IRRA Reporting Department Visited the United Nations’s Special Rapporteurs at Geneva
International Refugee Rights Association [IRRA] participated in nine different meetings in Geneva between 14-18 November 2022 in cooperation with the Reporting & Research and the External Relations Departments.
In the meetings; IRRA reports, analyzes and information notes were presented to UN representatives in print, the main legal problems faced by Syrians in Turkey and Turkey's situation in the harmonization process also discussed with the UN reporters.
In the first day of the meeting, Selim Vatandaş attended the meeting titled administrative detention in Turkey and South Africa at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and shared the official data about the Removal Centers in Turkey with the authorities. In addition, touching on the main problems of Syrian children in Turkey, Vatandaş stated that approximately 800,000 children who cannot obtain citizenship from Syria and have to reside in Turkey may face the problem of “statelesness” in the long run.
On the second day of the meetings, Selim Vatandaş meet the representatives of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Arrests and Migrant Workers Committee on the UN offices. He exchanged information on the functioning of UN mechanisms, the effectiveness of field reports and irregular migrants working unregistered. During the meetings, the importance of Article 76 and 77 of the International Covenant for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families and Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights were specially emphasized so that lawyers could specifically reference them in their petitions.
On the last day of the visit, Vatandaş met special rapporteurs at the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on migration, preventing torture and combating human trafficking to talk about Turkey’s agenda and present our reports and analyzes in English.
