BERN, SWITZERLAND – The Swiss Migration Office’s current backlog of some 3,000 applications must be completed and applications brought up to date by 2013, former Swiss Federal Judge Michel Féraud concluded as part of his final report on applications for asylum in Switzerland.
But the most damning part of his report covers applications from Iraqis at the Swiss embassies in Egypt and Syria, from 2006 to 2008: the judge writes that a Swiss Justice and Police Department decision in November 2006 to not handle the applications was not in line with procedures defined by law, and it violated constitutional guarantees.
Rigid system contributed to decision to ignore applications, backlog
His report implies that the blame lies with the rigidity of the legal situation, according to a Federal Council statement issued 11 January: all Swiss embassies are required to accept and handle asylum applications, although they are not equipped, in terms of staffing, to do so. The applicants, had they been turned down by Switzerland, would not have been obliged to return to Iraq, since they had been accepted by Egypt and Syria.
One of the debates that was taking place at the time was how to better distinguish between legitimate asylum seekers and migrants. The number of asylum seekers grew steadily from the 1970s, federal statistics show, and the resident asylum population peaked at some 105,000 in 1999. The number of applicants has been in the range of about 10-15,000 annually for the past decade just under 11,000 in 2007, with 15,567 applicants in 2011.
UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) figures published in November show that the decline in applications for asylum occurred worldwide, not just in Switzerland, from 2000 to 2010.
Judge not suggesting legal pursuit
Féraud notes that, given the lapse of time and the Federal Council’s stated desire in 2010 to make the regulations less rigid, thus giving embassies more discretion in handling cases, he is not recommending disciplinary action. His investigation did not turn up any acts of wrongdoing such as overstepping the bounds of their authority on the part of government employees.
Blocher headed department in 2005, successors unaware of decision
Christoph Blocher was the federal councilor with responsibility for the Justice and Police Department at the time; his right-wing UDC People’s Party came in for heavy criticism inside and outside Switzerland in 2006 for posters seen to be racist, as the party campaigned to reduce the number of immigrants.
Blocher was succeeded as head of the department by Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf after he lost his seat on the council in December 2007, but neither Widmer-Schlumpf nor her successor as minister with responsibility for the federal office, Simonetta Sommaruga, were informed of the Iraqi applications and the decision to ignore them.
The report was requested by the Federal Council in August 2011 when it was made aware that the applications had not been dealt with for a number of years.
Féraud filed it 22 December and the Federal Council 11 January acknowledged publicly that it had received and is considering the report.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers in Switzerland grew strongly, 19.8 percent, in November, with 2,142 requests, following a similar increase in October, according to the Federal Migration Office.
The largest numbers were from Tunisians (+163 percent), Eritreans (+16.1 percent) and Serbs. The latter group was mainly from the Roma population and most of the requests were turned down, says Bern.
The number of asylum seekers whose cases are handled in a year reached its peak in 1999, with over 100,000 cases, then fell steadily until 2010 when it was down to some 37,000 persons before rising to 40,000 this year.
Part of the ballooning number in 1999 was due to a massive backlog, which was gradually reduced following heated political debates over the need to act more quickly but also to get the numbers down. The number of cases accepted for consideration and the number of new cases today shows a very different situation from that 12 years ago: in 1999 there were 47,513 new requests; in 2011 there have been just over 20,000.
In 1999, more than 17,000 were provisionally accepted, less than one-fifth of all cases, and more than 35,000, or about one-third, were in the process of being sent back. Today fully half of all cases treated are new requests in 2011: just over 20,000 people. And the number of those returned has fallen dramatically, to 377, with 23,335 people temporarily accepted (the number includes some cases from previous years).
In the end, the total number given asylum in 1999 was 627 and this year it is 1,855 (to end November).
