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.
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.
