The CGRS has released its asylum figures for November 2016.
Evolution
- In November 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,614 asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (including children) is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is a decrease of 5.3 % compared to October 2016 (1,705).
- In November 2016, the total number of asylum applicants was more than three times lower compared to November 2015 (5,724).
- The lower number of asylum applications in the first eleven months of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015 is mainly due to a sharp decline in the number of applicants from:
- Syria: from an average of 867 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 227 per month in 2016, i.e. a fourfold decrease,
- Afghanistan: from an average of 692 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 238 per month in 2016, i.e. three times lower.
- Iraq: from an average of 789 persons per month in 2015 to an average of 97 per month in 2016, i.e. an eightfold decrease,
- In November 2016, Syria remained the main country of origin of asylum applicants in Belgium, with 243 applications, i.e. 15.1 % of the total number for November, followed by Albania (130 applications, 8.1 %), Turkey (129 applications, 8 %), Afghanistan (117 applications, 7.2 %) and Iraq (98 applications, 6.1 %).
- In November 2016, 89 (self-declared) minors who were not accompanied by at least one of their parents applied for asylum in Belgium.
Decisions
- In November 2016, the CGRS took 1,455 decisions. These decisions concerned 1,793 persons.
- The CGRS has taken 20,205 decisions (corresponding to 25,167 persons) since the start of 2016, i.e. already 19.4 % more decisions than in the whole of 2015 (16,929 decisions).
- In 2016, the CGRA reached a protection rate of 58.4 %. This is the proportion of decisions granting refugee status (46.6 %) or subsidiary protection status (11.8 %) compared to the total number of final decisions.
- In absolute figures, during the first eleven months of 2016, the CGRS granted an international protection status to 14,241 persons.
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 November 2016, the total caseload amounted to 15,828 cases. Since June 2016, the CGRS has effectively been reducing its backlog.