The Right to Work in Ecuador: A Positive Development within a Restrictive New Law

Adina Appelbaum is a second year joint MPP/JD student at Georgetown University.  She spent a year in Cairo, Egypt as a Fulbright Fellow providing legal aid to refugees who had fled from Iraq, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan.  Adina has also worked with refugee issues at Asylum Access Ecuador and at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

By Adina Appelbaum

On May 30, 2012, the Ecuadorian government adopted Decreto 1182, a new restrictive decree that has replaced the previous policies regarding the refugee status determination process (RSD) in Ecuador.  Decreto 1182 represents a great setback for refugee rights in Ecuador, as the law no longer includes a provision to accept refugees under the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees of 1984, which until recently has provided protection to thousands of Colombians fleeing violence.  Under the new decree, asylum seekers now have only 15 business days to apply for status in Ecuador after entering the country and three to five days to submit an appeal for a negative decision.  Additionally, refugees who are considered ilegitimas, or illegitimate, are now excluded from the process.

Updates From the Field — Refugee Livelihoods in Ecuador

Photo by Nitsan Tal

Anna Chen spent a year working for Asylum Access in Quito, Ecuador. In March 2012, she travelled with volunteer photographer Nitsan Tal to document the inspiring lives of our refugee clients. 

By: Anna Chen. 

In a home virtually empty of furniture, Maria* shows me the wood boards lying among sawdust, glue, paint and work tools. Donning a white face mask, she squats down and begins to saw at a board. These are the first steps of making what will become large wooden mirror frames, a craft she learned from the internet. Each takes several hours to complete, including embellishing the frames with ornate golden decorations. But this is the easy bit.

Maria tells me the most difficult part is getting people to buy them off the streets of Quito, where she peddles them for about USD10 apiece. With modest profit margins, Maria must sell dozens to feed her family of four every month.

This labor day, let’s reflect on how lucky we are to have employment

As we commemorate Labor Day and enjoy the long weekend, many refugees in Africa, Asia and Latin America still cannot feed their families because they are denied the right to work.