The total number of persons whose cases were worked upon between January and December 2006 totalled 1421. Of these, only 28 persons were granted refugee status while 522 were granted humanitarian protection. This was revealed in a statement by the Office of the Refugee Commissioner on Saturday.
149 were cases already opened in 2005 and the rest, 1272 were initiated in 2006. 637 persons were rejected (this does not include those persons granted humanitarian protection) while 23 persons withdrew their application.
Between January and December 2006, the cases of 1210 persons from 39 different nationalities were concluded. This total includes the 887 persons that arrived in Malta in 2005. The remaining 323 arrived in Malta in 2006. By end December 2006, the Office was still working on the cases of 211 persons. A further 720 persons are awaiting the start of their application process. These arrived in Malta after the 20 June 2006.
The cases of 211 persons are still being examined. Of these, 109 applicants did not present any documents and are claiming to be unaccompanied minors. Their cases are still being examined by the competent authorities in order to establish whether they are minors or not. Their application for recognition of refugee status remains pending awaiting the results of this process.
In turn, during the past five years, between the 1st January 2002 until end December 2006, the Office of the Refugee Commissioner worked on 4477 cases. Of these, 186 persons were granted refugee status while 2005 persons were granted humanitarian protection. 1949 applicants were rejected while 126 applicants abandoned or withdrew their application. 211 cases are still being examined.
In the statement, the Office of the Refugee Commissioner said that during the process of examination of the applications, several difficulties are encountered. Such difficulties include lack of documents or even falsifying of documents. In other cases the interview takes a long time in order to establish the real nationality, ethnic group or religion of the person. Thorough examination of cases requires sometimes even more than one nterview in view of detention allegations, beating, evasions and other experiences to establish whether these claims are true or not.
The Office also said that another problem encountered is the lack of interpreters and other difficulties for organizing the interviews which in majority are carried out in the closed centers. Cases sometimes also remain pending due to requests by applicants themselves to supply relevant documents or submission by their lawyers while in other cases the applicant would need to be examined by a medical board.
Apart from this, the case workers need time to research and study the case and build an evaluation for their recommendations.
Read more about this issue on MaltaMedia's special feature:
Lanċa Ġejja u Oħra Sejra: Malta and its migrations.
For more detailed information about Malta in 2006 see MaltaMedia's end of year round-up 2006: A Year in Review.
See also:
Office to help Malta with migrants' repatriation
by MaltaMedia News - Dec 18, 2006
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