The Claimant applied for asylum based upon his account of an attack during the Rwandan genocide and subsequent events. The Home Secretary refused the application and the Claimant appealed. At the appeal he was unrepresented and he adduced no medical evidence. The Immigration Judge dismissed his appeal, disbelieving the entirety of his account. Once his appeal rights had been exhausted, the Secretary of State detained him on 19 October 2010 for the purpose of removal. At the time of detention he suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants has published his regional study on the management of the external borders of the European Union and its impact on the human rights of migrants. The study concludes that the EU's approach to migration is based on deterrence of irregular migration through the strengthening of external border controls, and that such approach is coupled with a discourse that links migration to criminality and security.
The European Commission has released its Annual Report on Immigration and Asylum for 2012 which summarises the developments in these areas during the last year and includes an overview of challenges and a forward-looking perspective into 2013. It covers several areas of immigration as well as asylum, and provides the asylum figures for 2012.
The applicant, from Mogadishu (Somalia), sought asylum in Sweden in April 2009, allegedly to escape persecution by al-Shabaab, an Islamist group in Somalia. He claimed to have been persecuted for working with the American Friends Service Community from 1992 to 2005, including by way of threatening telephone calls telling him to stop spreading Christianity. After five interviews with the Swedish Migration Board, and an oral hearing before the Swedish Migration Court, the applicant's asylum claim was rejected, on grounds of vagueness and lack of credibility.
Eurostat published recently the figures on asylum applications and first instance decisions in the European Union for the second quarter of 2012. Nearly 70,000 applications were lodged in that period, which means a 10% decrease in comparison to the same period of 2011. 65,260 first instance decisions were taken, of which 18,260 were positive (granting either refugee status, subsidiary protection or protection for humanitarian reasons) and 47,000 were negative.
Human Rights Watch has published a report documenting summary returns of migrants from Italy to Greece. According to its findings, migrants and potential asylum seekers who try to reach Italy from Greece as stowaways in ferryboats are summarily sent back to Greece by Italian authorities, without being given the chance to enter the Italian territory and without proper screening procedures. In addition, unaccompanied children do not always undergo age determination procedures and guardians are not assigned to them.
The Administrative Court of Stuttgart by order of July 02 2012 responding to an urgent request of the applicant family (applicant), ruled that the Federal Republic of Germany must ensure that the applicant is not returned to Italy based on the Dublin Regulation because, due to the systemic deficiencies of the asylum procedures and reception conditions in Italy, the risk of inhuman or degrading treatment is imminent. Thus, the German state undertakes to continue the asylum procedure for the applicant in Germany.
The NGO Medical Justice released this week its report on the consequences that detention may have on the pregnancy of detained women. The report shows that, although migrant pregnant women are detained with a view to their removal, only 5% of those held in one particular detention centre in the UK in 2011 were successfully removed. It also finds that the healthcare these women received in detention was inadequate and that asylum seeking women have poorer health outcomes during and after childbirth than others.
The Dutch Council for Refugees reports that it has been revealed that Chinese informants working as interpreters in asylum cases were passing on information regarding Uyghuri applications for asylum in the Netherlands. Seeking asylum is treated as an act of treason by the Chinese Government, which places returned Uyghurs in danger if suspected of applying for asylum
