The CGRS has released its asylum figures for April 2016.
Evolution
- In April 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,300 asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (including children) concerned by an asylum application is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is a decrease of 5.4 % compared to March 2016 (1,374) and of 20.1 % compared to April 2015 (1,627).
- This decrease is mainly due to a sharp decline in the number of asylum applicants from Afghanistan (from 2,176 in December 2015 to 184 in April 2016), Syria (from 1,076 in December 2015 to 208 in April 2016) and Iraq (from 494 in December 2015 to 53 in April 2016).
Men - women - children
- In April 2016, there were more male asylum applicants (including children) than female applicants in Belgium (respectively 64.17 % and 35.83 %). This ratio was 70.7 % to 29.3 % in the previous month.
- In April 2016, 85 (self-declared) unaccompanied foreign minors applied for asylum in Belgium. This is a marked decrease compared to the period from August to December 2015, when a monthly average of 511 (self-declared) unaccompanied foreign minors requested asylum in Belgium.
Countries of origin
- In April 2016, Syria was the main country of origin of asylum applicants in Belgium (208 applications, i.e. 16 %), followed by Afghanistan (184 applications, i.e. 14.2 %) and Albania (72 applications, i.e. 5.5 %).
- Somalia and Guinea completed the top five of countries of origin in April 2016, with respectively 5.4 % and 5 % of the total number of asylum applicants. With 53 applications (4.1 %), Iraq only ranks seventh. For the first time since April 2015, Iraq does not appear in the top 3 countries of origin.
Decisions
- In April 2016, the CGRS took 1,998 decisions, for a total of 2,485 persons.
- In April 2016, compared to the total number of persons who received a final decision, the proportion of persons who were granted refugee status (48 %) or subsidiary protection status (15 %) amounted to 63 %. This corresponds to 1,147 decisions for 1,450 persons. This is in line with 2015, when the CGRS granted refugee status in 6 out of 10 decisions.
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 April 2016, the total caseload amounted to 18,375 cases. In 2015, the caseload doubled from 5,589 asylum cases to 11,305 cases and it continues to increase. As the CGRS considers 4,500 cases a normal caseload, the actual backlog amounts to 13.875 asylum cases.