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Home Affairs signs deal with UN refugee agency to deal with asylum seekers backlog

Source: News24, 28/01/2022


• As of the 2019/20 financial year, the Refugee Appeal Authority
of SA says the backlog stood at more than 153 000.
• The new deal with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees will see around R147 million given to RAASA and technical
support to eliminate this backlog.
• The number of people now who must be cleared via this backlog
is 163 000.
The Department of Home Affairs has signed an agreement with the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR ) to eliminate delays
and a backlog in decisions for asylum seekers.
Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi said: `I am happy that the
UNHCR is partnering with the government and people of South Africa in
eliminating the backlog in the asylum seeker system.
`The start of this backlog coincided with the year 2008 when there was
a global financial crisis. Up until then, the department was able to
clear asylum applications which it was receiving each year from 1998,
the year in which the Refugee Act of South Africa was enacted.`
As of the 2019/20 financial year, the Refugee Appeal Authority of SA
(RAASA), an independent statutory administrative tribunal tasked with
ensuring that appeal cases are dealt with efficiently, said the
backlog stood at more than 153 000. The Auditor-General said, if
nothing changed, it would take 68 years to clear the backlog, without
taking new cases.
`The partnership we are launching brings in financial and technical
support to help RAASA eliminate the backlog and establish a robust
asylum appeals management programme going into the future. Over the
next four years, the UNHCR will make available US$9.6 million or
around R147 million to RAASA and technical support to eliminate this
backlog,” Motsoaledi said.
Motsoaledi said the agreement would see the UNHCR pay for 36 new
members of Raasa, including their training and equipment. The number
of people now who must be cleared via this backlogs is 163 000.
Currently in Cape Town, thousands of refugees are displaced after they
fled their homes due to xenophobia fears. They have been relocated to
two temporary sites - one in Bellville Paint City and the others at
Wingfield Military site in Goodwood.
Parliament`s home affairs portfolio committee has since intervened to
either repatriate people back to their home countries or to
reintegrate the refugees back into their communities.
The committee had set March 15 as the deadline for the UNHCR, the City
and the Department of Home Affairs together to come up with a plan for
the former Greenmarket Square refugees.
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