Helsinki Committee says refugees in Moldova encounter difficulties in social reintegration

The persons with refugee status in Moldova find it very difficult to reintegrate into the society. The way they are treated and their condition do not correspond to the national and international legislative norms in the area, a communiqué from the Helsinki Committee for Human Right of Moldova says. The Juridical Clinic of the Committee received a number of complaints from the refugees that lived in the temporary accommodation centre for refugees. The refugees complain about the evacuation of eight families of refugees and about the delay in releasing their identity cards and in legalizing their stay in Moldova. This leads to the limitation or violation of a number of their rights, while the lack of travel documents essentially restricts their movement. According to the organization, all these facts have a negative impact on the integration of the refugees into the new social environment and constitute violations of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of the refugees, asylum seekers or beneficiaries of humanitarian aid. Another problem is the absence of identification documents, especially of international passports for refugees. The Committee says that the internally displaced people also face problems. It mentions that Moldova does not have a state body that would deal with the problems of these persons. Also, the state does not take into consideration the instable situation in the Transnistrian region. More and more people get displaced and their fate on the territory controlled by the Moldovan authorities is uncertain. The Committee considers that there should be created at least a subdivision in the Migration and Asylum Bureau that would deal with such problems and provide all the assistance the refugees need to socially reintegrate, as well as a joint commission composed of representatives of governmental agencies and of the civil society that would examine the causes of the situations and would work out measures to overcome them. There are about 12,500 people in Moldova that have been issued with stay permits.