Asylum Applications Falling

posted: 27/11/2009

The latest asylum figures show a further fall in the number of fresh claims for refugee status between July and September this year, to 5,055 – a decline of 24%, compared with the same period in 2008.
 

Refugee welfare groups said the fall in asylum numbers raised fears that the tightening up of Britain's borders was denying sanctuary to those who needed protection. The top three countries from where asylum seekers came were Afghanistan (790), Iran (540) and Zimbabwe (525).
 

Immigration detention for asylum and children
A total of 7,110 people were held in immigration detention between July and September this year – more than half of them asylum seekers. They included 315 children, 240 of them under 11. Of those detained, 365 had been held for more than 12 months.
 

More leaving
Net migration – the number of people who come to live in Britain minus the number who move abroad – fell by more than a third to 163,000 last year, its lowest level since Poland joined the European Union.
 

The Office for National Statistics said the fall from 233,000 in 2007 was mainly driven by a rise in emigration to a 17-year high: 427,000 people left Britain to live abroad, up from 341,000 the previous year. The increase was mainly due to the number of Poles returning home.
 

Immigration reached 590,000, with the largest single group comprising 85,000 British citizens returning to live in the UK. That total compares with 574,000 in 2007 and 596,000 in 2006.
 

The level of emigration is the highest since 1991, the first year with comparable records. The ONS said there had been a large increase in the number of people emigrating for work-related reasons, particularly those with a fixed job to go to. The number going to a definite job rose from 100,000 in 2007 to 136,000.
 

Source
 

image              Refugee Week was in mid June.

Zimbabwe - Forced Returns Protests

posted: 30/10/2009

Refugee and HIV organisations were among those angered and concerned by Home Office ministers saying that Zimbabwe is now safe enough to resume the forcible return of thousands of refused asylum seekers.
 

Bad timing?

The announcement by the immigration minister, Phil Woolas (MP for the NW constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth), came just as the UN's monitor on torture was forcibly expelled from Harare, and when Amnesty International warned that the country was "on the brink of sliding back into violence".
 

Woolas told MPs that he was encouraging Zimbabweans whose asylum application in Britain had been rejected to return home voluntarily by including a £2,000 cash payment in a total repatriation package worth up to £6,000. But he also said the UK Border Agency was resuming work on a programme of enforced returns to Zimbabwe.
 

"We have always expected those not to be in need of protection to return home. We prefer these individuals to return voluntarily, and the enhancements to the assisted voluntary return scheme will support this," he said. "But where they choose not to do so, we are bound to take steps over time to enforce the law."
 

George House Trust comment

That’s perhaps more bluff and bluster, for the benefit of the press and some sections of the public, to make him seem to be tougher on returns. His formal statement says something less scary – the key sentence is:

“The UK Border Agency will therefore be starting work over the autumn on a process aimed at normalising our returns policy to Zimbabwe, moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.”

The key words we take comfort from are here (our italics) “moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.” So he means the political situation is not yet right to restart forced returns. Any government that rushes to resume forced returns to Zimbabwe faces the prospect of a second defeat in the courts.

Zimbaweans are the largest nationality group among expatriate Africans with HIV in the UK, which is why this policy change is significant. Well over 650 Zimbabweans diagnosed with HIV are living in NW England.

High Court ended returns in 2006

Forcible returns to Zimbabwe were suspended in September 2006, when high court judges ruled that those who could not demonstrate their loyalty to Robert Mugabe's regime would face persecution on their return. It is thought there are more than 10,000 refused asylum seekers from Zimbabwe in Britain. Only recently more than 2,000 fled to the UK during Zimbabwe's elections in 2008.
 

The Home Office statement says there have been "positive changes" in Zimbabwe in the past six months, including less indiscriminate violence, more basic commodities are available and the economy and schools have improved since the formation of the unity government. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is prime minister under President Mugabe.
Refugee groups say only 89 people went back to Zimbabwe under the British government's voluntary returns programme between January and August.
 

Safety claims ridiculed
The Refugee Council said the Home Office's judgment on life in Zimbabwe was ludicrous. "In the past few days allegations of arrest, intimidation and harassment of supporters of the MDC and of human rights defenders have been widely reported," said the council's chief executive, Donna Covey. "Our government is showing a cavalier attitude to the safety of refugees who have stood up for democracy and human rights. After the farcical attempts to return Iraqis and Afghans in recent weeks against UN advice, it is of great concern that the government are now considering returns to Zimbabwe."
 

Sandy Buchan, of Refugee Action, also said the move was premature: "We still see more Zimbabweans asking for help and advice than any other single nationality, and many are terrified of returning to their country." And Patson Muzuwa, of the Zimbabwe Association said "It is very premature of them to think of forced removals," adding that Woolas's statement was intended to pave the way for a programme of forcible removals last attempted in 2004 and 2005.
 

Source 
 

UN torture investigator refused entry to Zimbabwe
 

Minister's Statement on changing the policy on returning people to Zimbabwe 
 

Changes to the voluntary returns package
 
 

Zimbabwe - HIV in Crisis

posted: 18/12/2008

Health workers in Zimbabwe are warning that international alarm over the spreading cholera emergency, which has claimed nearly a thousand lives, is overshadowing the HIV crisis, which is killing as many people every three days.

The rising death toll from cholera, brought on by collapsed sewerage systems infecting drinking water, has become the most visible sign of Zimbabwe's extraordinary implosion and the indifference of its leaders. As the disease spread across the border into South Africa, alarmed foreign governments promised to pour in aid to contain the outbreak. But cholera and the failure of the sewerage system are symptoms of the wider collapse of the state and its devastating consequences.

