• Enlarge Text
• Decrease Text
• Print
• E-mail Article

 

Industrialized countries in recent years have complained about being swamped by asylum-seekers and have adopted increasingly stricter policies designed to stem the tide of refugees and ensure border protection. Since 2002, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been tracking a downward trend in asylum applications lodged in industrialized countries. Its latest report, Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2006, shows a steady decline in 50 industrialized countries (44 European and 6 non-European). The 2006 level was the lowest in many years and, in some cases, even for decades.

Germany and Denmark, for instance, recorded the lowest level since 1983, New Zealand since 1988 and the United Kingdom since 1989. In France, the number of asylum applications submitted in 2006 was the lowest since 1998. The 25 countries of the European Union received 53 per cent fewer requests in 2006 compared to 2002, while Europe as a whole registered a 54-per cent decline. While some experts agree that stricter asylum policies are behind the declining trend, others prefer to point out the growing feelings of intolerance and xenophobia fueling these policies.

Addressing the impact of stricter policies, UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres said UNHCR fully recognized that States were entitled to the responsible management of their borders. “But States”, he added, “should also recognize that guarding borders must not prevent physical access to asylum procedures or fair refugee status determination for those entitled to it by international law.” For his part, Sherif Elsayed-Ali, head of the refugee and migrants’ rights team at Amnesty International Secretariat, acknowledged that complex policies adopted by States not only had a “negative effect” on access to asylum, but also led to declining numbers of asylum-seekers. “These [policies] include the increasing attempts of certain States to offload their obligations on to other States through interception, extraterritorial processing and other means”, he said. “States also use deterrents to stem the flow of asylum-seekers, such as the detention of failed asylum-seekers and pushing them into destitution through restricting access to assistance and employment.”

Bill Frelick, Refugee Policy Director at Human Rights Watch, noted however that non-entrée measures often made no distinction between people in need of international protection and other undocumented migrants. The UN Department of Public Information, in its 2006 list of “10 Stories the World Should Hear More About”, had warned that the line was blurring between victims fleeing persecution and migrants seeking economic opportunity. Mr. Guterres said “that confusion is often bred by those who deliberately mix security problems, terrorism, migrant flows and asylum issues in order to capitalize on the fear and apprehension that result. The reality seldom supports the populist rhetoric”.

Doudou Diène, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, addressed the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in 2006 in Geneva, alerting it to the growing impact of racism and xenophobia around the world and how they impacted asylum policies. He wrote: “Racism and xenophobia are coming out of the closet, in a sense, and gradually creeping into the policies of mainstream political actors. That fact is manifested not only in the backing away from cultural diversity manifested by many States, but also in restrictive policies regarding immigrants and asylum-seekers.”

Mr. Diène, in a 2007 report to the Human Rights Council, discussed the situation in the United Kingdom. He asserted that the negative climate around asylum and refugee-related issues was closely linked to frequent changes in policies designed to increasingly deter asylum-seekers from entering the country, especially in the wake of the July 2005 bombings in London. The UNHCR distribution of asylum claims for 2006 in the United Kingdom showed that the number of new requests (27,000) lodged had fallen by 10 per cent compared to 2005, by one third (31 per cent) compared to 2004, by more than half (54 per cent) compared to 2003 and by nearly three quarters (73 per cent) compared to 2002, when the United Kingdom was the main destination for asylum-seekers, with more than 103,000 new claims.

Mr. Elsayed-Ali deplored the fact “that many Governments used the usually irrational and unjustified fear of asylum-seekers for political and electoral purposes, pushing through harsh policies that fuel xenophobia and intolerance”. Mr. Frelick emphasized this fear in action in the wake of September 11 (2001), stating that the United States suspended its refugee resettlement programme and its Congress passed a flurry of counterterrorism bills, “many of which focused on restricting asylum”. He noted that “refugees and asylum-seekers became the easy, visible targets that arose from this fear of terrorism, even though there was scant evidence that terrorists had or would use the refugee and asylum systems to enter the country.”