For the 16th consecutive year, Forum réfugiés-Cosi published its Annual Report on Asylum on June 20th, which is a unique resource of its kind.
It describes and analyzes the reception and protection conditions observable in France and Europe, while also providing an overview of the geopolitical situation in certain countries of origin of asylum seekers.
World Refugee Day is an opportunity to recall the imperative of protection that comes from the international commitments of France, the European Union, and its member states, as forced population displacements fleeing war and persecution reach a record level.
For the first time, at the end of 2015, the threshold of 60 million displaced persons was crossed. 6 million in just that year.
86% of refugees are located in poor countries close to the conflict zone. Turkey hosts the most (3.1M), and in percentage of population, it is Lebanon: 18% are refugees.
It had been more than a quarter of a century (since 1989) since France recorded such a number of asylum requests, with 74,468 first-time applications in 2015, a year which saw Europe requested by 1.3 million applicants.
Nevertheless, our country is relatively little affected by the current “refugee crisis” – which is primarily a crisis of refugee management – compared to other European countries: when comparing the number of applicants to the national population, France ranks fifteenth in Europe.
This increase in the number of protection requests in France should therefore not destabilize an asylum system that the 2015 reform aims to improve.
The year 2015 was also marked by a significant increase in the number of protection decisions (19,500 in 2015, compared to less than 10,000 in 2012, nearly doubling).
However, this trend will continue in the coming years with the arrival of asylum seekers “relocated” from Greece and Italy or “reinstalled” from first reception countries such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.
Concerns mainly focus on the evolution of the asylum policies of the European Union and its member states.
