The CGRS has released its asylum figures for August 2016.
EVOLUTION
- In August 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,673 asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (including children) is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is an increase of 26.6 % compared to July 2016 (1,322). An upward trend could already be seen in July 2016, after a sharp decrease in the number of asylum seekers in the first half of the year.
- In August 2016, the number of asylum seekers was lower by 70.1 % in comparison with August 2015 (5,595), when the influx of asylum seekers was reaching towards a peak (6,830 in September 2015).
- The lower number of asylum applications in the first eight months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 is mainly due to a sharp decline in the number of persons
- from Iraq: from an average of 789 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 98 per month in 2016
- from Syria: from an average of 867 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 222 per month in 2016
- from Afghanistan: from an average of 692 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 287 in August 2016.
MEN – WOMEN - CHILDREN
- In August 2016, more men (including children) than women applied for asylum in Belgium: 59.81 % compared to 40.19 %. For the whole of 2015, the proportion of men was somewhat higher: 70.8 % men compared to 29.2 % women.
- In August 2016, 105 (self-declared) unaccompanied minors applied for asylum in Belgium.
COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN
- In August 2016, Syria remained the most important country of origin of asylum applicants in Belgium with 10.6 % of the total number of applications, followed by Afghanistan (148 persons, 8.8 %). Guinea and Iraq (115 applications, 6.9 %) share the third place.
- Somalia and ‘Undetermined’ (mainly Palestinians) completed the top five in August 2016, with respectively 5.6 % (93 applications) and 5.5 % (92 applications) of the total number of asylum seekers.
DECISIONS
- In August 2016, the CGRS took 1,690 decisions. These decisions concerned 2,111 persons.
- In August 2016, the proportion of persons to whom the CGRS granted refugee status (48.4 %) or subsidiary protection status (13.1 %), compared to the total number of persons who received a final decision, amounted to 61.5 %. This corresponds to 888 decisions for 1,119 persons. The tendency of 2015 is confirmed: last year, the CGRS granted asylum status in six out of ten decisions.
- In absolute figures, the CGRS granted asylum status to 10,845 persons in the first eight months of 2016. This is as much as in 2015, when 10,798 persons were granted asylum in Belgium.
BACKLOG
- The total caseload of the CGRS is the number of asylum cases in which the CGRS has not yet taken a decision. At the end of August 2016, the total caseload amounted to 16.992 cases. Since June 2016, the CGRS is effectively reducing its backlog.