By Elena Habersky
Ten Years Ago
On the morning of December 18, 2015, I stopped receiving Facebook messages from my former English students. The last messages they sent me included photos of their UNHCR cards: photos of their faces grainy, but the information easily readable; their names, ages, and place of birth: Darfur.
It had been a grueling two days since December 16, the day when approximately 800 Sudanese asylum seekers and refugees were rounded up in front of the UNHCR Amman offices and herded on to buses, their hands visibly zip-tied, to be taken to their final destination: the airport. A rumor quickly spread during those early morning hours of December 16 that the buses were going to take them to the airport because they were going to be relocated to Canada after a month of protesting outside UNHCR offices. Their protest, a very colorful camp city including men, women, and children, had been erected by Sudanese in Jordan who were asking for greater access to housing, education, and healthcare, along with more resettlement opportunities to third countries; opportunities they believed other communities were receiving but they were not due to discrimination.
The true goal behind getting them onto buses, however, was much more sinister: they were being deported. The two-day affair saw individuals beaten, tear-gassed, and hit with rubber bullets at a warehouse close to the airport with no ventilation. At the end of the ordeal, three planes carrying approximately 450 people made their way from Amman to Khartoum.
It has been ten years since this deportation occurred. The outrage felt in Amman amongst the community and their supporters(including students, academics, humanitarian workers, and concerned individuals) was palpable, and perhaps somehow still is, as was an overlying blanket of sadness and fear for those Sudanese left behind. Indeed, those left behind in Amman have been left trying to pick up the pieces of their lives as friends, spouses, and family members were torn from them and sent to an unknown future. What seemed like a harrowing and one-off event, perhaps a warning message to other refugees in Jordan to behave and not cause a scene, has had real and lasting effects on this tight-knit community. As deportations increase globally, it is important to reflect on the lasting impacts a decision like this can have.
Customary International Law and Nonrefoulement
Deporting asylum seekers and refugees violates the customary international law principle of nonrefoulement, which explicitly forbids governments from returning individuals to places where they risk being persecuted, tortured, or exposed to inhumane or degrading treatment and punishment. Even though Jordan is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it nevertheless is bound by this customary international law principle. In addition, Jordan is party to the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratifying it in 1991. This should prohibit the removal of those who have a fear of returning to a country where they may face torture or persecution.
Darfur has been and continues to be an unsafe location. For many Darfuris who were deported in 2015 their main fear was not even the situation they may find themselves in Darfur, but the treatment they would first receive upon arrival in Khartoum. Many were political activists who spoke out against the then-Bashir government and its involvement with ethnic cleansing of non-Arab tribes in Western Sudan.
One friend was questioned upon arrival:
“When we landed at Khartoum Airport, we all went through six-hour interviews. Yeah, from 12pm to 6pm, six-hour interviews! The security forces had files on all of us, they knew everything about our backgrounds, including our education levels, so I knew I couldn’t lie. They even had what major I studied in college. They asked us many questions. Where we were from in Darfur, where our families were now, if we still had any contacts located in Sudan, what was our address, where we were planning on staying. They took our fingerprints and told us we could not leave Sudan legally for an undefined period. I knew if I would leave, which I needed to, I would have to leave by smuggling to Egypt.”
According to the Jordanian government spokesperson at the time, “asylum conditions don’t apply to [Sudanese]” because they entered Jordan under the pretext of seeking medical treatment. Regardless of how one enters a country, one can still apply for and obtain refugee status. This is why many of the Sudanese individuals deported had asylum-seeking and refugee status with UNHCR, even if they came under the pretext of receiving medical care.
The Political Aftermath
Deportations are more often than not catastrophic and life-altering events for everyone involved. A global rise of right-wing politics and rhetoric has also brought an increase of securitized migration policies, leading to an escalation in deportations. States often want to be viewed as ‘doing something’ to stop irregular migration and get rid of non-citizens, especially with money flowing in from allies to support this purpose. While such measures can be traced to pressure on global South states (such as Jordan) from the European Union and the Global North , we do a disservice in completely taking away the agency of such states within the Global South in these decision-making processes.
In January 2019, Jordan released a government decision that all people entering on tourism, medical, study, or work visas could not be registered with UNHCR, once again going against international refugee law and Jordan’s MoU with UNHCR. While the decision technically mentions visa types, government officials have mentioned Yemenis, Iraqis, and Sudanese by nationality as being unable to apply for registration, leading to questions of racial and xenophobic discrimination; especially for Yemenis and Sudanese whose arrival numbers increased between 2016-2018. In 2021 Jordan also deported four Yemeni asylum seekers.
Until the writing of this blog post, the registration suspension for these groups is still in place.
Real-world Impact
The deportation in 2015 had a real and lasting impact on this small and vibrant Sudanese community.
For those left behind in Jordan, difficulties remain. Over the past decade, some have been resettled abroad, though global resettlement numbers have sharply dwindled. Others started their own grassroots initiatives to support their communities, contesting the reliance on international organizations and UN agencies – it should come as no surprise that since 2015 there remains a serious mistrust of these organizations and their ability to determine what decisions are the best for the community. Through this work, many community members have become true leaders. However, they operate within an environment where many of those they advocate for cannot access services and basic needs due to the suspension of registration, and a constant fear of deportation still remains.
The silver lining for many of the ‘deported Darfuris’ is that they were able to leave Sudan quickly after arrival in Khartoum, smuggling themselves across the border to neighboring Egypt. Due to their situation, their asylum process was straightforward and mostly all have obtained refugee status, with a few gaining coveted resettlement slots abroad in Europe and North America within the past ten years, while others have clandestinely made their way to Europe. Work is difficult for refugees in Egypt due to a number of bureaucratic barriers, with many finding work in the informal labor market, which can open them up to exploitation and abuse. Egypt has also started targeting Sudanese migrants after one million entered the country following the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan in April 2023. The government has detained and deported thousands back to Sudan within the past two years. Yet, despite all the difficulties this group remains close and participates in football clubs and other cultural events together. They feel they are always bound together due to their deportation and remain supportive of one another through it all.
One reality still remains though: both groups miss one another, are still in contact, and wonder what could have been if the deportation did not occur.
Conclusion
This blog is important for many reasons. The main one is remembrance and reflection; to show we have not forgotten an event which, while physically ripping some apart from each other, brought many more together. Another is to show how difficulties persist and that policies and rhetoric towards marginalized and vulnerable communities who have been forced from their homes have sadly not changed – it could be argued they have become worse. Yet, it is also important to see, without losing ourselves in the platitudes of ‘resilience’, that people live their lives and can create something positive out of something tragic, not allowing only something bad to define them. This type of community mobilization, while still allowing for validation of suffering and recognition of loss, serves as a powerful catalyst for advocacy, fostering awareness of the ongoing struggles faced by individuals and families affected by deportation. Ultimately, this remembrance embodies the hope for a future where every person can live with dignity and belonging, free from the fear of separation.
Elena Habersky is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow and is conducting research on her project, “Bordering Sudanese Lives: Negotiating Identity, Work, and Mobility in Egypt (1952-2026)”. She currently serves as an affiliate for the Refugee Law Initiative (RLI) at the University of London, as one of two PhD Representatives for the IMISCOE Standing Committee on Forced Migration and Refugees, and as a co-editor for the Externalizing Asylum Blog. She recently joined the Advisory Committee of Locally Led, a grassroots organization which supports refugee-led organizations (RLOs) in the global South and continues to work as a project development consultant for a Sudanese RLO in the Faisal neighborhood of Greater Cairo.
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