The right of refugees to apply for family reunification should be extended to holders of subsidiary or humanitarian protection, the Emigrants Commission said.

In a message issued on the occasion of Mother’s Day, being celebrated on Sunday, the commission appealed to the Maltese to also remember refugee mothers and others in a similar situation, especially those in Malta with children who had not yet met their father.

It appealed to the authorities to facilitate the reunification of families in cases where the father or the mother had subsidiary protection in a humanitarian gesture.

The Commission said it was referring above all to cases where, because of extraordinary human circumstances, many times dramatic, the children would have been born in Malta without the presence of their father, as well as to other cases where the children would not have been with their father or mother for years.

It would be honourable for Malta if it found a suitable means of applying refugees’ right to family reunification also to those who enjoyed subsidiary or humanitarian protection, at the right conditions.

This also counted to siblings who had been in Malta for a considerable amount of time.