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Tag: asylum seekers

  • Deportation flights to Iraq resume despite UN warning

    Deportation flights to Iraq resume despite UN warning

    Asylum seekers have been returned to Baghdad after a temporary suspension of repatriation flights

    Owen Bowcott

    Iraqi protesters
    Iraqi protesters in Baghdad. As many as 30 have been killed in the 'Arab spring' demonstrations. Photograph: Shihab Ahmed/EPA

    The first group deportation of Iraqis for six months has seen a number of asylum seekers returned to a country convulsed by civil rights protests and violence.

    The decision to resume charter flights was in defiance of warnings by the United Nations high commissioner for refugees that it is unsafe to remove people to Baghdad and central Iraq.

    The plane, organised by the UK Borders Agency in conjunction with the Swedish government and the EU border agency Frontex, left Stansted airport at 7am on Wednesday. Last-minute appeals on behalf of other failed asylum seekers prevented several others from being forcibly repatriated. It is not known how many deportees from Sweden were on board.

    Charter flight removals to Baghdad were temporarily suspended last October after the European court of human rights ruled that a surge in sectarian violence and suicide bombings made Baghdad and the surrounding area too dangerous.

    The Home Office has since pledged to “continue to undertake” deportations but acknowledged that, in cases where the Strasbourg court supported petitions from individuals demonstrating that they were at risk, it would not enforce removal.

    Refugee organisations said that as many as 17 people had been deported, but the Home Office maintained that only eight had gone.

    Protesters in Baghdad and northern Iraq are staging “Arab spring”-style protests against corruption, poor services and lack of employment. As many as 30 demonstrators have been killed in the capital and the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya since mid-February as authorities have suppressed dissent.

    The UNHCR has criticised European states, including the UK, that have sent Iraqis back to the five central governorates, or provinces, including Baghdad. “We are very concerned about reports that the Home Office has returned Iraqis to Baghdad,” a spokeswoman for the UNHCR said. “The situation for minorities [such as Christians] in Iraq is very precarious. There has been a deterioration in security.”

    The International Federation of Iraqi Refugees, which monitors removals, said the resumption of charter flights had been done at a time when attention was focused on Libya.

    “The UK government, while it is saying how much it supports democracy and human rights in Libya, continues to support the corrupt governments in Iraq and Kurdistan (sic),” said a spokesman. “Now it is deporting people, many of whom left to flee this same government violence, into the middle of it. It is a criminal hypocrisy and must be stopped.”

    A Home Office spokesman said: “The UK courts have confirmed that we are able to return people to all of Iraq and that the return of Kurdish Iraqis via Baghdad does not expose them to serious harm. The UK Border Agency would prefer that those with no legal basis to remain in the UK leave voluntarily. Where they do not, we will seek to enforce their removal.”

    guardian.co.uk, 9 March 2011

  • Report finds major drop in asylum-seekers in Turkey

    Report finds major drop in asylum-seekers in Turkey

    FULYA ÖZERKAN

    ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News

    This file photo shows a Pakistani man holding his daughter in Nea Vissa, Greece. A new report calls for the rigorous analysis of core capacities of countries to manage migration effectively and identify gaps and priorities for the future.
    This file photo shows a Pakistani man holding his daughter in Nea Vissa, Greece. A new report calls for the rigorous analysis of core capacities of countries to manage migration effectively and identify gaps and priorities for the future.

    The number of asylum-seekers in southern Europe fell by 33 percent last year, driven by significant declines in applications in Italy, Turkey and Greece, a new report released Monday by the International Organization for Migration has revealed.

    The World Migration Report 2010 looks into the wave of migration across the globe and calls for the rigorous analysis of core capacities of countries to manage migration effectively and identify gaps and priorities for the future.

    In 2009, the total number of asylum-seekers in industrialized nations remained stable with about 377,000 applications, according to the report. The Nordic region recorded a 13 percent increase with 51,100 new applicants – the highest in six years – but by contrast, the number of applications in Southern Europe fell by 33 percent, with 50,100 claims.

    That was driven by significant declines in Italy (-42 percent), Turkey (-40 percent) and Greece (-20 percent).

    Another fact the comprehensive study revealed was that with the exception of Germany, most Western and Central European countries experienced an increase in their populations. For the majority of these countries, the increase was due to both positive natural population change (a higher number of live births than deaths during the year) and positive net migration (a higher number of immigrants than emigrants).

    In Turkey, along with Macedonia and Poland, the number of emigrants is larger than the number of immigrants but a higher birth rate than death rate keeps the total population growing, said the report.

    Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly suggested that each family in Turkey should have at least three children to overcome the adverse effects of the gradual decrease that will occur in the country’s growth rate over the next 30 years. His remarks, when first uttered, sparked heavy debates in academic circles, with many arguing that encouraging people to have more children is not a solution for an aging population.

    The report also looks into changes in the populations of internally displaced persons, or IDPs. Despite an important 1.1-million-person drop in the IDP population in Sudan, it remains the most affected country, with 4.9 million IDPs. There has also been a slight drop in the IDP population in Iraq – from 2,778,000 to 2,764,111. But the report reveals this too remains high given Iraq has the third-largest IDP population in the world as of 2010. Colombia stands as the second largest with 3.3 million.

    Other previously important IDP populations, however, have remained largely unchanged according to the research. This is the case in Turkey as well as in Azerbaijan, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, Senegal and, despite their upheavals, in Georgia and Sri Lanka. In Georgia, it seems that most of the displaced (apart from ethnic Georgians displaced from Abkhazia and South Ossetia) have returned to their homes.

    Regarding overall immigration policy of countries, the report notes that responses to current and emerging migration challenges and opportunities are often short-term, piecemeal and fragmented although hundreds of millions of dollars are spent each year by the states to manage migration.

    If the number of international migrants, estimated at 214 million in 2010, continues to grow at the same pace as during the last 20 years, it could reach 405 million by 2050, it warned.

    One of the reasons for this steep rise will be significant growth in the labor force in developing countries, from 2.4 billion in 2005 to 3.6 billion in 2040, accentuating the global mismatch between labor supply and demand. The impact of environmental change will also affect migration trends in the future.