Large numbers of people from Nigeria, Afghanistan and Syria also applied for asylum this year.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Canton Valais police raided the Visp asylum centre Monday and found 156 grams of cocaine, several hundred grams of marijuana, a fake CHF200 bill and CHF1,500 in cash.
Five people were arrested; a 20-year-old Gambian for drug abuse, a 22year-old from Equatorial Guinea for being in Switzerland illegally, two Nigerians ages 21 and 36 for drug abuse and a fifth person whose nationality was not made public, but who was sent to France for being in Switzerland illegally.
Three individuals who are being housed at other Swiss asylum centres have been banned from the Visp centre.
Monday’s raid, which is designed to limit drugs in canton Valais, comes just as the ODEA (Observatoire romand du droit d’asile et des étrangers) publishes a report on Switzerland’s immigration and asylum policy, suggesting the country may be crossing the line into illegality in its efforts to reduce illegal immigrants.
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Switzerland, with a foreign population that is 24 percent of the total, is grappling with the extremes they bring: what some consider undesirable foreigners, on the one hand, and on the other hand those who help finance a more comfortable life for their communes. Most, of course, sit somewhere in the middle, attracting less attention.
Initiative “against mass immigration” needs 100,000 signatures to call for a vote
Switzerland has a surprising mix of foreigners (photo: Ellen Wallace)
Issues related to foreigners, which the right-wing UDC/SVP People’s Party have invoked for several public referendums, were in the limelight in July 2011 when the party deposited its next initiative with the federal chancellery, a vote “Against massive immigration”.
The party was widely said outside Switzerland to be heading for a record number of votes in October parliamentary elections, but it in fact lost several key seats and its numbers in parliament have fallen.
It has until January 2013 to collect enough signatures to take the initiative to the polls.
In theory, immigration is an issue covering workers given permits to live in the country, but critics of the UDC have argued that anti-immigration referendums lump together all foreigners and provoke anti-foreigner and racist hysteria. Le Temps in July described the poster linked to the initiative as using “menacing silhouettes” and argued to that is “designed to provoke an anti-foreign paranoia”, which then party-boss Tony Brunner from St Gallen (defeated in a run-off vote in November) disputed.
Foreign, living in Switzerland and rich
Bilan magazine’s 2011 list of Switzerland’s richest people, published this week, shows a hefty percentage of foreigners whose tax residence is Switzerland. Many of them live in communes where they have been granted lump-sum tax arrangements, which can considerably reduce income taxes for the rest of the commune. The list has 300 persons, but the magazine notes that if just the two main criteria (Swiss or tax residence here; assets of at least CHF100 million) are considered, there probably more than 1,000 people who could be included.
The not-entirely Swiss group includes newcomer Jim Ratcliffe, British, who brought his company Ineos to Rolle in canton Vaud (and threw his financial support behind the Lausanne Hockey Club), Glencore executives Daniel Maté, Spanish, Aristotelis Mistakidis, Greek and Tor Peterson, American, as well as their South African CEO, Ivan Glasenberg.
BERN, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers in Switzerland rose 4.9 percent in October, representing 100 more individuals (total, 31 October: 2,142) than in September, new figures from the Federal Migration Office shows. The office says that at the end of September the figures for the second quarter of the year were stable, with a 1.2 percent increase.
Zurich, Bern and Vaud have the largest number of active asylum applications under consideration.
Eritreans and Tunisians remain the two largest groups seeking asylum, with Nigerians third.
Switzerland sent 351 applicants to Italy in October, under the terms of the Dublin Regulation, which is designed to prevent asylum-seekers from applying to several European Union states or to move continually from one to another.
Tunisians fleeing Libya early in 2011: the Arab Spring events were not the driving force behind the growing number of asylum seekers in 2011 (photo, UNHCR)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The number of asylum seekers worldwide increased by 17 percent, the UN refugee group UNHCR announced Tuesday. Applications to industrialized countries numbered 198,300 from 1 January to 30 June 2011, with “most claimants coming from countries with longstanding displacement situations.”
