EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Protracted displacement remains one of the most pressing humanitarian challenges facing refugees in Indonesia. As a non-signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention, Indonesia provides temporary protection but no pathway to permanent legal status, leaving refugees in prolonged uncertainty with restricted access to rights and limited prospects for durable solutions. For many Afghan refugee youth, this uncertainty has persisted for over a decade, profoundly shaping their mental well-being, resilience, and ability to participate meaningfully in society.
This qualitative study, conducted by Emplace Initiative with support from the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC) and the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), draws on in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with 25 participants, including Afghan refugee youth, refugee leaders, Indonesian stakeholders, and psychosocial practitioners, to examine the psychosocial impacts of prolonged displacement in Indonesia.
THE FINDINGS demonstrate that prolonged uncertainty itself has become a major source of psychological harm. Participants consistently described living in a state of indefinite limbo, characterised by the inability to work legally, limited access to higher education, prolonged family separation, financial dependency, and the absence of a foreseeable future. Limbo is a daily struggle against stagnation. Rather than recovering from a single traumatic event, refugee youth experience continuous and cumulative stress resulting from years of legal insecurity and social exclusion. These directly erode well-being, manifesting in persistent anxiety, chronic sleep issues, and a pervasive emotional numbness. Feelings of hopelessness, emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and depression were recurrent throughout the research.
Youth experience a tense duality in which independent milestones (higher education, careers) are suspended, yet adult responsibilities within families and communities accelerate.
The structural absence of formal academic recognition, a transparent resettlement process, or clear futures heavily fractures the motivation to learn. Planning and engaging often feel pointless, leading to severe demotivation and heightened household or community tensions. The responsibilities at home also prevented some youth from participating in community activities.
The study further reveals that refugee mental well-being deteriorates significantly during major humanitarian and geopolitical crises related to them. Events such as the Taliban's return to power in Afghanistan, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Iran vs Israel and the US conflict, reductions in humanitarian assistance, and growing uncertainty surrounding resettlement pathways repeatedly intensified psychological distress by reopening unresolved trauma and increasing concerns for family members remaining in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and other diaspora locations. Participants reported that these crises compounded existing vulnerabilities and, in some cases, contributed to severe mental health conditions, self-harm, and suicide within the refugee community.
Beyond legal and economic insecurity, the research highlights the psychosocial impact of social and religious marginalization. While existing literature notes that Shia Hazaras often navigate public ignorance and sectarian stereotypes regarding their faith in Sunni-majority Indonesia, which frequently compels them to avoid public worship, informants in this study primarily highlighted marginalization driven by their status as refugees and foreigners. Their accounts note experiences of being degraded or patronized as “vulnerable” or “lesser” by non-refugees who were aware of their status. Additionally, because of their physical appearance, participants are often mistaken for foreign tourists among those unaware of their refugee status and condition, leading local vendors to charge them inflated prices, severely compound their existing financial limitations and reinforce their sense of alterity.
Despite these significant challenges, the research also documents remarkable resilience among Afghan refugee youth.
Participants identified education, volunteering, peer support, sports, faith, and engagement with refugee-led organizations (RLOs) or other civil society organizations as critical sources of hope, purpose, and psychological strength. Crucially, youth relied on high-volume daily activities such as teaching, managing RLOs, athletic training, creative outlets, workshops, and reading to construct a rigorous “secondary routine” . This self-imposed structure serves as a vital psychological anchor: it provides predictability in times of uncertainty, deliberately keeping their minds preoccupied to distract from looming anxieties about their future.
Beyond distraction, well-being was sustained by a shared growth mindset and strong, aligned support systems. Informants actively engaged in continuous skill-building, such as mastering English and taking on community leadership, using these pursuits as a process of active meaning-making. By framing daily efforts as investments in their personal development, they restored a sense of agency, individual value, and purpose. Surrounding themselves with peers who shared this growth-oriented outlook created a protective community buffer. Operating within these networks, RLOs have emerged as trusted actors offering tailored psychosocial support, informal education, and leadership development, compensating for gaps in formal humanitarian assistance despite severe resource constraints.
However, while grassroots programs and personal motivation successfully convert forced inactivity into periods of strategic skill-building, they exist within a fragile ecosystem. Community programming alone cannot resolve the root trauma of prolonged displacement, nor can individual resilience compensate for structural exclusion.
While refugee-led initiatives strengthen coping capacities and social cohesion, they cannot substitute for formal legal recognition, basic rights, or long-term mobility. Sustainable well-being requires systemic policy reforms that restore dignity and enable refugees to rebuild their lives through expanded access to education, livelihoods, healthcare, legal protections, and long-term solutions, including resettlement and complementary pathways. Achieving this demands concrete commitment and coordination across all key stakeholders, including UNHCR, IOM, international donors, humanitarian organizations, the Indonesian government, local civil society, RLOs, community leaders, and refugee youth themselves. Ultimately, addressing psychosocial health requires dismantling the structural conditions of limbo that perpetuate harm.
Ultimately, improving psychosocial well-being requires addressing not only individual mental health needs but also the structural conditions of prolonged displacement that continue to shape refugees' lives.
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