Migri postpones asylum decisions for Afghans

The Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) has postponed making decisions on asylum applications made by Afghan refugees and decided to re-evaluate its policy for Afghan asylum seekers following a new policy issued by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), reported the national broadcaster Yle.

“The UNHCR has released a new policy on Afghanistan. We are working through it at the moment and will change our policy if needed. In the meantime, we will not be making decisions on asylum applications from Afghan applicants. We will release more details as soon as we have finished analysing the material,” the Yle quoted a tweet of Migri as saying.

Earlier, the interior ministry said it will carry out an independent study on Migri’s assessment of different war-torn regions.

On August 29, the Finland Chapter of Amnesty International urged the Finnish authorities to refrain from deporting rejected Afghan asylum seekers.

Amnesty International recently demanded that Finland end all deportations to Afghanistan, saying that the security situation there has deteriorated considerably.

Referring to UN statistics, the Amnesty International said more than 1,600 people were killed and another 3,500 injured in escalating violence in Afghanistan during the first six months of this year.

It also mentioned that France and Italy were not deporting people to Afghanistan for this reason, and that Finland should also put an end to such repatriations.

Meanwhile, the Finnish police in a Twit have confirmed that it too have suspended repatriations to Afghanistan, said the Yle report.