The figures are part of report issued 18 October by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office, “Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, First Half 2011″. The group notes that applications usually peak in the second half of a year and it expects that the final tally may be the highest in eight years: 420,000.
The report does not show how many applications translate into the granting of asylum, in other words refugee status.
The floodgates have not been opened by the Arab Spring events, with neighbouring countries accepting most of the refugees who have fled conflict in northern Africa. Rather,
AUSTRALIA – Child asylum-seekers in Australia may be victims of “child abuse,” said the Australian Medical Association, AMA, to a joint select committee looking into Australia’s detention network.
The AMA said it has “grave concerns for the mental welfare of child asylum-seekers and believes mandatory detention is akin to child abuse.”
According to the Association, asylum-seekers as young as nine, have attempted suicide while in Australian immigration lock-ups.
Currently there are 795 children in the detention network, including those in community placements, says The Australian newspaper. “Of these, 282 are unaccompanied, 688 are housed in mainland facilities and 107 are on Christmas Island,” the article says.
Links to: The Australian
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – The first group of Nigerians to be returned to their country in a year for being in Switzerland illegally was coloured by problems at Zurich Airport Thursday 7 July. Two of the group of 19 resisted and were injured by police; they were not put on the plane in the end and both were sent to cantonal prisons, according to Zurich police, who say an administrative inquiry has been opened.
The incident received heavy coverage by Swiss media Friday in part because the Federal Office for Migration, which is responsible for the flights, issued a press release saying that the flight was “without incident”. TSR reports that the office later explained the two versions of Thursdays events as an administrative communications confusion, with the Migrations press release referring only to the flight itself, since what happened earlier falls under the responsibility of Zurich police.
An ailing 85-year-old surrounded by her family in a camp for people displaced by floods in Balochistan, Pakistan. The elderly are especially vulnerable to water-borne diseases associated with flooding (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / D Khan, September 2010)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The numbers alone are daunting: 43.7 million displaced persons worldwide, of which 15.4m are refugees, 27.5m are internally displaced refugees and nearly 850,000 are asylum seekers, with one-fifth of asylum seekers in South Africa alone.
The world’s 49 least developed countries hosted some 2 million refugees last year.
Just under 100,000 refugees were admitted for resettlement in 2010, by 22 countries. The United States accounted for 71,000 of these.
The figures are part of the “UNHCR Global Trends 2010″ (2.7 MB pdf) published 20 June to mark World Refugees Day.
The numbers don’t yet include refugees from 2011 conflicts in Cote d’Ivoire, Syria and Libya, among others.
The imbalance in how the world supports refugees, or people who are forcibly displaced, is equally stark and marks this year’s report, says the UN High Commissioner for Refugees agency, based in Geneva: “Pakistan, Iran, and Syria have the largest refugee populations at 1.9 million, 1.1 million, and 1 million respectively. Pakistan also has the biggest economic impact with 710 refugees for each dollar of its per capita GDP (PPP) followed by Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya with 475 and 247 refugees respectively. By comparison Germany, the industrialized country with the largest refugee population (594,000 people), has 17 refugees for each dollar of per capita GDP.”
Click on charts to view larger
Drawn-out wars taking their toll
Roughly one-quarter of the 15.4m refugees are registered with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The UNHCR says that of those under its care, 7.2m or about one-third, have been stuck in a refugee situation for more than five years, mainly due to drawn-out wars.
Within view of the Itombwe Massif, a convoy of UNHCR trucks carries Burundian refugees home after years of exile in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / M Hofer, December 2010)
The figure is the highest since 2001 and at the same time the lowest number since 1990 have been able to return home, fewer than 200,000.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, comments bluntly that “Fears about supposed floods of refugees in industrialized countries are being vastly overblown or mistakenly conflated with issues of migration. Meanwhile it’s poorer countries that are left having to pick up the burden.”
