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 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.
The Irish Refugee Council (IRC) is seeking to appoint a Director to work on a contractual basis with the EDAL Project Manager. The person is expected to take up responsibilities as soon as possible and must be available until the end of February 2014 when the current phase of EDAL will come to an end.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited Greece from 21 January to 31 January. In its end-of-mission statement, the Group underlines several flaws in Greece's detention policies, in particular regarding asylum seekers. The Group notes that disproportionately long detention of asylum seekers with no application of alternatives and in absence of effective judicial review may be considered as arbitrary. Moreover, the Group considers that detention as long as 18 months (which is the maximum in Greece for asylum seekers) in deficient conditions may amount to unwarranted punishment.
The applicants, Ibrahima Diallo and Mamadou Dian Diallo, are two Guinean nationals who were born in 1980 and 1985, respectively. In the autumn of 2006, they arrived at Prague airport by plane from Dakar (Senegal), having transferred in Lisbon. They both applied immediately for asylum claiming they would be detained, and possibly even killed, if they returned to Guinea where the police had been searching for them.
The case concerns a couple of Palestinians who were recognised as refugees by the UNRWA. In 2003 they were forced to leave the refugee camp where they used to live in Jordan owing to a conflict with a local family, and went to France. They applied for asylum, but their claims were rejected by the French Asylum Office.
