UNHCR stands with the Eritrean refugees in Denmark! It exposes the filmsy and inaccurate report of the Danish Immigration Service (DIS)! It is now upto the Eritrean refugees themselves to stand up together and to express their views. I wish them all success on Friday 19 - 2014. Stand united for justice. Sad to say the actions (inactions) of some Eritrean refugees are in support of the Danish Immigration Service. They want to batter their bread on both sides! Just one quote: The report contains references to “a UN agency” in Asmara, and meeting notes with a “UNAgency” are included in pp. 31-33 of the Annex to the report. For the sake of clarity and toavoid any confusion amongst readers of the FFM report, UNHCR wishes to emphasize that the information ascribed to a “UN Agency” is not information provided by UNHCR (despitethe fact that the notes of the meeting with a “UN Agency” contain references to “UNHCRregistered” refugees in Shire). UNHCR is not the (Asmara-based) “UN Agency” referred tothroughout the report. 1435206_0001.pngFact Finding Mission Report of the Danish Immigration Service,“Eritrea – Drivers and Root Causes of Emigration, National Service and thePossibility of Return. Country of Origin Information for Use in the AsylumDetermination Process”,UNHCR’s perspective1. In November 2014 the Danish Immigration Service (DIS) published a fact finding mission(FFM) report on its website, entitled“Eritrea – Drivers and Root Causes of Emigration,National Service and the Possibility of Return. Country of Origin Information for Use in theAsylum Determination Process”(hereafter: “the report”). 1.The report summarizesinformation gathered by the FFM delegation in Ethiopia (20-27 August 2014), London(September 2014) and Eritrea (1-17 October 2014). 2. UNHCR welcomes efforts by State asylum services and others to ensure that States and otherstakeholders in asylum procedures have access to high quality country-of-origin information(COI). Accurate, reliable COI that is also detailed and balanced is a precondition for high-quality decision-making on applications for international protection. In addition, quality COI,available and accessible to all decision-makers, legal aid providers and others, has thepotential to contribute to more harmonized adjudication of asylum claims. 3. Against this background, UNHCR welcomes the decision of DIS to produce a COI report inEnglish on Eritrea, in light of the fact that asylum-seekers from Eritrea are amongst the topnationalities of asylum-seekers in Europe and elsewhere.2UNHCR does, however, have anumber of concerns as regards the methodology used by DIS in the report. These concernsare outlined below. 4. The report contains references to “a UN agency” in Asmara, and meeting notes with a “UNAgency” are included in pp. 31-33 of the Annex to the report. For the sake of clarity and toavoid any confusion amongst readers of the FFM report, UNHCR wishes to emphasize that the information ascribed to a “UN Agency” is not information provided by UNHCR (despitethe fact that the notes of the meeting with a “UN Agency” contain references to “UNHCRregistered” refugees in Shire). UNHCR is not the (Asmara-based) “UN Agency” referred tothroughout the report. 5. At the same time, notes of meetings between UNHCR in Addis Ababa and in Shire, Ethiopia,are contained in the Annex of the report (pp. 69-73). However, in the main text of the report(pp. 1-20 pages), the information provided by UNHCR in Addis Ababa is not used or referredto, and there is only one general reference to UNHCR Shire as a source of information. 6. InUNHCR’s view, the main text of the report (pp. 1-20) could have benefited from inclusion ofUNHCR’s Shire’s description of the procedures for Eritrean arrivals. This information ishowever not referred to in the report. Instead, the report relies on speculative statements of12Danish Immigration Service,Eritrea – Drivers and Root Causes of Emigration, National Service and the Possibility of Return Country ofOrigin Information for Use in the Asylum Determination Process Report,5/2014 ENG, November 2014,nyidanmark.dk/NR/rdonlyres/B28905F5-5C3F-409B-8A22-0DF0DACBDAEF/0/EritreareportEndeligversion.pdf.See e.g. UNHCR,Sharp increase in number of Eritrean refugees and asylum-seekers in Europe, Ethiopia and Sudan,14 November 2014,unhcr.org/5465fea1381.html.1/3 1435206_0002.pnganother interlocutor as regards nationality identification of UNHCR registered refugees inShire.36. The main text of the report (pp. 1-20) makes frequent use of brief summaries of informationprovided by informants. Direct quotes are used only rarely. Moreover, on numerous occasionsin the report, viewpoints of different interlocutors are grouped together in one summaryparagraph. As a result, actual statements of, and nuances provided by, interlocutors are notreflected in the 20-page report. 