Archive for category: ANNOUNCEMENTS

“Which is the closest mosque to your home?” Or “Which school did you go to?” Or “Which team are you?” Simple questions, however, that their answer will judge for a refugee whether he will continue his life in Germany or whether he will return to his country. People who are trained to interview in order to judge whether or not someone is entitled to asylum need to do a lot of research to find out the truth.

As stated by an official of the Greek Asylum Service, “there is a lot of information from the countries of origin of the asylum seekers we ought to know. If for example, someone mentions a battle, we need to find out if that particular event really happened when he claims to have been in the area. On the other hand, he has to prove that he speaks the truth”.

Each request is dealt with individually, irrespective of the country of origin. However, there may be special reasons for the Service to investigate. “For example, Albanians are not at risk in their homeland, Albania is a country that generally does not have refugees. However, a particular person may be at risk for his or her life for particular reasons,” the official said.

In these cases, however, the possibility of approval of the asylum application is minimal. However, the Asylum Service is obliged to investigate it, following the lawful yet time-consuming process.

In 2016 applied for asylum in Greece 1,420 people from Albania and 688 people from Georgia. Accordingly, in 2017, 334 Albanian nationals and 227 Georgians did the same. In total, from 2013 to 2017, a total of 3,745 Albanians and 1,993 Georgians have submitted an asylum application to Greece.

In Greece, 51,092 asylum applications were lodged in Greece (monthly average 4.258). In 2017, 16,870 requests were filed by the end of March. The Greek Asylum Service as a whole is now able to handle 170 requests a day.

The non-governmental organization Médecins sans Frontières has asked the US and Mexican governments to implement “immediate” legal protection measures such as asylum applications, humanitarian entry permits and protection measures for those fleeing to escape from violence

The refugees and migratory flows from the Middle East and Africa are intense in Europe. But hundreds of thousands of people try to reach North America, that is, the United States and Canada starting from Central America.

Thousands of refugees and migrants have lost their lives in the Mediterranean, much more are being killed, raped and tortured by traffickers, but also in the American continent, a humanitarian crisis is underway, particularly in Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and the Mexico.

According to the MSF report, “this migration is not only financially motivated, it is a wider humanitarian crisis”.

Médecins Sans Frontières states that the vast majority of immigrants live “in a state of constant violence”, which starts in their countries of origin and expands to Mexico, where they have no access to help. Two out of three (68.3%) of the surveyed migrants said they were victims of violence during their travel from Mexico to the US, with almost a third of women reporting that they were victims of sexual violence.

A message to support refugees was sent by this year’s Eurovision winner Salvador Sobral. Wearing a T-shirt that had the message “S.O.S. Refugees”, the contestant from Portugal showed his solidarity for refugees, calling for Europeans to do the same.

However, the Eurovision organization (EBU) banned the Portuguese competitor from wearing this particular t-shirt.

Salvador Sobral has worn the “S.O.S. Refugees” blouse on several occasions during this contest, but the EBU has forbidden to wear it on the day of the big final and during the voting.

The EBU claims that the singer puts forward a “political message” that runs counter to the rules of the contest, which does not allow political positions.

On the occasion of the celebration of Mother’s Day, Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Nils Muiznies, referred to the right of families to live together and to the violation of this right for refugee families who, due to European refugee policies, are forced to live separately.

According to the Commissioner, “we must not forget that there are mothers of refugees who have been forced to live separately from their family members because of the policies applied by most of these European countries.”

Commenting on the policy of European countries, the Commissioner notes that many European countries have made family reunification more difficult by measures aimed at managing migration.

”The restrictions that exist in many European countries on the family reunification of refugees”, concluded Commissioner Muszetz, ”are causing enormous suffering and family tragedies”.

Finally, the Commissioner announced that next month he will publish a series of recommendations to specific European countries in order to adopt a more humane policy with regard to the reunification of refugee families.

Hungary and Slovakia have expressed once more their opposition to the system of redistribution of refugees. The two countries have been brought to trial to the European Court of Justice, stating that the EU’s quota system for receiving refugees is illegal.

In 2015, the European Union reached a system of the relocation of 120,000 refugees among the 28 member states in a decision to help Greece and Italy with the most pressure from the refugee crisis, that resulted in bringing from 2014 more than 1.6 million refugees and migrants in the EU.

However, the agreement has met with strong resistance from the four Visegrad states, stressing that quotas for the allocation of refugees should be “non-compulsory”.

During the hearing in the European Court of Justice, representatives of Hungary and Slovakia defended their countries’ position against the reception of asylum seekers, which prompted the reaction of Germany and other countries that stressed the need for European solidarity.

The Prime Ministers of Hungary and Slovakia, Victor Orban and Robert Fico, have sought to abandon the quota system – agreed by the EU by a majority.

Poland was the only country in the courtroom that supported Hungary and Slovakia. Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Sweden, Luxembourg, Belgium and the European Commission have been brought against the request by Hungary and Slovakia, claiming that the fundamental principle of European solidarity is at stake in this case.

Many other EU countries are delaying implementation of the refugee resettlement program, with some 18,000 people coming from Greece and Italy in more than 1.5 years, based on the agreement that expires in September.

The Advocate-General of the Court will present on 26 July an opinion on the case, which may be indicative of the decision, which is expected to be issued in the autumn.