Some people have been refugees for up to 30 years, with Afghanistan a notable case in point. Afghans were one-third of the world’s refugees in 2001, as they were a decade later, at the start of 2011.
60th anniversary for UNHCR shows dramatic changes
A woman returns to the ruins of her home after violence strikes southern Kyrgyzstan (photo, ©2011 UNHCR / S Schulman, June 2010)
The UNHCR will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its founding in July 2011 and the report notes that the picture today is “of a dratically changed protection environment”. The organization’s early “caseload was 2.1 million Europeans, uprooted by World War Two. Today, UNHCR’s work extends to more than 120 countries and encompasses people forced to flee across borders as well as those in flight within their own countries.”
Two relatively recent developments have been the huge growth in numbers of internally displaced persons and the growing number of stateless persons, or “people lacking the basic safety-net of a nationality”, says the Geneva group, which plans to highlight this group during 2011.
“The number of countries reporting stateless populations has increased steadily since 2004, but differences in definitions and methodologies still prevent reliable measurement of the problem. In 2010, the reported number of stateless people (3.5 million) was nearly half of that in 2009, but mainly due to methodological changes in some countries that supply data. Unofficial estimates put the global number closer to 12 million.”
Actress Angelina Jolie to help tell individual stories for 60th anniversary
The UNHCR’s Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie is helping draw attention to refugees’ stories in a series of videos, including one released 18 June of her visit to Syrian refugees in Turkey. The videos are part of the organization’s efforts to draw attention to refugees by recounting individuals’ stories.
Source: UNHCR, Geneva, 28 March 2011 (click on image to view larger)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of asylum seekers in the world has been halved in the past 10 years, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees says in its 2010 annual asylum report issued early Monday 27 March. Whether this is good news or bad is difficult to judge, concedes the Geneva-based organization’s head.
“The global dynamics of asylum are changing. Asylum claims in the industrialized world are much lower than a decade ago while year-on-year levels are up in only a handful of countries,” notes High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres. “We need to study the root causes to see if the decline is because of fewer push factors in areas of origin, or tighter migration control in countries of asylum.”
He notes that developing countries still host the lion’s share of applications, and asks that other countries continue to support countries like Liberia, Tunisia and Egypt who are hosting large numbers of asylum seekers due to conflicts in neighbouring countries.
The report covers 44 countries that are destinations for asylum seekers.
US remains most popular host country
Switzerland was the 8th most popular country, with 13,800 applicants.
The report states that 358,800 asylum applications were made to industrialized countries last year, a 5 percent fall from 2009, and some 42 percent lower than the decade’s peak in 2001, when almost 620,000 asylum applications were made.
The US is the top destination for asylum seekers, for the fifth year in a row, followed by France, Germany, Sweden and Canada. These five countries accounted for 56 percent of all applications.
US numbers of new applicants were boosted by requests for asylum by more Chinese and Mexicans, while France saw an increase in applicants from Serbia, Russia and Congo. Germany saw an influx from Serbia, notably Kosovo, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. The UNHCR says the “development is widely attributed to the introduction of visa-free entry to the European Union for nationals of these two countries since December 2009.”
Serbia has highest number of applicants
Serbia was the country with the highest number of applicants, 28,900, which the UNHCR says is almost as high as in 2001, “soon after teh Kosovo crisis”.
Several changes have taken place, including:
- the number of applications from Afghans fell by 9 percent and whereas in the past Norway and the UK were the main destinations, Germany and Sweden have become the top hosts
- Chinese asylum-seekers made up the third-largest asylum group in 2010, partly due to a substantial drop in the number of new applications from Iraq and Somalia
- for the first time since 2005, Iraq was not one of the top two countries of origin of asylum-seekers. It dropped to fourth place, followed by the Russian Federation
- Somalia, which occupied the third spot in 2009, fell to sixth in 2010.
