The CGRS has released its asylum figures for June 2016.
Evolution
- In June 2016, the Immigration Office registered 1,089 asylum applicants in Belgium. Every person (including children) concerned by an asylum application is counted as an asylum applicant.
- This is a decrease of 8.7 % compared to May 2016 (1,193) and of 62.4 % compared to June 2015 (2,894).
- The figure of 1,089 asylum applicants is the lowest since March 2008.
- Compared to the second half of 2015, the number of asylum applicants continues to decrease significantly. Whereas during the last six months of 2015, there was a monthly average of 5,505 asylum applicants, this dropped to an average of 1,553 for the first six months of 2016.
- This decrease is mainly due to a sharp decline in the number of asylum applicants from Afghanistan (from 2,176 in December 2015 to 187 in June 2016), Syria (from 1,076 in December 2015 to 103 in June 2016) and Iraq (from 494 in December 2015 to 47 in June 2016).
Men - women - children
- In June 2016, there were more males (including children) than females who applied for asylum in Belgium (respectively 60.65 % and 39.35 %). This ratio was 66.44 % to 33.56 % in the previous month.
- In June 2016, 103 unaccompanied foreign (self-declared) 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 unaccompanied foreign (self-declared) minors requested asylum in Belgium.
Countries of origin
- In June 2016, Afghanistan was the main country of origin of asylum applicants in Belgium (187 applications, i.e. 17.2 %), followed by Syria (103 applications, i.e. 9.5 %) and Somalia (62 applications, i.e. 5.7 %).
- Guinea and Albania completed the top five of countries of origin in June 2016, with respectively 5.5 % (60 applications) and 5.1 % (55 applications) of the total number of asylum applicants.
Decisions
- In June 2016, the CGRS took 2,336 decisions, concerning a total of 2,895 persons.
- In June 2016, compared to the total number of persons who received a final decision, the proportion of persons who were granted refugee status (48.5 %) or subsidiary protection status (12 %) amounted to 60.5 %. This corresponds to 1,287 decisions, concerning 1,650 persons. This is in line with 2015, when the CGRS granted international protection 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 June 2016, the total caseload amounted to 17.629 cases. In 2015, the caseload doubled from 5,589 asylum cases to 11,305. For two months now, the caseload has been decreasing again. As the CGRS considers 4,500 cases a normal caseload, the actual backlog amounts to 13.129 asylum cases.