Asylum seekers in Italy face 'serious violations of their fundamental rights', says IRC

The NGO International Rescue Committee (IRC) especially denounces the fact that asylum seekers often spend up to eight months in uncertainty due to discrimination in the processing of their requests. They remain “

several days, sometimes without water, without food or without a change of clothes

”, in front of administrative processing centers, often without succeeding in obtaining an appointment.

Volunteers from the Linea d'Ombra association bring a hot meal to refugees in front of the train station in Trieste, Italy, February 19, 2024. Getty Images - Barbara Zanon

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In a

report published on April 4

, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) highlights the serious violations of fundamental rights faced by people seeking asylum in major Italian cities. She interviewed asylum seekers in several cities including Bologna, Florence, Milan, Naples, Rome and Turin between May 2023 and January 2024. 

Read alsoMediterranean: a migrant rescue boat immobilized in Italy

“

There is a problem with procedural delays. It starts with the time an asylum seeker needs to get a first appointment, 

explains Flaminia Delle Cesa of the IRC, joined by

Achim Lippold

, of the international service.

According to Italian and European law, access to the procedure for the recognition of international protection of the person must take place within a few days, 16 days maximum. But what we found is that asylum seekers often have to wait for weeks and months for an appointment. Because sometimes, they simply don't have access to the services that process their requests. They cannot physically present themselves at the police stations which here in Italy take care of the registration of their cases. And even if they managed to get an appointment, they then have to wait a long time for the file to be processed. And during this time, they have no rights, they are left in a legal vacuum, without documents, without access to the labor market, even informal, and without housing

.”

The NGO mentions, for example, the situation in Rome of people huddled under makeshift blankets made from garbage bags in front of the police headquarters, and of hundreds living in “inhumane conditions” in abandoned silos in Trieste (north-east). ). The Italian state must “

urgently remove obstacles to submitting applications for international protection and establish minimum standards so that people are properly cared for while their applications are assessed

 ,” says the IRC report .

Read also: Italy will relocate to Albania the reception of migrants rescued at sea

He also points to the far-right policy of Giorgia Meloni's government which penalizes the reception system by concentrating its efforts on preventing arrivals in Italy, the first European stopover for migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa, as well as as the new questions raised by the agreement concluded with the Albanian authorities for two migrant detention centers on their soil capable of accommodating 3,000 people at a time. Ms Meloni says processing asylum applications will take a month, or 36,000 files per year.

In 2022, according to the latest available figures, Italian authorities examined 58,478 asylum applications, some of which had been submitted in previous years, while another 51,601 remained pending at the end of the year. Around 158,000 migrants arrived in Italy by sea in 2023, and almost 11,500 since the start of 2024.

Read alsoItaly: in Trieste, a model of welcoming migrants that has proven itself

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