A football game between Rohingya and Indian youths.

Some of the Rohingyas have also self-organised. A small number of prominent youths established a Rohingya Literacy Programme and women’s empowerment initiatives, as well as actively networking with the aid community to augment support and services. Their football team the Shining Stars, is an important social initiative offering bridging opportunities to other groups in Delhi, as they play solidarity matches with other teams in the city.

Challenges

The existence of these community organisations speaks of the opportunities that exist in a city. Urban environments more readily provide enough working people in close proximity to enable a membership model (such as with KDWS). Cities also offer malleable spaces, for the transformation of apartments into community centres (such as for the Chins) or wasteland into a football pitch (for the Rohingya Shining Stars).

However, it would be a mistake to laud these community initiatives as solutions to the problem of ensuring adequate refugee protection in India. Many arise due to severe access gaps in Indian public services.

It was the discrimination they experienced in Indian schools and clinics that led the Chins to establish parallel schools and a health clinic. Moreover, not only is sustainability precarious (the clinic run by a Chin refugee doctor had to close when he was resettled), it also reinforces segregation. The same Christian Afghan refugee who praised the support of his church network also spoke about such difficulties. He said: “It is unlucky to be stuck in such a situation [as a refugee] … the loneliness is different.”

The Rohingya youths have established their literacy and empowerment initiatives partly because of gaps in services and lack of staying power of many aid organisations. They describe a lack of funds as preventing sustainability and expansion. “The challenge with this job is that for me to help such people, it requires money,” one explained, “but in my community, people are illiterate and poor. How will they pay?”

Moreover, these self-organised communities can exacerbate—or create—community hierarchies, discrimination, and exclusion. As another refugee in Delhi explained: “The community leaders are selected on the basis of their connectivity with the NGOs.” This so often means men with a command of English.

While self-organised groups provide essential safety nets for refugees in Delhi, they are clearly not a replacement for governmental and NGO services. India not only urgently requires a robust, inclusive legal framework that protects refugees, the government and NGOs also need to re-approach how they can better support vulnerable communities to access wider public and aid services.

This increased support requires the government to change its restrictive position on humanitarian and development NGOs. Too many, especially those with international connections, are being weakened or closed down with recent changes in laws regulating foreign funding. Many argue this is driven by ideological motives to quash dissent.

This is exacerbating the pressure on already vulnerable refugee communities to make their own safety nets.

Jessica Field, assistant professor, Jindal School of International Affairs, OP Jindal Global University. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. We welcome your comments at ideas.india@qz.com.

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