For the third consecutive year, Venezuela and Colombia continue to be the first two countries of origin of people who applied for asylum in Spain in 2021according to the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (Cear).
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This NGO presented this Thursday the study “Refugees in Spain and Europe. Report 2022”, in which it states that during 2021, 71,830 asylum application files were resolved in Spain, although at the end of the year, 104,010 people were still pending. response.
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The rest of the nationalities of the majority asylum seekers were: Morocco, Mali, Senegal, Peru, Honduras, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nicaragua.
Spain is the third country in the European Union that attended to a greater number of asylum seekers, behind Germany and France, but despite doubling the rate of recognition of protection -which went from 5 to 10.5%-, is far from 35%
than the European average, and there are still more than 100,000 unresolved applications.
In total, last year 65,404 people applied for international protection in Spain, 26% less than in 2020, due to movement restrictions due to the pandemic, shortages and delays in appointments to formalize requests and difficulties in accessing territory Spanish, according to the source.
The general director of Cear, Estrella Galán, highlighted that 15% of the requests come from boys and girls, something that she described as “worrying”.
The NGO demands that all these people be given the same reception model as Ukrainians, through reception centers, where they carry out all the procedures and can access international protection in 24 hours.
This formula, together with the coordinated response of the Government and social organizations that was given to the almost 2,500 Afghans evacuated during the summer of 2021, are two models of success that this NGO highlighted this Thursday.
As negative aspects, Cear regrets the episode of entry to the Spanish city of Ceuta (North Africa) of some 10,000 immigrants from Morocco between May 17 and 18, since they identified “summary returns and saturation of public space (parks, streets…) due to difficulties in accessing the Temporary Stay Center for Immigrants”.
Another aspect to improve is the reception of migrants in the Canary Islands (Atlantic), where last year thousands of people arrived from Africa across the ocean, on what is considered the most dangerous migratory route in the world.
The report also highlights the decrease in the percentage of protection resolutions for humanitarian reasons for applicants from Venezuela, falling from 97% in 2020 to 82% in 2021.
Although Colombia and Venezuela continue to be the first nationalities, the trend changes in relation to the profile of the applicants, who go from being mainly Latin American with large family groups, to people of African origin, mostly young men with long-term travel. solo migrants.
By sex, 64% of applicants were men and 36% women, details the report. At the European level, 630,630 people applied for international protection last year, reaching pre-pandemic figures.
Germany (190,545), France (120,685) and Spain (65,404) were the top three host countries.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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