The calm streets of Nyon
Nyon, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Almost 90 asylum seekers at Nyon’s migrants’ reception centre EVAM became involved in a heated dispute concerning the disappearance of a sum of money, according to Vaud Cantonal Police.
The dispute pitted some 40 residents against another they accused of having taken money from a locker late 4 January. The centre’s administrator tried to calm things down and separate the groups but the alleged thief was stabbed in the thigh several times.
When 15 police patrol cars arrived, police had to face down the resolute opposition of the residents who threw stones and fire extinguishers at them. Police resorted to pepper spray in order to arrest the person accused of the knifing. Three policemen were wounded. The victim was taken to hospital and is not in danger.
This is the second time in less than two months that violence has erupted in one of the country’s refugee centres. In November 2010, seven people were sent to hospital following a violent dispute in Onex.
Background: GenevaLunch
AFrican Mirror TV coverage, Nigerian-Swiss meetings
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss and Nigerian governments Friday 5 November signed a bilateral migration agreement, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that covers a series of migration issues. The MoU concludes 18 months of negotiations and the Swiss government Friday described it as having a “pioneering character”.
The two countries have been trying to resolve a number of migration-related tensions that reached a low point when a 29-year-old Nigerian man died at Zurich Airport 17 March 2010, just as he was about to be repatriated. The Nigerian diaspora in Switzerland has demanded more help from the Swiss with integration issues and Switzerland has asked Nigeria for cooperation with the repatriation programme for Nigerians who are sent back home when their request for refugee status is rejected.
Nigerians are by far the largest group of asylum seekers in Switzerland, with 1,786 requests for asylum made in 2009 but only one granted, with six given provisional protection.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Migration Office, often in the spotlight because it handles the politically hot business of determining the status of asylum seekers, is feeling media heat again. This time it’s over 50 short-term work contracts for staff who hear asylum seekers’ cases. The Swiss Justice and Police Department annulled the contracts in question as illegal, RSR public radio reports.
They covered work for an undetermined period, on-call availability, variable pay rates and additional pay for irregular work, all of which appear not to fall within the legal limits of Swiss government contracts.
Unemployment hits foreigners harder than Swiss
Streets of Zurich: 22.2% of residents in Switzerland are foreigners
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The rate of growth of resident foreigners as part of the Swiss population is picking up, with a 2.2 percent increase in 2009, new federal statistics show. Germany and Italy lead with the way, with European Union citizens accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Switzerland at 31 Dcember 2009 had 1,802,300 resident foreigners, not including diplomatic and international organization employees.
Switzerland has the highest percentage of foreigners in Europe, after tiny Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, 22.9 percent of the population and one in four workers.
Long-term residents
Nearly 21 percent of resident foreigners were born in Switzerland and nearly 40 percent of those born abroad have lived in the country for at least 15 years and 15 percent have been in Switzerland for at least 30 years.
Asylum-seekers a small percentage
Only 2.2 percent of the resident foreign population, some 40,000 people were in the process of consideration for asylum, with another 1.1 percent having recently demanded asylum.
Higher unemployment, lower wages for foreigners
The definitive figures for 2009, published by the Swiss statistics office Thursday 23 September show several changes in the foreign population, as well as some marked differences between resident foreigners and the Swiss.
Eleven asylum seekers protesting their detention have spent the night on the roof of Villawood detention centre in Sydney, Australia. One man from Fiji earlier jumped to his death 20 September.
The protesters say they are unwilling to return to their countries of origin if their asylum requests are turned down by the government because they fear torture or death. The men, nine Tamils from Sri Lanka, an Iraqi and an Afghan, climbed onto the roof and have refused to come down unless they are granted asylum. Some have been at the detention centre since June 2009.
