Is South Africa home to more than a million asylum-seekers? The numbers don`t add up

Source: Africacheck, 03/09/2016

A recent report published by the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees claims that there are more than a million asylum seekers in
South Africa, and that the country is home to the highest number of
unresolved asylum cases in the world. But the figure is based on a
flawed reading of the available data.


With more than 3.2 million refugees and asylum seekers displaced in
2015 alone, is it possible that South Africa is home to the highest
number of asylum seekers in the world?


When Africa Check was asked to investigate similar claims back in
2013, it found that asylum seeker data supplied by both the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and South Africa`s
Department of Home Affairs was "flawed, inaccurate, and sharply
contradictory" – and that statements made to South African media, that
the country had received the "highest number of asylum applications
worldwide" – were unproven.


Despite this, international media reports continue to list South
Africa as being the country with "the most asylum seekers awaiting
determination".


In June 2016 the UNHCR published a new report on global trends in
forced displacement, based on 2015 data. According to the report, by
the end of 2015 the number of asylum claims in South Africa had risen
to 1,096,063 – a rather startling figure considering that, in the
previous reporting period (2014), South Africa had listed only 463,900
pending asylum claims.


The UNHCR report was quickly picked up by local media, with headlines
stating that there were "1 million asylum-seekers" in South Africa.
The UNHCR report, however, explained that the increase was not due to
an actual spike in numbers of people but rather due to a "change in
methodology due to the historical under-reporting [by South African
officials] of this population". The report added that just 62,200 new
applications for asylum had been made in South Africa in 2015.


But is the total number of asylum seekers and unresolved claims
reported by the UNHCR accurate?


The asylum process
Legally speaking, a refugee in South Africa is defined as a person who
has fled their "place of habitual residence" owing to a well-founded
fear of persecution for reasons of race, tribe, religion, nationality,
political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.


This includes people who are forced to flee their country of origin as
a result of "external aggression, occupation, foreign domination" or
events that "seriously" disrupt public order. An asylum seeker is a
person who is seeking recognition as a refugee and whose status has
yet to be determined.


Dependents of such a person also fall under the definition. In order
to become a refugee and avail oneself of particular protections –
including the right to stay – a person must lodge a claim for asylum
with the South African government.


This initiates a process by which the asylum seeker can motivate to
the government that he/she fulfills the legal criteria and should be
granted refugee status. This application is then adjudicated and,
depending on the outcome, can be appealed or later reviewed if
unsatisfactory.


Statistics recorded in a `poor manner`
Statistical adjustment or not, the UNHCR report`s claim that, by the
end of 2015, there were 1,096,063 outstanding decisions on asylum
status in South Africa would represent approximately a third of all
open asylum claims worldwide.


But the report also carries an additional note suggesting that the
high figure is due to the South African legal framework for asylum
applications having no provision for the withdrawal of asylum
applications once lodged.


Kaajal Ramjathan-Keogh of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC)
pointed out that the department of home affairs "has for many years
recorded the statistics in a poor manner, which did not remove persons
from the system and continued to count even persons who had moved out
of the asylum system."


The department of home affairs was asked to comment but had not
responded by the time of publication.


What does the data say?
Both the UNHCR and the department of home affairs have made limited
data available on the number of asylum seekers in the country. In the
case of the government, the most recent data comes via a presentation
to the portfolio committee on home affairs summarizing the trends in
asylum seekers between 2006 and 2015.


According to the presentation, 1,082,669 asylum cases were lodged
during that period. For South Africa to have over a million pending
asylum decisions by the end of 2015 would require the government to
have failed in nearly all asylum applications lodged in the last
decade.


Is this plausible?

According to the same presentation, 62,159 asylum applications were
lodged in 2015. Of these, 2,499 were approved for refugee status while
58,141 were denied, suggesting that all the applications in the 2015
period were dealt with.


However, 14,093 were appealed, and of these 12,361 remained open into
2016. This suggests that of the 62,159 cases opened in 2015,
approximately 23% remained open. This is a significantly lower rate
than what would be required to produce a backlog of one million cases
over 10 years, assuming the government`s ability to close cases
remained more or less constant.


UNHCR data obtained from its population statistics database on the
number of annual asylum applications matches the data in the
presentation to the portfolio committee up to 2011, but diverges
slightly from 2012 on-wards. By the end of 2014, according to the
UNHCR database, South Africa had 369,393 pending cases. Adding in the
2015 backlog of still-open claims from government data (12,361), South
Africa would have at most 381,754 pending claims at the end of
2015.


According to both sets of data, then, South Africa may well have
received over a million applications for asylum between 2006 and 2014,
but this is a different claim to saying that South Africa currently
has a million enclosed asylum applications (or individual applicants).



Conclusion: data suggests less than 400,000 pending asylum applications
Setting aside the pending cases figure of 1,096,063 for the moment and
using instead the largest possible backlog estimated earlier
(381,754), South Africa would still have the second-highest number of
currently-open asylum cases worldwide, just less than Germany
(420,625).


It is worth noting, however, that there are important distinctions to
be made between having the "largest number of unresolved applications
in 2015" and having "the largest number of applications in 2015". New
asylum applications received in South Africa in 2015 totaled
New asylum applications received in South Africa in 2015 totaled
62,159. In the same period, Germany reported that it received
approximately 1.1 million asylum seekers (although the actual number
of processed applications was much lower). The same UNHCR report
states that, in 2015, South Africa was only the tenth-largest
recipient of asylum seekers.


Ramjathan-Keogh of SALC explains that South Africa`s high number is
the result of "slow and ineffective asylum processing which keeps
people in asylum limbo for many years; instead of processing them so
that applicants are either granted or refused asylum", rather than
because the country is receiving more asylum seekers than anywhere
else in the world.


South Africa, therefore, did have the second-largest multi-year
backlog of unsettled asylum cases in the world in 2015, but the number
of pending cases is not as high as 1,096,063.