Mexico City.- Starting next Wednesday, asylum seekers in Mexico will be able to follow up on their applications online, without having to go to the offices of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar).
The agency and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) launched the Comar Digital platform on Monday, for the exclusive and confidential use of applicants.
They stressed that applicants will be able to know the status of their process step by step; receive notifications from Comar; obtain information about the procedure and consult frequently asked questions. The information, they pointed out, will be available in four languages: Spanish, English, French and Creole. They stressed that Comar Digital is only a consultation platform, so the procedures will continue to be in person, and that its use will not be mandatory.
Andrés Ramírez, general coordinator of Comar, said that the platform will contribute to having more agile and faster processes, will reduce the workload of the Commission’s staff and will ease the flow of people in the offices.
“It’s a win-win, especially for people seeking international protection, who won’t have to go around in circles,” Ramírez said at a press conference. He insisted that the current administration has registered the highest number of asylum applications in Mexico in history, with 555,868. For his part, Giovanni Lepri, UNHCR representative in Mexico, stressed the importance of achieving greater efficiency in the processing of asylum applications. “This project, which seems very technical, actually goes to the heart of the matter, by allowing faster procedures, safer procedures, that allow people who have access to their files from computers or other devices, to know what stage their processes are at,” he said. The platform, he said, is part of the digital transformation process of Comar, which began with the creation of the Refugee Information System (SIRE). In 2023, he added, the digitalization of the Commission’s physical archive will be completed, streamlining the asylum process and allowing for an increase in the capacity of this organization by 400 percent compared to 2018. Both warned about the more frequent appearance of xenophobic attitudes towards migrants in general and towards asylum seekers in particular in some areas of the country and among some sectors of society, which they called for to be countered.
#Digital #platform #asylum #seekers #launched