No medicines and starvation causing hundreds to die each day of HIV

Aid workers speak of a silent catastrophe in which people are dying of HIV by the hundreds every day for want of medicines and sufficient food to fight off the disease, and because a cynical government has blocked foreign aid workers from reaching many of the most vulnerable.

About one in five Zimbabweans are HIV-positive. The UN says HIV kills more than 400 Zimbabweans each day.

"This cholera is just one issue," said Meine Nicolai, director of operations for Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium, which is working in Zimbabwe. It is a disease with a risk of high mortality, so we have to pay special attention to treat the patients with cholera because it can spread very rapidly. But it is just one of the problems and the result of a collapsing system that is claiming many more lives. The situation of the wider population is more worrying in terms of a collapsing healthcare system, very high HIV prevalence and the nutritional situation."

Although HIV has been claiming increasing numbers of lives for years in Zimbabwe, health workers say people have been made more vulnerable to the disease by widespread malnutrition.

Many Zimbabweans, particularly in rural areas, eat one meal every two or three days because of the collapse of agriculture following the redistribution of white-owned farms and drought. Some are living off nothing more than berries and roots. With chronic malnutrition comes weakened immune systems and much greater vulnerability to HIV. Undernourishment also erodes the effectiveness of drugs that keep the disease at bay.

Some health workers say that the working-age population of entire villages has either left for South Africa to look for work or died of HIV.

2 in every 3 deaths are caused by HIV

The World Health Organisation says the disease is responsible for two-thirds of all adult deaths in Zimbabwe. More than 40% of deaths in children under five are HIV-related, six times the average in a region where the disease is rife. Life expectancy is among the lowest in the world. More than a million children have been made orphans as a result of HIV.

The dead are buried in overcrowded cemeteries where the graves are bunched together to make room for the next day's dead. Costly headstones have given way to wooden markers for men and women who have barely made it to adulthood.

Drugs now unavailable

Government distribution programmes for drugs such as the one that prevents HIV-positive women from passing the virus to their babies at birth have largely collapsed. According to the Global Fund for Aids, only about one in five of those who need antiretroviral drugs to keep the disease at bay are receiving them. Those who do are generally reliant on foreign aid organisations.

The cholera crisis is not detached from HIV. Nicolai says those most at risk from dying from the disease are undernourished and HIV-positive.

"A weakened population that is undernourished, a population that has a high HIV prevalence, is even more at risk from cholera. So cholera is important, but it's only one of the problems," she said.
 

Zimbabwe - Removals Halted

posted: 17/12/2008

The government has effectively decided that most Zimbabweans in the UK can now remain, at least until the situation in Zimbabwe radically improves.

It has said it will not appeal the key decision of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal that the situation in Zimbabwe has deteriorated so far that only people who can prove they are supporters of the governing Zanu-PF should be returned. 

On 19th November 2008 the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal published a determination on a significant country guidance case for Zimbabwe.

The Tribunal found that anyone who is unable to demonstrate support for or loyalty Zanu-PF or the regime is at risk if returned to Zimbabwe. However, each case will have to be decided one by one, depending on the person's own relationship to Zanu-PF - friend or foe?

Fresh Claims

If a failed asylum seeker can show that they will not be able to demonstrate loyalty to the regime, then that could be enough to make a fresh claim. A significant number of Zimbabweans who have been refused asylum should now benefit from this decision, particularly those who have been in the UK for some time.

The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal's decision in RN  was long awaited by thousands of Zimbabwean asylum seekers in the U.K. The decision at last offers real hope to the 7,500, a significant number of whom are living with HIV, whose applications for asylum in the UK had been refused by the Government and the Tribunal on the basis that there was nothing stopping them from returning to Zimbabwe.

Humanitarian claims too, if no basic necessities

The Tribunal’s momentous decision was for a person known as RN, a teacher from Zimbabwe who came to the UK nearly three years ago to escape violence from supporters of Mugabe’s regime. In allowing RN’s appeal on refugee and human rights grounds, the Tribunal concluded that all those Zimbabweans in the UK who cannot demonstrate loyalty to the Zanu-PF regime should be granted permission to stay and work in the UK until it is safe for them to return to Zimbabwe. The Tribunal also recognised that those who may be deprived of all the basic necessities of life if returned to Zimbabwe should be granted permission to stay here on humanitarian grounds.

The Tribunal made a similar decision in 2005 but the Government appealed and the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal. Several further test cases went to the Court of Appeal and the matter remained unresolved until the Government’s decision this week not to challenge RN. The solicitor for RN, from the Immigration Advisory Service, Julian Bild, commented:

“The Government’s decision this week not to challenge the judgement in RN’s appeal is a welcome recognition of the real dangers that face Zimbabweans if removed from the UK. I am sure that most of the Zimbabweans in the UK would choose to go home if they could do so safely and with dignity but with the current appalling levels of violence and destitution to which Zimbabwe has descended the result of the test case was clearly the correct one. The Government must act quickly to implement the decision.

“Those Zimbabweans who have previously failed in their applications for asylum in the UK should quickly get legal advice from accredited legal representatives on their position following the test case decision”.

source source2

Briefing from Refugee Council

The Tribunal's decision reference for the case is RN (Returnees) Zimbabwe CG [2008] UKAIT 00083 [November 2008]