The struggles of refugee and foreign pupils in Nelson Mandela Bay when it comes to accessing schooling will be highlighted in Germany on Tuesday at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation event.
This is as the refugee community faces another crisis after the department of home affairs signalled its intent to stop issuing birth certificates to foreign children born in SA.
The global launch of Unesco’s 2019 Global Education Monitoring report will be held in Germany on Tuesday.
The theme of the special report is “Migration, Displacement and Education: Building bridges, not walls”.
According to a Unesco statement, the event in Berlin will also highlight interventions by German foreign minister Heiko Maas.
As part of the report’s launch, the experience of an inner-city primary school child in Central, Port Elizabeth, will be highlighted .
Kester Nyatsanza, a Zimbabwean mother of two children born in SA, said she had become despondent as a result of her struggles with home affairs.
“My children have not been issued with the right permits for them to be allowed into state schools,” Nyatsanza said.
“I am self-employed. I have to pay R1,300 for my little girl to attend a private school because the state schools refuse to take her. I must also pay R500 for the transport.
“I thought I was making headway a few months ago, but then home affairs said because I took my children to Zimbabwe for their grandfather’s funeral, they can’t get the right permits,” she said.
“I am very scared as I was robbed a few months ago and they now told me at home affairs that I will have to wait for another three years to get new birth certificates,” she said.
“I don’t make enough money every month. I live under enormous pressure. It is a big problem. I also don’t have a solution. I have tried everything.
“The South African government needs to help us.
“Education is life to our children. I can’t keep the girls at home.
“Every time I look at my children I stress . . . if I pay the money for school I don’t have money for food and clothes.”
Meanwhile, the legal challenges against home affairs to obtain birth certificates for children with foreign parents are mounting.
Legal Aid SA is dealing with 30 cases involving the department’s refusal to register children in the Eastern Cape without a DNA test.
Lawyers for Human Rights has started an international fundraising campaign to fight the regulations and save a further 50 children from statelessness.
Lawyers for Human Rights, the Centre for Child Law, the Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town and the UCT Refugee Law Clinic have vowed to fight the proposed birth certificate amendinternational law, it is the responsibility of the country of birth to issue a birth certificate, regardless of whether citizenship is also granted or not.
They added that it discriminates against children and violates their human rights to refuse them birth certificates.
According to the statement, this will harm vulnerable groups even more as refugee and asylum-seeker children cannot approach their embassies, which would jeopardise their protection in SA.
Orphaned and abandoned children who cannot prove their nationalities will be excluded from obtaining a birth certificate.
And stateless children who do not have a country of nationality will not be protected.
The statement reads: “This proposed amendment comes in the wake of criticism from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the UN Human Rights council on South Africa’s violations of international law on the child’s right to birth registration and a legal identity.
“Without a birth certificate children face immense barriers to basic services and human rights . . . We urge the department of home affairs not to pursue this amendment.”