Invaluable resource by European Council on Refugees and Exiles' Asylum Information Database gets annual update
The latest annual update of the Asylum Information Database's (AIDA) comprehensive report on the asylum system in the UK was published last week.
You can download the 119-page report here.
AIDA is a project coordinated by the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE). It produces reports on over 20 European countries that are an invaluable resource for anyone looking for detailed and up-to-date information about a country's asylum system. All of AIDA's reports can be accessed from here.
The new UK report provides a summary of developments in asylum in 2023, as well as providing an extensive and extremely useful overview of asylum procedure in the UK, reception conditions for asylum seekers, the detention of asylum seekers, and the content of international protection.
This year's update was prepared by Sonia Lenegan, formerly of ILPA and Rainbow Migration and currently the editor of Colin Yeo's Free Movement website. It builds on AIDA's original report authored by Gina Clayton and past updates by Judith Dennis and Jon Featonby of the Refugee Council.
Information in the updated report is up to date as of 31 December 2023, though some more recent developments are covered, right up to last week's passing of the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024 in Parliament.
As the report notes, 84,425 people applied for asylum in the UK in 2023 and 29,437 people arrived by small boat after crossing the Channel. The backlog of asylum claims awaiting an initial decision went down and the number of decisions made by the Home Office went up. Last year also saw the passing of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, although much of it is not yet in force, including the Home Secretary's duty to remove any asylum seeker considered to have entered the UK unlawfully.
Accompanying AIDA's report is a separate 16-page annex, which can be downloaded here, that looks at developments in the UK's visa schemes for Ukrainian nationals following the Russian invasion in 2022.
Meanwhile, Amnesty International's annual report on human rights in the world was released last week and the entry on the UK noted that the Government continued to pursue a policy agenda that breached its international human rights commitments and curtailed human rights protections, particularly with regard to people seeking asylum and other migrants. Amnesty added that hostile government rhetoric against migrants increased throughout 2023.