By Tiffany Shakespeare Describing France as a “big prison”, Mohamed, 26, a Syrian asylum seeker, is trapped in protracted legal ...
By Tiffany Shakespeare
Describing
France as a “big prison”, Mohamed, 26, a Syrian asylum seeker, is trapped in
protracted legal limbo. He arrived in Paris in September 2014, and a year later
is still waiting to attain refugee status. He is unable to travel or work, and
as his ISIS captors in Syria were French nationals, he does not know who to
trust. His wife and one-year-old son, born after he fled, are stuck in Damascus
also waiting so that they can join him under family reunification laws. Some
wait for over 2 years for their refugee status, and Mohamed is terrified that
his family will be killed by heavy bombing in Damascus before they are allowed
to join him.
Mohamed is one
of over 12 million people affected by the four year conflict, which has claimed
over a quarter of a million lives since March 2011. He is one of four million
refugees fleeing Syria, one of over 300,000 applying for asylum in Europe, and
one of over 6,000 applying in France. Whilst France boasts a strong tradition
of human rights, promoting Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, has the country really
lived up to its image during the Syrian refugee crisis, especially given
Syria’s status as a former French mandate? Is France really a welcoming haven
doing its utmost to be #AvecLesSyriens?
Sabreen
Al-Rassace, coordinator of Syrian political asylum centre, Association Revivre,
one ofmany NGOs helping refugees, insists that France has a long way to go before
assuming its title as a country of les Droits de l’Homme. This is due to the
cumbersome administrative processes that Al-Rassace describes as “inhumane”.
Whilst Syrian acceptance rates are high, with 96 percent of applications
accepted, compared with 22 percent acceptance rates of all asylum applications
(according to 2013 data), claiming asylum in France is a long and difficult
process.
The procedure
Asylum seekers
must register at the police station and request a temporary residence permit on
asylum grounds. For this, they must provide an address. Once processed, the
asylum seeker has 21 days to complete their application for the Office for the
Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA). OFPRA is responsible for
examining, refusing, or granting refugee status, a ten-year residency permit,
or subsidiary protection, a one-year permit that can be renewed after
reassessment of the situation in the country of origin. OFPRA also decide
whether the applicant should be examined under an “accelerated” or “regular”
procedure. Accelerated procedure is for those coming from countries deemed to
be “safe”, constituting nearly 1/3 of all asylum origin countries. Regular
procedure, which has a greater application acceptance rate, is for nationals
coming from “unsafe” countries, according to the French government.
The National
Court of Asylum (CNDA) is responsible for decisions on appeals against rejected
asylum applications, and appeals must be lodged within 30 days of the OFPRA
decision. The Office for Immigration and Integration (OFFI) is responsible for
accommodation allocation. Under French law, asylum seekers are entitled to
accommodation in a state reception centre through the Welcoming Centre for
Asylum Seekers (CADA). Here, they should receive material, social, and
administrative support while their asylum claim is being processed, asrequired
by EU law.
A system in need
of reform
The French
asylum procedure is long and over-subscribed. In interviews with Association
Revivre, Jesuit Refugee Service (JSR) and various asylum lawyers, two pressing
problems have frequently been mentioned: the lengthy process of acquiring
refugee status, and the lack of housing when asylum seekers arrive. In 2014,
the average time period for OFPRA to make a decision was 195 days and many
asylum seekers, including families, are left destitute with no alternative but
to sleep on the streets. Various temporary “squats” have developed in northern
Paris, including sprawling cities of tents and make-shift structures under the
railway at La Chapelle, and Saint Ouin.
Al-Rassace says
that the inadequacies of the system are greatly exacerbated by the fact that
asylum seekers must first provide an address when they register at the police
station. Whilst some asylum seekers, like Mohamed, can register with an
“individual address” (in his case, a distant aunt) others have no contacts in
the country, and must use the address of France’s public bodies. These are
France Land of Asylum (FTDA) for individual adults, or Coordination of the Home
for Asylum Seeking Families (CAFDA) for families. Using FTDA or CAFDA prolongs
the asylum procedure by another couple of months. Omar, 23, a Syrian who
arrived in Europe by boat in February having crossed the entirety of Macedonia
by foot, has registered with FTDA but is yet to be allocated accommodation.
