UNHCR: The UN Refugee Agency

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Refugees Magazine Issue 146 ("Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence") - Are Iraqis Getting a Fair Deal? Statistics raise concerns in industrialized countries

Refugees Magazine, 1 April 2007

By William Spindler

Every day people all over the world see the escalating violence in Iraq on their TV and computer screens. Yet – despite the constant bloodshed – statistics show it has never been more difficult for Iraqis to find protection in industrialized countries.

Iman Ramzi*, a vivacious Iraqi woman who has lived in Europe for almost two decades and is married to a European, explained some of the difficulties her fellow citizens face when trying to leave their country: "To get a passport in Iraq is very difficult – you have to pay a hefty bribe. Unless you have a lot of money you can forget about getting a passport," she said.

Obtaining a valid passport is only the first of many hurdles Iraqis have to negotiate to reach safety, and some sort of peace of mind. Getting out of Iraq at all is physically difficult, as travel across sectarian boundaries has grown increasingly dangerous. Getting a visa for countries in the immediate region has also been growing more and more difficult – and nowadays permission to stay, when granted, is usually strictly time limited. Getting visas to travel further afield is for most Iraqis well nigh impossible.

The obstacles are formidable. Yet, for some, gaining asylum is a matter of life or death.

"Even a well-established person like me finds it practically impossible to get a visa for her closest relatives to come and visit her," said Iman. "I can't even take my brothers or sisters out of Iraq to give them a breath of fresh air. My mother died without me being able to see her."

An immigration officer told her recently: "We don't want Iraqis here, not even on a visit. If you want to see your family, you can meet them somewhere else." Another official told her: "You (Iraqis) are a danger to our country." Like several other refugees interviewed for this article, Iman did not want the European country where she now lives identified. Fear and anxiety seem to pursue Iraqis wherever they go.

Faced with such impediments, many refugees who do not feel safe in the immediate region have little choice but to resort to smugglers who, in exchange for a fee said to range from US$ 5,000 to US$ 20,000, offer to guide them along one of many clandestine and often dangerous routes into Europe.

Abdul's is a typical case.* A minor member of the Baath party – like hundreds of thousands of others – he worked in a government department during Saddam Hussein's time. This is enough to condemn him to death in the eyes of some militias. As violence around him escalated, he fled to Syria.

Desperately afraid of being sent back to Iraq, he then moved on with the help of smugglers to Turkey, where he was supplied with false documents that enabled him to travel to Algeria and Morocco. His journey ended in the North African Spanish enclave of Melilla, where he approached the police and requested asylum. After a long wait, he has been granted refugee status by the Spanish authorities. "I arrived in Spain just by accident," he said in hesitant Spanish, adding that now, finally, he feels safe.

Recent statistics suggest he is one of the luckier of the current generation of Iraqi refugees trying to enter Europe.

Last year, Iraqis lodged some 22,000 asylum applications in industrialized countries. Although significant, this figure pales in comparison to the estimated two million Iraqis in Syria, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries. It is also less than half the 52,000 asylum requests made by Iraqis in 2002 – before the war and subsequent collapse of the security situation in Iraq (see table 1).

Since the situation inside Iraq cannot objectively be said to be better now than it was in 2002, why is the number of Iraqi asylum seekers in industrialized countries still so low?

System failure?

Refugee advocates argue the main reason is that restrictive policies in many industrialized countries are either making it very difficult for potential refugees to get there, or – when they do – deterring them from applying for asylum. As a result of their own analysis of likely risks and benefits, refugees may have given up attempting to be recognized as such. If this is the case, then the refugee system built up so painstakingly during the aftermath of World War II is starting to fail.

"We are concerned that European countries – both individually and collectively – may have sacrificed some protection safeguards in their efforts to reduce the numbers of asylum seekers," said Judith Kumin, who heads UNHCR's office in Brussels.

According to Krister Isaksson, an analyst at the Swedish Migration Board, many Iraqis in Europe choose to remain illegal because they believe their asylum request will be denied. "This is how Sweden is different," he told the AFP news agency. "In Sweden, they opt to seek asylum because they are likely to get permission to stay." As a result, Sweden received close to half of all the Iraqi asylum applications made in Europe during 2006.

During an EU meeting of justice and interior ministers in February 2007, Swedish Migration and Asylum Policy Minister Tobias Billström made an appeal to other European countries to show more solidarity, and help Sweden (which received 8,950 asylum applications from Iraqis in 2006) share the responsibility of providing protection to Iraqi refugees. After Sweden, the largest number of Iraqi asylum applications was made in the Netherlands (2,765) followed by Germany, Greece, the UK and Norway (see table 2).

Unrealistic recognition rates

Even those Iraqis who manage to surmount all the obstacles and seek asylum in an industrialized country, often find the odds are still stacked against them.

Although each asylum application should be examined on its merits, the latest statistics show that, for Iraqi asylum seekers, the chance of finding protection in an industrialized country ranges from over 90 percent to zero, depending on which country they are in when they apply.

Few countries are recognizing Iraqis as refugees under the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. When protection is granted, it tends to be 'subsidiary protection' or another 'humanitarian status,' which are accompanied by fewer basic legal, social and material benefits.

In addition, large numbers of applications from Iraqis are recorded as being closed without a decision being taken on the merits. While this can be a sign that the applicant has moved on somewhere else, it can also mean that the case was closed on purely formal grounds. Similarly, some European countries record claims as 'rejected' when they have determined that another state is responsible for deciding the case under the so-called 'Dublin II' regulation.

