Europe: an obsolete right of asylum in the face of the situation in Afghanistan?
Afghan migrants land on the Greek island of Lesvos.
REUTERS / Dimitris Michalakis
Text by: Antoine Casalta
5 mins
Representatives of the Afghan government and the Taliban are due to meet in Doha on Saturday for talks amid heavy fighting on the ground and foreign forces withdraw from Afghanistan.
On Sunday July 11, the Afghan government called on European countries to stop deporting migrants from Afghanistan.
Indeed, while the security situation there is deteriorating, the host countries maintain a less generous reception policy than in the past.
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The Taliban asserted, on July 9, control 85% of the Afghan territory, and continue to advance as the troops of the international coalition leave the country. With each district taken, thousands of people take the road of exile. Reza Jafari, president of the association “Children of Afghanistan and elsewhere”, based in Paris, notes that “for the
past few weeks, young Afghans have been arriving every day from other European countries
. "
Today, Afghans are the first asylum seekers in France - and the second in Europe - with 10,365 applications filed in 2020, a number on the rise despite a year in which travel has been made more difficult due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, while France's policy is to send Afghan migrants back to Kabul less, the rate of acceptance of these asylum requests continues to decline.
From 84% in 2017, France currently accepts less than 60% of these requests according to the
latest activity report of the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra).
"
Blind violence"
Two decisions
of the National Court of Asylum (CNDA) dated November 2020, further tighten asylum conditions and consider that "
The indiscriminate violence currently prevailing in the city of Kabul is not such that there are There are serious and proven grounds for believing that each civilian who returns there runs, by the sole fact of his presence in this city, a real risk of a serious threat to his life or his person
”.
A situation denounced by Reza Jafari. “
This text is not in line with the situation there, where civilians are targeted every day. The judges of the CNDA and the officials of the Ofpra know this, but they must apply the case law as it is written. Kabul is the only point of entry into the country, as long as the city is not on the red list the authorities will consider that they can return refugees there
. "
In addition, the vast majority of refugees who reach France are
"dublined"
. That is to say that the authorities must accompany them back to the first European country into which they entered, by virtue of the Dublin agreements, a country which in the majority of cases has a very limited asylum policy. “
When they are sent back to Greece or Italy, migrants are systematically detained and sent back to Kabul,
” says Zabiullah Muhammadi, himself a refugee and president of the “Nouvelle Page” association for aid to integration of Afghans in France. And to add: "
The fate of the Afghans returned to Afghanistan is terrible, without resources, some are forced to join the Taliban under the threat, or become marginalized
. "
Claudia Charles is a lawyer at
Migreurop
, a network of activists and researchers who analyze European migration policies. According to her, the lack of a coordinated response from European countries is the result of a "
no-reception policy, everything has been implemented so that they do not arrive in Europe
". She adds: “
In the absence of a common asylum policy, states take unilateral decisions that often harm refugees
. »Decisions whose main common point remains expulsion. Today, they are resuming thanks to the end of the health crisis. In Germany, Switzerland and Austria, charters to Kabul are taking off again with dozens of people on board.
Contacted by RFI, the CNDA indicates that no new decision on the level of insecurity in Afghanistan is planned for the moment.
The Council of State, for its part,
has just confirmed
the court decisions of last November.
Proof that the situation of Afghan asylum seekers should not change quickly, despite the obvious urgency of the situation on the ground.
Emergency of which the French authorities are however aware: Tuesday, July 13, the French embassy in Kabul called on all French nationals to leave Afghanistan.
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