By IPS Correspondents
ROME, Mar 22 2005 (IPS)

Refugees seeking asylum in Italy often see their rights denied, and are prevented fair access to asylum procedures, the Italian human rights organisation International Consortium of Solidarity (ICS) said in a report Tuesday.

The 100-page report ‘Refugees in Italy: Protection Denied’ – the first comprehensive report on refugees in Italy – paints a bleak picture and points to a confusing situation. It shows among other things significant differences between figures issued by the government and those provided by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working with asylum seekers.

The report written with the help of dozens of organisations and local bodies working with refugees says many foreigners are unfairly turned back at the border without being given a chance to apply for asylum.

Asylum rights are formally recognised by the Italian constitution even if there is no comprehensive law on asylum, but rights are made impracticable by a maze of bureaucratic hurdles, poor legal assistance, scarcity of competent and impartial translators and poor funding.

The very incompleteness of official data epitomises the situation of refugees in Italy and results in inadequate funding and poor assistance, ICS vice-president Gianfranco Schiavoni said at the launch of the report Tuesday.

“This report is a punch in the stomach,” said Luigi Ciotti, one of Italy’s most famous anti-mafia priests following the launch of the report. “In our country immigrants tend to be compared to criminals,” he said, urging a radical change of attitude.

“From a legal point of view, leaving refugees alone and without assistance is like committing a crime,” said Emeka Victor Okeadu, president of the Council of Immigrants at the Rome city council. “Politicians tend to present immigration as a security problem and not as a human rights problem.”

Italy is the only country in the European Union (EU) lacking a comprehensive law on asylum. After a failed attempt by the previous government to pass new legislation in 2001, the Italian parliament is again preparing to discuss a law on asylum rights.

But Schiavoni said the draft under discussion is “mediocre”, and warned that some 50 amendments presented by members of the centre-right majority coalition risked turning the draft into an “imprecise” and “improbable” law.

The ICS report comes amid fresh controversy over treatment of scores of foreigners from African and Asian countries who land illegally in Italy seeking a better life or fleeing war at home. Recent accords with Libya have resulted in dozens of people of various nationalities being sent there as they are picked up in Italy.

Many of these migrants were not allowed to request refugee status, said Christopher Hein from the Italian Council for Refugees. Others were held at special centres where even United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) representatives had been barred entry, he said.

Hein said his organisation would file an appeal to the European Court for Human Rights in Strasbourg this week to stop Italy sending more people to Libya. This procedure, which Hein says puts lives at risk, has been repeatedly attacked by Amnesty International.

“Italy is openly violating domestic and international laws on access to requesting asylum. To send people back to countries where respect of human rights is very low, as in Libya, is not a gesture worthy of a civilised country,” said Schiavone.

The report offers alarming data. It says that in 2003, 25,795 people requested asylum or were waiting for their case to be heard. But Home Ministry data for the same year put the number of holders of permits to stay pending an asylum request at 10,550.

Italy’s inability to provide precise figures on the number and state of refugees on its soil led the EU to cut refugee funds by 69.05 percent in 2004 over the previous year. The Italian budget for the ‘System of Protection of Asylum Seekers’ meets only 6.76 percent of the need.

In 2003, the report says, the Central Commission for the Recognition of Refugee Status examined 11,319 asylum requests. It upheld 555 and rejected 9,878. The percentage of requests upheld decreased sharply from 15.8 percent in 2001 to 4.9 percent in 2003.

The Commission comprises several members, but some 30.4 percent of hearings are attended by just one member and 43.5 percent by only two. “This prevents the commission from upholding a homogenous line of conduct, and the presence of only one commissioner does not protect the asylum seekers from the risk of subjective evaluation,” the report says.

The average length of a hearing that determines an applicant’s future is 15-20 minutes, including translation.. In some cases, it does not last more than five minutes.

“Obviously, it is almost impossible for the asylum seeker to explain his plea in full. The disappointment increases if we compare the length of the hearing to the waiting period to be granted the hearing (18 months on average),” the report says.

ICS said it found also that access to asylum varied wildly depending on the region or the police area where the request was made.

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