The UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children, has released her activity report, covering a time span from August 2012 until February 2013. The report will be put to the Human Rights Council during its next session. The report comprises a thematic analysis of the integration of a human rights-based approach in measures to discourage the demand that fosters all forms of exploitation of persons and which leads to human trafficking.
The International Association of Refugee Law Judges (IARLJ) released guidance for the assessment of credibility in international protection claims under the Qualification Directive. The paper first explains the legal and historic background of asylum assessment and the international and EU legal frameworks of international protection and then proposes an outline for the credibility of assessment in different stages. Drawing from European and international best practice, it also sets out criteria and standards for the assessment of credibility.
The European Commission has presented its new proposal for a Regulation concerning operations coordinated by Frontex for the surveillance of external sea borders. In 2012, the CJEU annulled the previous decision regulating this issue (Decision 2010/252/EU) after an action brought by the European Parliament, who considered that it had been adopted through an inappropriate procedure. The new proposal replaces the annulled decision.
The applicants are two siblings who are Pakistani nationals. They had come to Norway with their mother in 1989 and they were granted residence permits on humanitarian grounds. In 1999 their permits were withdrawn on account of the fact that they had returned to Pakistan between 1992 and 1996 without notifying it to the Norwegian immigration authorities, and they were refused further residence in Norway. The two applicants were minors at the time.
The applicants are Mohammad Rasoul Madah, an Iranian national, his partner, Maria Kerkenezova, and their son, Daniel Mohammad Rasoul Madah, both Bulgarian nationals. They were born in 1965, 1973 and 2006 respectively. Granted a permanent residence permit in Bulgaria in 2001, Mohammad Rasoul Madah subsequently met and started living with Ms Kerkenezova, with whom he had a son, the third applicant.
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.
CEAR has published its Annual Report on the Situation of Refugees in Spain for 2012. The report reviews briefly the situation of refugees in the world and in Europe and then looks in more detail into the situation of refugees in Spain from the points of view of access to the territory and procedures, of the processing of applications for international protection and its outcomes, of integration of refugees and access to the labour market.
The CPT examined the treatment of persons detained by different Spanish law enforcement agencies in 2011, including detention centres for foreign nationals. The report criticises the prison-like atmosphere of those centres and the restrictive regimes in place. It also refers to several allegations of ill-treatment of foreign nationals detained in them, in particular by external intervention of the National Police.
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.
