The CGRS has released its asylum figures for March 2016.
EVOLUTION
- In March 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,374 persons as asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person concerned by an asylum application is counted as an applicant.
- This is a decrease of 9.8 % compared to February 2016 (1,523 applicants) and less than a quarter of the monthly average of applicants (5,885) during the peak period between August and December 2015. The number of asylum applicants registered in March 2016 has decreased with 21.7 % compared to March 2015 (1,755 applicants).
- This decrease is mainly due to a further decline in the number of asylum applicants from Afghanistan (from 2,176 in December 2015 to 259 in March 2016). There was also a sharp decrease in the number of asylum applicants from Syria (from 1,076 in December 2015 to 123 in March 2016) and Iraq (from 494 in December 2015 to 82 in March 2016).
MEN – WOMEN – CHILDREN
- In March 2016, there were more male asylum applicants (including children) than female applicants (70.7 % to 29.3 %) in Belgium. This ratio was 60.5 % to 39.5 % in the previous month.
- In March 2016, 127(self-declared) unaccompanied foreign minors applied for asylum in Belgium. This is a sharp decrease compared to the period between August and December 2015, when a monthly average of 511 (self-declared) unaccompanied foreign minors filed an application for asylum in Belgium.
COUNTRIES OF ORIGIN
- In March 2016, Afghanistan was the main country of origin of asylum applicants in, Belgium (259, i.e. 18.9 %), followed by Syria (123, i.e. 9 %) and Iraq (82, i.e. 6 %). These three countries now represent one third of the number of applications, whereas for the whole of 2015, they represented two thirds of asylum applications filed in Belgium.
- With respectively 5.8 % and 5.2 % of the total number of asylum applicants, Somalia and Guinea completed the top five of countries of origin in March 2016.
Decisions
- In March 2016, the CGRS took 2,053 decisions, for a total of 2,543 persons. This is an increase in output by 5.5 % compared to February 2016 (1,945decisions) and by 31.8 % compared to January 2016.
- In March 2016, the proportion of persons who were granted refugee status (46.6 %) or subsidiary protection status (15.6 %), compared to the total number of persons who received a final decision, amounted to 62.2 %. This corresponds to 1,165 decisions for 1,502 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 March 2016, the total caseload amounted to 17,510 cases. 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 13.010 asylum cases. The Immigration Office also has a backlog in dossiers that will be transmitted to the CGRS.