UK asylum grant drops by over a quarter: Report
The United Kingdom has granted asylum to fewer people over the past year, a new reports suggests, as activists point to the country’s unrealistic high standard of proof as a main reason for people being repeatedly turned away.
A report published on the website of the Independent newspaper on Monday showed that the number of people granted asylum in the UK had plummeted by 26 per cent in the past year while the government rejected more than half of applications for refuge.
The report cited data from the Home Office (UK interior ministry) showing that authorities had granted asylum to 4,981 people in the year to June 2018, a 26-percent decrease compared to the previous 12-month period.
The data also showed that less than a fifth (18 per cent) of applications were granted in 2017, compared with 25 per cent the year before and 39 per cent in 2014/15.
Rights activists told the Independent that a main reason for increased rate of rejected asylums is the fact that the applicants are expected to obtain “impossible” proof such as evidence documenting torture and sexual violence.
“The Home Office applies an unrealistically high standard of proof expecting applicants to obtain impossible proof – like birth certificates they may have left behind in the middle of the night when fleeing violence, or evidence documenting graphic details of sexual violence,” said Ciaran Price, the public affairs officer at Asylum Aid, a refugee rights campaigning group.
The report comes just months after former Home Secretary Amber Rudd was forced to resign over allegations her department was pursuing reduced asylum targets. The case, which became known as the Windrush scandal, showed that many from a generation of Jamaican refugees who had been admitted to Britain decades ago had been left destitute because they had failed to provide enough evidence to substantiate their refugee status.
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