Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1272935
8 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 26 JULY 2020 INTERVIEW During this visit you have been familiarising yourself with Mal- ta's asylum system. What are your impressions so far? How do you assess the local asylum and reception procedures? This is our first mission, glob- ally, after lockdown… precisely because we are so concerned where Malta stands in the asy- lum system: being, as it is, at the centre of the crossroads of world migration; on the front- line, really, when it comes to boats crossing the Mediterra- nean. We are very conscious of the fact that Malta is a common-law country; a rule-of-law based de- mocracy. Over the years you have established an asylum sys- tem, with its own processes… and that is encouraging. But I think what has happened, over time, is that the numbers coming have been more than that system is capable of deal- ing with. […] It has not been in- vested in enough, or expanded to deal with the emerging and contemporary environment. As a result, the asylum process is extremely slow: people with multiple applications can end up staying here for many, many years. The refugee assessment sys- tem is now subject to backlogs; and the capacity for appeals can go on for years. I was advised by one of the tribunal judges that you can receive seven or eight constant appeals, on one ground or another. There is no limit to the number of appeals that can be made, which is clog- ging the system up. And of course, there's the problem of reception facilities: the use of what is effectively mandatory detention, in con- ditions which are substandard. There is also the added chal- lenge of the sheer numbers of boats coming in, and the ad hoc way in which disembarkation is allowed… We have also observed how asylum seekers and other mi- grants from mixed flows, who no longer have access to re- ception centres, seem to get caught up in a cycle of home- lessness. Is this a problem with the system itself; and if so, how can it be addressed? I think it has become a prob- lem with the system. With smaller numbers, and a differ- ent environment, the system might have been able to cope. But as things stand, it can't. Adding to that is another problem: even if you emerge from that process as someone who is not entitled to interna- tional protection – and that's probably a very high number of people – for practical purposes, overwhelmingly they are not able to be returned. Most will refuse to return vol- untarily; and even if you were to embark on a forcible return, that also very often proves un- successful: most commonly, because the country of origin would refuse to provide the necessary documents, or refuse to take them back. In that way, too, the system is breaking down. And it's a very important matter, as far as UN- HCR is concerned: because if you can't return those who are not entitled to asylum, then you will have diminished the cred- ibility of the asylum system to protect who are entitled to ref- ugee status. The whole system has to work: not just bits of it. But what I'm also observing, if I may, is that the same sys- tem does have the potential for working; and that the govern- ment has the political commit- ment to respect the fundamen- tal right of asylum. The part of the puzzle that we can help with, as UNHCR, is to help establish an asylum system which works: ensuring returns; ensuring speedy responses to asylum requests; a single, de- finitive appeals process…. To clean up the system, if you like; which would help reduce the pull-factor. Do you see this systemic fail- ure as being a 'pull-factor' in its own right? If so, how? At the moment, unfortunate- ly, Malta has – if I may say so – some rather contradictory poli- cies. Firstly, the pull-factor. We are very grateful that, through search and rescue, you have picked people up at sea; and you have disembarked them, and brought them into the system. But given that the system itself is broken, and that people in fact stay here for many, many years – without or without pro- tection status; mostly without – that becomes a pull-factor. It encourages people smugglers. Then, of course, there's a fail- Prof. GILLIAN TRIGGS, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection at UNHCR, is on a three-day mission to Malta to assess asylum and reception procedures. Her initial verdict is that the system has been overwhelmed by higher numbers than it was designed for; and now requires an urgent overhaul The system is broken Raphael Vassallo rvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt