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UNHCR: UK asylum system making progress
LONDON, May 12 (UNHCR) - The Home Office continues to improve its determination of first instance asylum claims, a new UNHCR survey released today reports, but significant areas must still be addressed to substantially boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the process.
UN Refugee Agency officials auditing the Home Office's procedures for examining asylum applications report that "there has been some improvement on key indicators of decision quality" but note on-going problems in the government's interviewing and claims determination process affecting both positive and negative decisions.
"We believe that a more efficient and effective asylum claims determination process would result in a cost savings for the UK taxpayer, while people claiming asylum would not have to wait through a drawn-out first instance process," said Bemma Donkoh, UNHCR representative to the United Kingdom.
UNHCR reports that measures to improve refugee status determination procedures and expedite key areas of the first instance claims process, which were highlighted in the agency's previous two reports, have still not been satisfactorily addressed.
"Our ongoing audit continues to indicate areas noted previously that the Home Office can improve upon, and most recommendations covered in UNHCR's second report remain current and valid," UNHCR's Donkoh declared.
The latest UNHCR study focussed on assessing the quality of asylum interviews. It found that most Home Office caseworkers do review applicants' files prior to interviews, but their level of preparation was often insufficient and they undertook little prior research.
"UNHCR's view is that where interviews are not properly prepared they are less effective," Donkoh said. "In situations such as this, caseworkers are less likely to be focussed on the material facts of a claim and to identify all salient points, such as apparent inconsistencies."
Refugee agency workers operating at the Home Office's main centres in Croydon and Liverpool also found that while some interviews were undertaken in a professional manner, a significant number of interviews were observed in which a poor interview climate was created. Gender sensitive issues such as rape, sexual assault, forced marriage or domestic violence were often not being handled by interviewers and interpreters of the relevant gender.
"Gender-sensitive interviewing and interpreting should be automatic and introduced with immediate effect," UNHCR reports.
While some interviews were appropriately focussed, a lack of focus was one of the main weaknesses in nearly half the interviews observed by UNHCR's auditors. The UN also observed that interpreters were frequently ill-managed by the Home Office interviewer, and frequently engaged in exchanges with people seeking asylum that were not translated.
Claims by people seeking asylum in the UK last year were at their lowest level since 1993. UNHCR believes that falling numbers of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide gives governments more leeway to work on improving the efficiency of asylum systems. States also need to ensure that countries in Africa and South Asia, which shelter the vast majority of the world's dispossessed, receive proper support to care for their refugee populations.
The UN report on the Home Office's asylum claims determination is the third such study the refugee agency has produced. UNHCR began monitoring the first instance asylum process beginning in mid-2004 at the invitation of the Home Secretary to help the government enhance refugee status determination procedures.
Full Report, PDF
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