Statistical overview of asylum applications lodged inEurope and selectednon-European countries
Asylum Levels and Trendsin Industrialized Countries
F i r s t H a l f
2 0 1 1
Who is anasylum-seeker?
An asylum-seeker is an individual
who hassought international protection and whose claimfor refugee status has not been determined yet.As part of its obligation to protect refugees onits territory, the country of asylum is normallyresponsible for determining whether an asylum-seeker is a refugee or not. This responsibility isoften incorporated in national legislation of thecountry and, for State Parties, is derived fromthe
1951 Convention Relating to the Satus of Refugees
.
•
Trends at a Glance
An estimated
198,300 asylumapplications
were recordedduring the rst six months of 2011 in the 44 countries includedin this report. This is 17 per centmore than during the sameperiod 2010 (169,300), and isnearly identical to the number of applications recorded during thesecond half of 2010 (197,600).If the observed historicalpattern of asylum applicationscontinues, it is estimated that thenumber of asylum claims thatwill be submitted in the
44 industrialized countries
for the whole of 2011 may reach420,000. This would be thehighest number in eight years, butstill well below the peak of 2001when almost 620,000 asylumclaims were reported.The
38 countries in Europe
received
144,000
claims duringthe rst six months of 2011. Thisis an increase of 16 per centcompared to the correspondingperiod in 2010 (124,200 claims),but slightly less than the secondsemester of 2010 (149,400claims). Europe accounted forthree quarters (73%) of all claimslodged among the industrializedcountries.With an estimated
36,400
asylumapplications, the
United Statesof America
was the largest singlerecipient of new asylum claimsamong the group of industrializedcountries during the rst half of 2011. France was second with26,100 asylum applications,followed by Germany (20,100),Sweden (12,600), and the UnitedKingdom (12,200). The top vereceiving countries togetheraccounted for more than half (54%) of all asylum claimsreceived in the countries includedin this report.The
Nordic region
was the onlyEuropean region to experience afall in asylum applications in therst six months of 2011 (20,400claims), compared to both therst and second semesters of 2010 (-11% and -27% respectively).
Australia
and
Belgium
haverevised the way in which theyreport asylum data to UNHCR.As a result, historical data forAustralia has been adjusted forthe period from 2002 to 2010.With 15,300 asylum claims lodgedby Afghans in the rst half of 2011, Afghanistan was the mostsignicant
source country
of asylum-seekers of all of the44 countries included in thisreport, followed by China (11,700claims), Serbia (and Kosovo: SCRes. 1244)
(1)
(10,300), Iraq (10,100),and the Islamic Republic of Iran(7,600). Persons from these vecountries together accounted for55,000 applications, or almostone third (29%) of all asylumclaims submitted in industrializedcountriesThe
27 Member States of theEuropean Union
registered123,400 asylum claims in the rsthalf of 2011, 13 per cent more thanin the rst six months of 2010(109,500). The EU-27 togetheraccounted for 86 per cent of allasylum claims in Europe.While a relatively modest numberof persons eeing North Africacame to Europe, the highestrelative increase was recordedfor
Tunisian
and
Libyan
citizens.As such, in Europe, the largestrelative increase was registered in
southern Europe
which received
25,100
asylum requests duringthe rst semester of 2011: a 57 percent increase compared to therst six months of 2010 (16,000claims). The increase is mainly inthe number of asylum-seekers in
Italy
,
Malta
and
Turkey
.
First half
2011
in review
17
%
13
%
57
%
6,3005,10011
%
27
%
In
North America
, an estimated
47,900
new asylum applicationswere submitted during the rstsix months of 2011: 9,600 claimsor 25 per cent more than in therst semester of 2010.
420,000
The number of asylum-seekersin
Australia
and
New Zealand
decreased by one fth during therst half of 2011 (5,100 claims)compared to the rst semester of 2010 (6,300 claims).In
Japan
and the
Republic of Korea
, almost
1,300
personsrequested refugee status duringthe rst half of 2011, more thandouble the gure for the sameperiod in 2010 (600 claims).
×
2
1
SecurityCouncil Resolution 1244(1999)
+16
%
Top5
25
%
54
%
1.
USA
2.
FRA
3.
GER
others
4.
SWE
5.
UK
46
%
1.
AFGHANISTAN
2.
CHINA
3.