Fortunately, he has been able to find shelter through the Welcome Network
Initiative, which provides monthly lodging with French host families.
The French
asylum system has previously been criticised as being in breach of France’s
obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights. In September 2014,
the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Nils Muizniek, denounced
the deficiencies of the asylum procedure, drafting a 50-page report at the beginning
of this year.
The right
reforms?
Reforms of the
French asylum system were already underway by December 2014, and were
promulgated by Parliament on 29 July 2015. Whilst a full description of
proposed reforms can be found in Annex 2 of the Asylum Information Database
2015 Country Report, the general aim is to shorten the length of the procedures
from an average of over two years to nine months by 2017.
However,
shortening the length of procedures comes at a cost. Eve Shahshahani from
Christian Action for the Abolition of Torture (ACAT) points out that reducing
the length of the process often has negative repercussions on equal
opportunities for asylum seekers, where the “presumption of fraud is primary”.
She insists judges, lawyers and the government, even with the best intentions,
will not have the “time nor the means to study all applications in depth”.
Another focus of
the changes was reforming France’s “accelerated” procedure, for those coming
from a “safe” country of origin. Applications will now be examined by a single
generalist judge instead of three. In an interview with JRS France concerns
were raised over the presence of only one judge at the Court, leading to a
“risk of error and a lack of good justice”: “the judge will have to make a decision
very quickly, within 5 weeks, which may affect the quality of the judge’s
decisions if she/he has many cases”.
Similarly,
Muizniek points out that as in any asylum system, the “automatic nature of the
classification” of “requests by nationals of states appearing on the list of
‘safe countries of origin’” remains a considerable worry. This is problematic
as even in those countries deemed safe overall, there are often individuals,
such as those in minority groups or LGBTQ communities who are certainly not
“safe”. Refugee status should be granted in recognition of individual
circumstances, not a general risk.
Despite the
revisions of French asylum law being a positive sign overall (for example, a
lawyeris now provided during a refugee’s OFPRA interview) further efforts are
necessary to ensure asylum seekers’ rights are properly protected. Association
Réfugié-Cosi insists the draft law should include further amendments, in order
to:
- guarantee effective remedies in detention centres;
- preserve the quality of the National Court of Asylum’s examination and decision-making process by stipulating a longer time limit to examine appeals in the accelerated procedure;
- harmonise services offered by reception facilities for asylum seekers and provide accommodation together with legal support to all asylum seekers.
Syrians in Paris
Al-Rassace
explains that the French asylum experience is traumatising, especially compared
to Germany, Sweden, and Belgium. Mohamed voiced his frustration at the system,
explaining that a friend of his, who left Turkey by boat two months after him,
has acquired his refugee status in Germany and has already received a home, a
bank card, and around EUR 450 per month. Omar is also suspended in a period of
legal limbo. After three months of waiting, he was told by OFPRA last week that
they have delayed his status determination for another six months, without
providing a reason.
Whilst Syrian
experiences vary, all are entangled in the complex and protracted bureaucratic
web of the French asylum system. Confronted with legal loopholes,
organisational inefficiencies, and increasing islamophobia among the French
public, many do not feel France, despite President François Holland’s
involvement in leading the European response to the refugee crisis, is a
country of “les Droits de l’Homme”.
While these two
young Syrians wait for their asylum claims to be processed, Omar is involved
with the conflict from afar, coordinating Syrian doctors on the frontline.
Mohamed, however, has stopped all of his online political activism, fearful of
his wife and child in Damascus being targeted by Assad.
About The Author:
About The Author:
Tiffany Shakespeare is a fourth-year Anthropology student at University College London. She has just returned from Sciences Po, Paris, where she conducted research on Syrian refugees in Paris and their involvement in homeland politics. Thomson Reuters ResearcherID : M-9616-2015
This article was first published at Rights in Exile Newsletter on Oct 1, 2015
AIDN: 001-10-2015-0313
AIDN: 001-10-2015-0313