UK no longer top asylum nation....
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| Tue, 08-31-2004 - 5:30pm |
Some interesting figures.
Are any of you surprised by the #'s?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/3615566.stm
France has replaced the UK as the top destination for asylum seekers in the industrialised world, according to the United Nations.
Figures from the UN Refugee Agency indicate the UK has dropped to third place behind the United States.
The number of asylum seekers in industrialised countries has dropped to the lowest level in 17 years.
The UN said the decrease was largely down to the massive decline in refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to the figures, the number of people seeking asylum in industrialised countries fell in the second quarter of 2004, continuing a downward trend.
Approximately 86,900 people applied between April and June in the 30 richest states, compared to 107,911 in the same part of last year.
Applications are 8% down on the previous quarter, which itself was almost a fifth down on the last quarter of 2003.
UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesman Rupert Colville said: "The total number of claims in all 30 industrialised countries during the first six months of 2004 is 22% lower than during the first half of 2003.
"It's the lowest level since 1987. Three big groups - Afghanis, Iraqis and Kosovars - have fallen away."
Mr Colville said the change in the top receiving country had come as numbers had fallen away in Germany and UK more quickly than in France.
In the second quarter of 2004, some 9,200 asylum seekers arrived in the UK - a 13% drop on the previous quarter. Asylum applications had already dropped by a fifth in the first quarter of 2004.
In comparison, France received 14,049 asylum seekers in the second quarter and the United States 9,660 - both of these falls, but not as substantial as in the UK.
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Germany and Austria are the other two top receiving nations for the period, though there are no up-to-date figures for Italy which is thought to be experiencing an increase in arrivals.
"It is not so much that France has gone up," said Mr Colville. "The numbers in Germany, which topped the list for about 18 years, have steadily fallen over the past few years.
"The UK, which was the top receiving country at the beginning of the 21st century, has seen numbers fall quite sharply."
The European Union now accounts for almost three-quarters of all asylum seeker arrivals in the industrialised world.
The 25 EU states received 147,340 claims during the first six months of this year, a drop of 18% compared with the same period last year.
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The monthly average for European countries so far during 2004 is 24,560, the lowest since 1997, and third lowest since 1988.
But six of the new states which joined the club in May have recorded increases in applications - Cyprus, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.
The UNHCR said the 90% rise in applications in Cyprus had mostly come from a "sudden surge" in applications by Bangladeshis who had originally entered the country on student visas.
Russians, apparently mainly Chechens, accounted for the largest single group of asylum seekers in the last quarter, with more than 7,000 saying they were fleeing persecution and violence.
Others still in the top 10 include people from the former Yugoslavia, China, Turkey - mainly Kurds - and, unusually, an increase in asylum seekers from India.
There has been no marked increase of refugees entering the industrialised world from Darfur, the war-torn western region of Sudan experiencing a major humanitarian crisis, said the UN.

