The CGRS released its asylum statistics for March 2017.
ASYLUM APPLICATIONS
- In March 2017, the Belgian Immigration Office registered 1,534 asylum applicants. Every person (including children) is counted as an asylum applicant.
- Additionally, 154 persons arrived in March in Belgium under a resettlement programme and 96 under a relocation programme. This means that a total of 1,784 asylum applications were registered in March 2017, an increase compared to February 2017 (1,416 applications).
- Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq remained the top 3 countries of origin of asylum applicants registered in March 2017, followed by Eritrea, Albania, Guinea, Russia, Congo (DRC), Turkey and Palestine.
ASYLUM DECISIONS
- In March 2017, the CGRS took 2,025 decisions. These decisions concerned a total of 2,631 persons.
- The protection rate in March 2017 was 49.8 %.
CASELOAD
- The total caseload of the CGRS is the number of asylum cases in which the CGRS has not yet taken a decision. This caseload continues to decrease.
- At the end of March 2017, there was a total caseload of 13,335 dossiers. As 5,000 dossiers can be considered a normal caseload, the actual backlog amounted to 8,335 dossiers.