Advocacy and Awareness Raising
ARDC advocates for the rights of all refugees and asylum seekers in Israel and for a humane and fair Israeli asylum policy. We are also working hard to raise awareness about the plight of African refugees and asylum seekers, reduce incidents of discrimination and change public attitudes towards the community.
Our advocacy work resulted in the following successes for the refugee and asylum seeker community:
* In the past two years, 40 unaccompanied minors have been enrolled in Israeli boarding schools and given the opportunity to progress their education. These minors had arrived in Israel without family or caregivers and were originally homeless living on the streets in south Tel Aviv—an area that is known for its high levels of poverty, crime, drug-dealing, theft, prostitution and frequent sexual and gender-based assaults. Thus, they were highly vulnerable to participating in high-risk activities and faced a serious risk to their well-being. The opportunity to learn in this supportive, structured environment represents their first step towards rebuilding their young lives. ARDC sponsored 48 individual psychological evaluation reports produced by child psychologist Lisa Law as a precondition for these minors to be accepted at boarding schools.
* 2000 Eritreans seeking asylum were granted work permits following campaigning by the ARDC in cooperation with other human rights organizations. The government was motivated by the squalid, overcrowded conditions of the community-organized shelters where the asylum seekers had been living to grant them the right to work and allow them to find the means to support themselves.
* In July 2009, the Hadera-Gadera policy was abandoned as a result of heavy lobbying by the Refugees’ Rights Forum. The Tel Aviv district is home to a significant proportion of refugee and asylum seeker community, however, it has not always been a place of safe refuge. In response to the sharp influx of asylum seekers from Africa, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert devised the ‘Hadera-Gadera’ policy to prohibit refugees and asylum seekers from living or working in central Israel. However, education and job opportunities for asylum seekers are poor outside Tel Aviv and the only access that they have to medical services and support are those provided by human rights organizations based in Tel Aviv, such as ourselves and the Physicians for Human Rights. In mid-2009, Operation Oz began to enforce the Hadera-Gedera policy resulting in waves of asylum seekers being arrested and detained. However, in July 2009, as a result of intensive lobbying in co-operation with other human rights organizations, the ARDC persuaded the Israeli government to abandon the policy.
The Refugee Seder 2010
30/03/2010 - 05/04/2010
The Refugees' Rights Forum
01/01/2008 - N/A
Other public awareness-raising
01/01/2008 - N/A
Giving Back with Love
01/01/2007 - N/A
