A UN report has confirmed that Malta receives the highest number of asylum seekers in the world when the figures are compared with national populations.
For every 1,000 inhabitants, Malta received 20 irregular immigrants between 2007 and 2011, according to the UN refugee agency’s report entitled Asylum Levels and Trends in Industrialised Countries 2011, released yesterday.
Cyprus came in second place, with 17 immigrants per 1,000 inhabitants, while Sweden ranked third, with 15.6.
By comparison, the US and France received one and three asylum seekers respectively per 1,000 inhabitants.
However, the situation changes when the number of asylum seekers is compared to a country’s gross domestic product. Here, the US, France and Germany top the list with 5.9, 6.1 and 4.4 asylum applicants per capita. These are also the “top three destination countries”, receiving the most asylum applications.
The UN report said most of the countries receiving large numbers of immigrants do not show up on the list when a comparison is made with national population since the top receivers have very large populations.
It said the GDP indicator might therefore be “more meaningful and interesting” when making comparisons among the 44 industrialised countries in Europe, North America, Australasia, and North-East Asia.
The report also said that last year, the biggest increase in annual asylum levels occurred in the eight southern European countries which received 66,800 asylum requests – an 87 per cent increase compared to 2010.
“Most of these claims were from people who arrived by boat in Italy and Malta but with a sharp increase also seen in Turkey.”
The increases were mainly due to the turmoil in North Africa.
In all, the world saw 441,300 asylum claims last year compared to 368,000 in 2010.
“The large number of asylum claims clearly shows 2011 to have been a year of great difficulty for very many people. We can be thankful only that throughout this the international system of asylum has held firm,” said António Guterres, the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees.
“Still, it is important to put these figures in perspective. The number of asylum claims received across all industrialised countries is still smaller than the population of Dadaab, a single refugee camp in northeast Kenya.”