Links to other sites: ABC News, AP, Sydney Morning Herald
Zurich Aiport, winter 2010
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Autopsy results published by canton Zurich Monday morning 28 June show that a 29-year-old Nigerian who died at Zurich Airport 17 March was suffering from an undiagnosed heart ailment, and his death was due to a heart attack. He died shortly before he was to board a plane to be returned forcibly to Nigeria. The medical examiner’s report indicates that the hunger strike he held in the days leading up to the flight aggravated the heart condition, which is virtually impossible to detect when a person is alive.
Forced repatriation flights were cancelled while an investigation into his death took place, but they were gradually resumed starting in May and the first such flight to Africa will take place in July, the Migration Office has told ATS news service.
Background, GenevaLunch and feature on debate over Migration Office policy
Refugees were sent back to Libya by Italy after they were rescued at sea in Malta's search-and-rescue waters in May 2010. Here, the exhausted refugees wait to hear their fate, in Tripoli (photo, M Alwash/UNHCR)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) has been told to close its office in Libya and cease all operations in Libya, the Geneva-based organization said Tuesday 8 June. No explanation has been given for the move, but it follows a weekend incident concerning a group of mainly Eritrean refugees who left Libya by boat and whose sinking craft was intercepted by Libyan vessels inside Malta’s search-and-rescue zone.
The organization has been critical several times in the past two years of rescue operations in the region, where Italy, Malta and Libya have disputed who is responsible for picking up boat people in distress.
The UNHCR has been operating in Libya since 1991, at the request of the government. It helps thousands of refugees in Libya, which, it says, has no refugee programme of its own and who continue to arrive in large numbers. They are mainly Palestinians and Iraqis, with others coming from Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Liberia and Ethiopia, according to the UNHCR, which says it hopes the closure will be temporary.
Tuesday the UN organization’s spokesperson Melissa Fleming described the boat incident as follows:
Distress calls were received on Sunday evening, including by UNHCR, and passed to Maltese and Italian maritime authorities. It is unclear which country had search-and-rescue responsibility when the distress calls were first sent. According to information made available to UNHCR, the boat was only rescued late on Monday, and by Libyan vessels.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss federal Migration Office confirmed 1 June to public television TSR that it has paid a sum of money to the family of a 29-year-old Nigerian who died at Zurich airport 17 March, but it has not confirmed the amount of CHF50,000 reported by African Mirror, a Swiss-based Internet media.
The money was provided, TSR public television quotes a Swiss official as saying, to help the family provide a decent burial for the man. His remains were flown to Nigeria 31 May, delayed first by the autopsy performed in Switzerland, then, according to African Mirror, by discussions over the money provided to the family by the Swiss government.
The family reportedly told African Mirror that Switzerland was slow to provide the funds, but TSR reports that the Migration Office says it took time for the money to transit local Nigerian offices. The investigation into the death continues and no information has been released since March about either the autopsy results or the circumstances surrounding his death.
Switzerland temporarily halted repatriation flights, such as the one the man was scheduled to take back to Lagos, but these resumed 21 May.
The man’s remains will be buried 5 June in Nigeria.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Nigerian ambassador Martin Uhomoibhi and Swiss Migration Office director Alard du Bois-Reymond met in Geneva for an hour 29 April, a meeting organized by the Swiss Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, reports swissinfo. The meeting was reportedly an informal discussion on asylum issues. “Alard du Bois-Reymond had irritated Nigerian authorities with remarks about Nigerians making a high number of unjustified asylum requests,” notes the Swiss public broadcast web site.
Background, GenevaLunch feature
Urban refugees, Colombia (photo 2009, Zalmai/UNHCR)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of asylum-seekers worldwide remained stable in 2009, UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) said Tuesday 23 March. “The notion that there is a flood of asylum-seekers into richer countries is a myth,” said António Guterres, director-general. “Despite what some populists claim, our data shows that the numbers have remained stable.”
The number has remained stable at 377,000 worldwide, but there have been significant changes within regions.
“The number of asylum applications increased in 19 of the countries and fell in the other 25 under review,” according to a UNHCR press release.