7. A comparison between the main text of the report and the records of the meeting notes (whichall interlocutors had an opportunity to review and clear; see Methodology Section 1.2)demonstrates that information provided by interlocutors has often been used selectively in thereport. In other instances, the report ascribes statements to interlocutors that cannot, however,be traced to these interlocutors’ statements as reviewed and cleared by them and contained inthe annexed meeting notes. The following examples refer:i. The report includes the following sentence (or variations of it), attributed toProf. Kibreab, no less than three times:“It is now possible for evaders anddeserters who have left Eritrea illegally to return if they pay the two percenttax and sign the apology letter at an Eritrean embassy. Kibreab was aware ofa few deserters from the National Service who have visited Eritrea and safelyleft the country again.”However, the record of the conversation with Prof.Kibreab provided in the annex of the Danish report show that Prof. Kibreabfollowed this sentence with the qualification:“ These are invariably peoplewho have been naturalized in their countries of asylum.”This qualification isnot included in the main text of the report on any of the three occasions thatProf. Kibreab’s statement is quoted. ii. In another example (page 15), “International Organisation (B)” is said to haveemphasized that “althoughit might be possible to return by paying the twopercent tax and signing the apology letter, there is no information available onthe specific profile of persons who are able to benefit from this practice”.According to the meeting notes, “International Organisation (B)” indicatedalso that“It was deemed very unlikely that those who have a fear ofpersecution would be approaching Eritrean Embassies to acquire a passportand consequently try to re-enter the country”.This second statement whichqualifies the previous statement has, however, not been incorporated in themain text of the report. iii. In a third example, “International Organisation (B)” is said (on page 19) tohave considered that“the reasons for this shift in attitude was thegovernment’s desire to encourage Eritreans to return to Eritrea”.It should benoted, however, that this statement cannot be traced to the meeting notes. What“International Organisation (B)” did consider (according to the meeting noteand as referenced on page 19 of the report) is that“the Eritrean government isincreasingly realizing that the exodus of mainly young men and women has Footnote .(3)The notes of the meeting with the “UN Agency” in Asmara on page 31 indicate that “It was acknowledged by a UN agency thatthere is apossibilitythatmaybeone out of ten UNHCR registered refugees in the Shire camps in northern Ethiopiacouldbe from other nationalities,including Somalis, Sudanese or any other tribes with similar features. (…) ”. [Emphasis added].2/3 reached a scale that threatens the development of Eritrea, as well as that thegovernment is in the process of leaving its position of isolation and graduallyopening up to the international community”. iv.On pp. 19-20, the report states: “Many of the sources consulted in Eritrea(Western embassies A, B, E; a Western embassy based in Khartoum (met inAsmara); a UN agency; an International organization (A); a regional NGObased in Asmara; a well-known Eritrean intellectual) as well as a Westernembassy (F) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, stated that most of the available reportson the human rights situation in Eritrea do not reflect the recent changes inEritrea.According to these sources, such reports should therefore not beconsidered representative of an accurate image of the current situation inEritrea regarding issues such as National Service, illegal exit and the generalhuman rights situation.”This is the closing statement of the 20-page reportand thus carries considerable weight. However, the part of the above statementreflected here in italics, cannot be traced back to any of the meeting notes withthe interlocutors listed at the start of the quoted paragraph. 8.The report does not include any reflections on the reliability of specific sources ofinformation. No information is provided in the report about the regulatory framework for themedia, NGOs, research institutes and other actors in Eritrea, nor does the report contain anassessment of the impact of these regulatory frameworks on the independence of certainsources and the reliability of information provided by these sources.UNHCRDecember 2014 ft.dk/samling/20141/almdel/uui/bilag/41/1435206/index.htm
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 13:26:03 +0000
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