Respect for the dignity of immigrants and the protection of vulnerable ones must be the main focus of any law on asylum, Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) Malta director Fr Paul Pace said.
Speaking about the Bill amending the Refugees Act 2000, he noted that the proposed amendments failed to provide sufficient guarantees of protection for refugees and asylum seekers.
"On the contrary, it actually removes many of the legal guarantees in the original Refugees Act and does not replace them with the corresponding provisions of the (EU) directives," he said in a statement to mark World Refugee Day 2008 today.
JRS yesterday presented the Minister for Justice and Home Affairs and his opposition counterpart with its comments on the Bill being discussed in Parliament.
Fr Pace noted that when the Refugees Act was first drafted, policies and structures were created over time, in a piecemeal manner, to deal with the challenges posed. This led to the creation of gaps in protection and the drafting of the new law was an excellent opportunity to conduct a "much needed" holistic evaluation of the system in order to improve the protection provided.
However, Fr Pace said, he was concerned that fundamental issues, such as procedural guarantees, rights of asylum seekers, protection of vulnerable asylum seekers and rights of people granted protection, may be regulated by subsidiary legislation when they ought to be an essential part of the main law.
JRS stressed that any legislation in place should provide basic guarantees. These included an absolute prohibition on refoulement (sending people back to their country) until a final decision is taken on an asylum application as well as effective access to all the basic socio-economic rights contained in the EU Reception Directive, including the right to medical care for all asylum seekers.
Furthermore, unaccompanied minors and other vulnerable asylum seekers needed protection and specialised assistance while other basic guarantees included procedural rules for a fair and impartial hearing, clearly established rights for persons granted refugee status and subsidiary protection.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that there were 11.4 million refugees outside their countries and 26 million others displaced internally by conflict or persecution at the end of 2007.
UNHCR's annual Global Trends Report notes that Afghans and Iraqis accounted for nearly half of all refugees under the UNHCR's care worldwide in 2007, followed by Colombians, Sudanese and Somalis. Most of the increase in refugees last year was a result of the volatile situation in Iraq. The top refugee-hosting countries in 2007 included Pakistan, Syria, Iran, Germany and Jordan.
Some 647,200 individual applications for asylum or refugee status were submitted to governments and UNHCR offices in 154 countries last year, a five per cent increase and the first rise in four years.
The full 2007 Global Trends Report is available on www.unhcr.org.