Lyss, canton Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Twenty-six people were injured in Lyss, canton Bern, after a fire broke out in the early hours of Thursday 25 February at a centre for asylum seekers. Cantonal police say there is no reason at this stage of the investigation to suspect criminal activity. The fire broke out shortly after 04:00, waking residents of the centre. Many of them appear to have panicked and jumped out of windows rather than taking the emergency exits, which were open. Several of the injured suffered pelvic fractures from hitting the hard ground when they jumped.
The center has a population of 135 people from 30 countries.
Links to other sites: ats/romandie (Fre), Bern police (Fre)
About 40 people have been injured in brawls between Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers being held at a holding centre on Christmas Island over the past few days. Three people were evacuated to Perth for treatment. The center holds more than 1,000 people, mainly from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, while their applications are processed. Several Sri Lankans have had their applications denied and were sent home, increasing tensions, although human rights groups blame the tension on overcrowding. The Australian government has said it will increase capacity at the centre by 800 this year.
An Australian navy ship intercepted a boat with 56 suspected asylum-seekers on board 100 nautical miles norwest of Derby, Western Australia, Monday afternoon. It is the 46th ship intercepted this year, and the second in two days.
Many boats are organized by people-smugglers from Indonesia who organize the trip from the country of origin, and then hide people on small boats. Once they reach Australian waters, the boat sends out a false distress signal to alert rescue ships in the hope of being taken to the detention centre, Al-Jazeera reports.
Links to other sites: Al-Jazeera, BBC, News Sun, Radio Australia
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of people asking for asylum in Switzerland was down significantly in the third quarter of the year, compared to last year, but up 8.7 percent over the second quarter 2009. A total of 3,744 asylum seekers filed papers in Switzerland between July and September, according to the Federal Office for Migration (FOM).
The tally for the year to date comes to 12,136. The FOM points out that 1,161 persons were sent back to another EU country under the provisions of the Dublin Convention, which stipulates that an asylum seeker who applies in one country and then moves to another country, must have his application settled in the country of first asylum. Many Georgians who originally applied for asylum in Poland were sent back to that country for that reason.
Edward M Kennedy visiting Bengali refugee camps in Kolkata in India in 1971. Image: AFP PHOTO/AFP/Getty Images
Edward M Kennedy speaks to a meeting of student leaders in 1966 - he called for participation in humanitarian relief programmes in South Vietnam. Image: AP Photo/Bob Daugherty
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Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The 2009 Fridtjof Nansen award will go to the late US Senator Edward Kennedy in recognition of his work in favour of refugees and asylum-seekers, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) announced 15 September. The ceremony takes place in the US, in Washington, DC 28 October.
Antonio Guterres, High Commissioner for Refugees, said in the announcement, “Kennedy stood out as a forceful advocate for those who suddenly found themselves with no voice and no rights. Year after year, conflict after conflict, he put the plight of refugees on the agenda and drove through policies that saved and shaped countless lives.” He noted that Kennedy’s work for refugees was not limited to the US and that most recently he had fought to draw attention to the needs of Iraqi refugees.
He added that Kennedy was informed of the Nansen committee’s decision in June before he died.
Senator Edward Kennedy, center left, has a smile and a handshake for an unidentified young refugee in the Tuki-Baab famine refugee camp during a visit, Tuesday, Dec. 27, 1984, Tuki-Baab, Eastern Sudan. Many of the refugees had walked for a week to reach the camp from Eritrea. Kennedy toured a number of refugee camps in the African drought area over Christmas week. The woman on the left is unidentified. Image: AP Photo/Robert Dear
Chart: UNHCR, "Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries, 2008"
Geneva, Switzerland (Genevalunch) – Political turmoil in Afghanistan and Somalia increased the number of asylum seekers in 2008 for the second year running, according to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Iraq provided the largest number of applicants for asylum, 40,500, a 10 percent decrease from 2007.
