Comment on the asylum statistics of January 2016
Evolution
- In January 2016, the Immigration Office registered 2,842 persons as asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (also children) is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is about half the monthly average of persons (5,885) who filed an asylum application during the peak period between August and December 2015. The number of asylum applicants registered in January 2016 is still higher than a year ago (1,717 persons in January 2015).
- The decrease is mainly due to a strong decline of the number of asylum applicants from Afghanistan (803 applicants, compared to 2,176 persons in December 2015). The number of asylum applicants from Syria (from 1,076 persons to 527) and Iraq (from 494 persons to 233) also halved.
- The past few weeks, the number of asylum applications has decreased not only in Belgium. The same tendency is noticed in other European countries. Especially in the Scandinavian countries, the decrease is striking. In other EU Member States such as Germany, the number of asylum applicants remains high.
- It is too early to draw conclusions from this evolution. In view of the international situation, it is possible that the number of asylum applicants will go up again. 2015 was characterized by the highest number of asylum applicants in Belgium (35,476 cases or 44,760 persons) since the year 2000 (41,982 cases).
Men – women – children
- In January 2016, more males filed an application for asylum in Belgium than females. The proportion is 70.8 % to 29.2 %.
- 51.7% of applicants were adult men.
- 19.4% adult women.
- 9.3% unaccompanied minor boys.
- 0.9% unaccompanied minor girls.
- 9.9% minor boys accompanied by one or both parents.
- 8.9% minor girls accompanied by one or both parents.
- In January 2016, 288 (self-declared) minor children and youngsters who arrived in Belgium without their parents applied for asylum in Belgium. This is a decrease of 64.2 % compared to December 2015, when 804 (self-declared) unaccompanied foreign minors filed an application for asylum in Belgium.
Countries of origin
- The vast majority of persons who applied for asylum in Belgium in January 2016 come from conflict zones : 28.3 % are Afghans, 18.5 % are Syrians and 8.2 % are Iraqi.
- Also in the top 5, in January 2016, the Iran and Undetermined country of origin (mainly Palestinians) accounted respectively for 4.3% and 3.5 % of the total number of asylum applicants.
- Another tendency, i.e. more migrants from North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria…) filing an application for asylum in Europe, is at present not noticeable in Belgium.
Decisions
- In January 2016, the CGRS took 1,557 decisions for a total of 1,896 persons.
- In January 2016, the proportion of persons who were granted refugee status (51 %) or subsidiary protection status (13.9 %), compared to the total number of persons who received a final decision, amounts to 64.9 %. This corresponds to 946 decisions for a totalof 1,167 persons. By doing so, the CGRS continues the trend of 2015, when the CGRS granted refugee status in 6 out of 10 decisions.
Backlog
- The total caseload of the CGRS is the number of cases for which the CGRS has not taken any decision yet. At the end of January 2016, the total caseload amounted to 13,655 cases (or 17.153 persons). In 2015, the caseload doubled from 5,565 asylum files to 11,305 files and it continues to increase. As the CGRS considers 4,500 cases as a normal caseload, the actual backlog amounts to 9,155 asylum cases.
- It should be noted that the caseload will continue to increase. As a result, there is a continuing need for reinforcement in order to eliminate the backlog and to manage the present influx of asylum applicants.
- In spite of an increase in the number of decisions and a decrease in the number of new asylum applications, few EU countries manage to keep up with the influx of new cases. As a result, in almost all EU+ countries, the backlog continues to increase.