DEFENDING
DEMOCRACY IN EXILE
Policy Responses to
Transnational Repression
CASE STUDY
South Africa
S
outh Africa hosts hundreds of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and diaspora
members, largely from other African countries. Despite a well-known trend of
transnational repression and intermittent diplomatic and legal responses, South African
authorities are largely ill-prepared to address the threat at scale due to administrative
problems, issues with policing, preoccupation with other domestic security issues, and
conflicting foreign policy goals. Xenophobia directed at migrants compounds many of these
problems and reduces the political will to address them.
Best practices in South Africa’s response to transnational repression:
•
Courts routinely protect the right to asylum, providing an important safeguard against
refoulement and degradation of the rights afforded to people in the migration system.
•
A joint project with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is in
place to clear the asylum application backlog by 2024.
•
The government has demonstrated it is capable of creating accountability for
transnational repression through the application of domestic criminal law and by
expelling diplomats.
Refugees in Cape Town
asked the UNHCR to
intervene on their
behalf after they said
they no longer felt safe
in South Africa due to
high levels of crime
and xenophobia. Photo
credit: Rodger Bosch/
AFP via Getty Images.