UN: The number of people seeking asylum in Europe and North America has fallen sharply this year, most notably due to a decline in applications from Iraqis, according to the United Nations refugee agency, writes Frances Williams in geneva
Asylum requests in the second quarter in the EU and Europe as a whole fell to their lowest level since the UN High Commissioner for Refugees started collecting quarterly data in 1999.
In the UK, Europe's main recipient country, applications fell by a third to 34,300 in the first half of 2003, compared with 51,500 in the same period last year.
The UNHCR said yesterday the 29 industrialised countries covered by the statistics, which exclude Italy because of lack of data, received 228,760 asylum requests between January and June 2003, 19 per cent fewer than in the first six months of 2002.
Between the first and second quarters the 29 countries saw a drop of 12 per cent, with a decrease of 16 per cent for the EU.
The report shows a dramatic fall in the number of Iraqis seeking asylum in the west - down 43 per cent between the first and second quarters. However, Iraq remains the leading country of origin for applicants in the EU, with 14,500 asylum applications lodged by Iraqis in the first six months of this year.
The number of EU asylum applications from the other main countries of origin, Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro, also fell this year. But applications from Russians, most fleeing conflict in Chechnya, jumped by nearly half, making them the fourth largest group seeking asylum in the EU.
In a reminder of the continuing insecurity in Afghanistan, the second quarter saw a 10 per cent increase over the first quarter in asylum applications from Afghanis. - (Financial Times)
A small group of Afghan asylum seekers who the government was adamant would never reach Australian shores when they were rescued by a freighter two years ago arrived in Australia yesterday as refugees.
The 14 Afghan men saved along with 419 others by the Norwegian freighter the Tampa in August 2001 flew into Brisbane from a camp on the South Pacific island of Nauru, 11 months after the UN declared them refugees.
Another 26 migrants from the Tampa remain on Nauru, awaiting resettlement. Others have been accepted as refugees by New Zealand and other countries and some have been repatriated after their asylum applications were rejected. - (Reuters)