Asylum statistics November 2016

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.
12 December 2016

Information about the asylum procedure, tailored to the asylum seeker, can be found at : asyluminbelgium.be.