The CGRS has released its asylum figures for September 2016.
EVOLUTION
- In September 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,496 asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (including children) is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is a decrease of 10.6 % compared to August 2016 (1,673).
- In September 2016, the number of asylum seekers was more than four times lower compared to September 2015 (6,830).
- The lower number of asylum applications in the first nine 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, i.e. an eightfold decrease,
- from Syria: from an average of 867 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 223 per month in 2016, i.e. a fourfold decrease,
- from Afghanistan: from an average of 692 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 267 per month in 2016, i.e. two and a half times lower.
- Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are still part of the top 10 countries of origin of asylum seekers in Belgium in 2016 and taken together represent 38.3 % of asylum seekers in 2016, compared to 63 % in 2015.
MEN – WOMEN - CHILDREN
- In September 2016, more men (including children) than women applied for asylum in Belgium: 60.84 % compared to 39.16 %. For the whole of 2015, the proportion of men was somewhat higher: 70.8 % men compared to 29.2 % women.
- In September 2016, 93 unaccompanied (self-declared) minors applied for asylum in Belgium.
COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN
- In September 2016, Syria remained the most important country of origin of asylum applicants in Belgium, with 15.4 % of the total number of applications, followed by Guinea (113 applicants, 7.6 %), Afghanistan (99 applicants, 6.6 %), Iraq (94 applicants, 6.3 %) and “Undetermined” (86 applicants, 5.7 %).
DECISIONS
- In September 2016, the CGRS took 1,821 decisions. These decisions concerned 2,241persons.
- The CGRS has taken 16,935 decisions (corresponding to 21,050 persons) since the start of 2016, i.e. as many decisions as for the whole of 2015 (16.929 decisions).
- In 2016, the protection rate of the CGRA was 59.1 %. This is the proportion of decisions granting refugee status (47.4 %) and subsidiary protection status (11.8 %) compared to the total number of final decisions. This figure is in line with 2015, when the CGRS granted an international protection status in 6 out of 10 decisions.
- In absolute figures, during the first nine months of 2016, the CGRS granted an international protection status to 12,048 persons, more than in the whole of 2015, when 10,798 persons were granted such a status 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 September 2016, the total caseload amounted to 16.776 cases. Since June 2016, the CGRS is effectively reducing its backlog.