"There is a real problem with Iraqis being sent back under the Dublin II regulation to Greece, which has frozen the determination of all Iraqi applications since 2003, or to Slovakia, which in 2006 did not extend protection to a single Iraqi," said UNHCR's Judith Kumin.

The agency's Director for Europe, Pirkko Kourula, is also deeply concerned by the failure of the recognition rates to reflect the reality of what is going on inside Iraq: "Given the seriousness of the situation in Iraq," she said, "one would certainly expect a much higher recognition rate for refugees from that country."

Human rights organizations have criticized countries involved militarily in Iraq, saying they appear to be among those least willing to receive Iraqi refugees.

"Up until now very few Iraqis displaced as a result of war have been allowed to take refuge in the US," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty International's Director for the Middle East and North Africa. "The US authorities must stand up to their obligations on this issue and help lead the effort to provide long-term durable solutions for Iraqi refugees."

Responding to such criticisms, the US recently announced it would accept an initial 7,000 refugees from Iraq's neighbouring countries.

The UK government has also come under fire from NGOs such as Human Rights Watch for its low recognition rate and lack of a resettlement programme for Iraqis. Statistics provided by the UK government to UNHCR show that in 2006, of the 735 decisions made on Iraqi claims, only 85 were positive: a 12 percent overall recognition rate compared to more than 50 percent at the turn of the century (see table 3).

"When European states go as far as sending soldiers to fight for security, democracy and human rights in Iraq, it would be a paradox if the same states then denied protection to the people of Iraq who flee the country because they feel insecure and threatened," said Bjarte Vandvik, Secretary General of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles.

The UN refugee agency periodically issues advisories to governments regarding conditions in specific countries. In the latest such advisory on Iraq (December 2006) UNHCR characterized the situation as one of "generalized violence" in which "massive targeted violations of human rights are prevalent."

UNHCR recommended that asylum seekers from southern and central Iraq should be favourably considered as refugees under the 1951 Refugee Convention or, failing that, be granted a complementary form of protection (unless, of course, the person in question is 'excludable' because of their past involvement in war crimes, crimes against humanity or other similarly serious crimes).

UNHCR's advisory concluded that no Iraqi from southern or central Iraq should be forcibly returned until there is a substantial improvement in the security and human rights situation in the country. With regard to the generally more stable Northern Governorates of Iraq, UNHCR recommends that no one be returned to a situation of internal displacement.

"We all know what is happening in Iraq today. If people cannot find protection in Iraq, then we must ensure that they find it when they escape" said UNHCR's Pirkko Kourula. "And we cannot reasonably expect Jordan and Syria, which are already bulging at the seams, to do it alone."

Although most industrialized countries have so far refrained from returning those Iraqis to whom they deny any positive status, the result is a large number of people living in a legal limbo. This is the case in Germany and Denmark, where rejected asylum seekers from Iraq are allowed to stay for the time being as "tolerated persons." In Greece, where no decisions have been made on Iraqi cases since 2003, they live from hand to mouth from one day to the next.

Despite a commitment to an EU-wide common asylum system, countries in Europe not only take differing approaches to Iraqi claims, but they also apply very different standards of treatment to asylum seekers. Some countries routinely detain them while their applications are being processed, while others do not. Some countries such as Belgium and non- EU member Switzerland continue to provide accommodation to asylum seekers who have been turned down for refugee status, but who are appealing against that decision – while others do not always do so, forcing many people into homelessness and destitution.

Even Iraqis who have successfully negotiated all the obstacles, and have been recognized as refugees, can find themselves without legal protection. In Germany, nearly 19,000 Iraqi refugees had their refugee status revoked between 2003 and 2006, based on the argument that they had fled the Saddam Hussein regime and therefore the circumstances for their recognition were no longer present. Last year alone, the German Office for Migration and Refugees revoked the refugee status of 4,228 Iraqis.

In many cases, this means these people lose their legal resident status and are deprived of their basic refugee rights: they have little or no access to the labour market and are often not eligible for family reunification or participation in local integration programmes. Since "tolerated" individuals are, from a legal point of view, obliged to depart, they have hardly any prospect of obtaining a safe and durable residence status in Germany. But for many, return to Iraq is simply not an option in the current circumstances.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres has appealed to countries outside the immediate region to accept Iraqi refugees for resettlement.

"We would be very happy if more Iraqis could be resettled to European and other industrialized countries," said UNHCR's Judith Kumin. "It is one way of showing solidarity with countries in the region – and for quite a few individuals resettlement is an absolutely vital solution. But we have to face up to the fact that there are many Iraqis already in the industrialized countries who are not getting proper protection."

Like countless other refugees before them, people fleeing the conflict in Iraq are often tarnished by the violence which they are trying to escape. Addressing the League of Arab States' Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Cairo in March, High Commissioner Guterres said: "Even in the most developed societies, we see the re-emergence of racism, xenophobia and that brand of populism which always tries to generate confusion in public opinion between refugees, migrants and even terrorists. Let us be perfectly clear: refugees are not terrorists, they are the first victims of terror."

UNHCR's Europe Director Pirkko Kourula underlined the fundamental principles: "The legal and moral obligations to protect refugees and asylum seekers still exist," she said, "and many Iraqis are right now in dire need of that protection. Most of them will never set eyes on Europe, or any of the other industrialized countries, but those who do deserve our respect. More than that, they need our clear, unequivocal protection."

* Name changed

Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 146: "Iraq Bleeds: Millions displaced by conflict, persecution and violence" (April 2007).

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