A group of eminent individuals from South Asian countries issued a declaration on Saturday asking their governments to adopt a uniform and comprehensive legal framework to guarantee the protection of refugees in the region.
None of the countries of South Asia signed the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees - the basic international agreement on the protection of refugees - but the EPG had proposed a model international law that is now incorporated in the new South Asia Declaration.
"The absence of a national legal framework for dealing with refugees in the region gives rise to disparities in the treatment of refugees as well as to uncertainties in approaches to refugee problems, and risks arbitrariness in dealing with refugees," said the preamble to the declaration.
Speaking at the press conference, former Chief Justice and chairman of the Pakistan EPG Nasim Hassan Shah said the declaration asks governments of the participating countries - Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal - to sign the 1951 convention and urged them to enact laws based on the model mechanism contained in the new document.
The declaration touches all aspects of refugee's protection, such as the commitment to granting asylum, fair treatment to refugees in the country of asylum and protection against refugees being forcibly returned to a country where they would be in danger, Shah added.
Shah said it also encourages the finding of durable solutions for refugee's problems like repatriation to their countries, local integration in the host country or resettlement in a third country when other alternatives are not available.
"This is something which is very important and will become a benchmark for the countries to follow," Nasim Hassan Shah pointed out and said, the declaration is another great achievement of this forum.
The regional consultations on refugees in South Asia were initiated by the previous UN High Commissioner for refugees Sadako Ogata in 1994 to provide a forum for eminent persons from the five South Asian countries to find ways to improve protection for refugees.
Shah said national EPG organisations would now approach foreign and law ministers in their respective countries to persuade them to bring forward legislation in conformity with the declaration.
The Pakistan EPG has already been discussing changes in their country's laws relating to refugees with the government and legislators.
Countries of South Asia face a variety of refugee problems. Nepal is hosting refugees from Bhutan and Myanmar refugees are in Bangladesh. Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghan refugees over the past 25 years, while India has a variety of refugee populations.
Sri Lanka is hosting only 18 refugees, but some 800,000 of its citizens are internally displaced persons (IDPs) by some 19 years of civil conflict and another million have left their country because of war.
"Now we have this declaration, which is an advance of the model law, which we will commend to the governments, to adopt in their national legislation and that will be a great step forward for refugee protection," said the chairman of the Pakistan EPG.
Nasim Hassan Shah disclosed that the declaration would provide concrete forum to Saarc refugee host countries to discuss their problems how to humanely treat them as no scientific mechanism was in place to give them relief.
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