SERBIA
(and Kosovo: SC Res. 1244)
4.
IRAQ
3.
ISLAMIC REP. OF IRAN
2
Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries - First half 2011
3
Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries - First half 2011
Revised data for Australia andBelgium
Data on asylum applications lodged in Australiaand Belgium
have been revised and are notcomparable with previous UNHCR reports. In thecase of Australia, statistics on asylum applicationsprovided by the Department of Immigration andCitizenship were limited to individuals lodging aprotection visa (PV). The new dataset includes bothrefugee status determination requests lodged by“irregular maritime arrivals” and protection visarequests. As a result, UNHCR’s monthly asylumstatistics for Australia were revised for the period2002 to 2010.In the case of Belgium, UNHCR’s data on monthlyasylum applications lodged during 2010 and laternow include children accompanying the principalapplicant, but exclude repeat claims for both theprincipal applicant and accompanying children.
•
© F . N O Y
A young woman from Sub-SaharanAfrica
in a minibus which will takefemale asylum-seekers and children to areception centre on the Italian island of Lampedusa. Most will stay on Lampedusafor a day or two for identification beforebeing transferred to holding centresor temporary housing facilities acrossItaly while their asylum claims are beingevaluated.
2
See Annex
Table 1
for a listof countries.
3
The presentation of monthlyasylum statistics of applications in Serbia does notinclude applications lodgedin Kosovo (SC Res.1244)owing to lackof monthlydata for Kosovo.
4
See UNHCR’s
2010 Global Trends
reportat
www.unhcr.org/statistics
(issuedJune 2011).
5
According to EURODAC’s CentralUnit,the verification of asylum claims in 2010 showedthat24.1per centof allasylum claims registeredin the system were multiple claims,i.e.the applicanthadsubmittedatleastone previous application in the same or another Member State of the European Union (Source:
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0549:FIN:EN:PDF
)
T
HE GROUP OF COUN-TRIES ANALYSED in thisreport is collectively referredto as “
the 44 industrialized coun-tries
” and has been defined forthe purpose of this report only. The
44
countries are:
27
Member States of the European Union,
(2)
Albania, Bos-nia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland,Liechtenstein, Montenegro, Norway,Serbia,
(3)
Switzerland, The formerYugoslav Republic of Macedonia, andTurkey, as well as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea and the United States of Amer-ica. The group of
44
countries receivedan estimated
198,300
asylum applica-tions in the first half of
2011
.The numbers in this report reflectclaims made for first instance asylumprocedures only. The report does notinclude data on applications on appealor review, and it does not provide infor-mation on the outcome of asylum pro-cedures or on the admission of refugeesthrough resettlement programmes.This information is available in otherUNHCR reports.
(4)
To the extent possible, the statisticspresented in this document reflectthe number of individuals lodging anasylum application for the first time.However, this may not reflect the ac-tual number of new asylum-seekers, assome of the figures quoted may includerepeat applications, including applica-tions made by persons in more than onecountry during the same year.
(5)
All data refer to the number of indi-viduals, with the exception of asylum-seekers in the United States of Americawhere only the number of cases (whichmay include several individuals) isavailable for applications submittedto the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Applica-tions submitted to the United StatesDepartment of Justice, Executive Of-fice of Immigration Review (EOIR) are,however, recorded as individuals. Toallow comparability with other coun-tries of asylum, UNHCR uses a figureof
1.4
individuals per case to estimatethe number of people reported by DHSbecause historical data suggest that,on average, one asylum case contains
1.4
individuals. In the country of origintables, figures for the United States of America are a combination of the num-ber of cases (DHS) and the number of individuals (EOIR), owing to the largevariation in case size by nationality.All figures in this report should beconsidered as provisional and subject tochange. Due to retroactive changes andadjustments, some of the data includedin this publication may differ slightlyfrom that reported in previous UN-HCR documents, or from the officialfigures published by States.
This report summarizes patterns and trends in the number of individual asylum claims submittedin Europe and selected non-European countries during the first six months of
2011
. The data inthis report are based on information available as of
14 September 2011
,
unless otherwise indicated.It covers the
38
European and six non-European States that currently provide monthly asylumstatistics to UNHCR. Figures are mostly based on official asylum statistics, reflecting nationallaws and procedures.
Introduction
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Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries - First half 2011
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Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialized Countries - First half 2011
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