The Office of the Ombudsman and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) made a joint appeal today to all government authorities to give impetus to refugee reception and integration schemes, with a reminder that Spain must comply with the commitments made in the sphere of international protection.
In the context of the current refugee crisis and the binding commitments undertaken in the frame of the European Commission’s Agenda on Migration, the Office of the Ombudsman and the UNHCR made this appeal at the opening ceremony of the one-day conference “La acogida e integración de refugiados en España” (Refugee reception and integration in Spain) before representatives of the central, regional and local governments, specialised institutions and NGOs.
The Ombudsman, Soledad Becerril; the UNHCR representative in Spain, Francesca Friz-Prguda; and the honorary chairman of the Spanish Committee of the UNHCR, Antonio Garrigues, were responsible for inaugurating this gathering, the aim of which is to promote joint action by all the government authorities and roll out a framework for working together that makes it possible to reinforce and speed up schemes for refugee reception and integration in Spain.
The First Assistant Ombudsman, Francisco Fernández Marugán, chaired a debate on “Forced displacement, mixed migration flows, impact and opportunities” with the participation of the regional UNHCR representative for southern Europe, Stéphane Jaquemet; the coordinator of the Resettlement Programme at the European Commission Asylum Unit, Esther Pozo; the director general of the Canadian Government Refugee Program, Sarita Bhatla; and Rafael Puyol, professor of Human Geography and honorary vice-chancellor of the Complutense University of Madrid.
Taskforce meetings will be held in due course with all the authorities “to review and assess reception procedures and the difficulties that may exist for resettling refugees”, the Ombudsman indicated.
After stating that consolidated democracies should “work on reception and resettlement schemes and on facilitating requests for asylum”, Soledad Becerril called for an EU-wide common asylum policy, to avoid “bureaucracy and different criteria in procedures and time schedules from turning requests into labyrinths for applicants and civil servants alike”.
She went on to say that the Office of the Ombudsman has asked central and autonomous regional governments to speed up asylum request processing, inform applicants of their rights and help them achieve their integration in all necessary aspects, and pointed out that “coordination with town councils and NGOs is fundamental”.
For her part, the UNHCR representative in Spain, Francesca Friz-Prguda, pointed out that “although Spain has a supportive society with the ingredients necessary to enable it to become a model reception and protection country, its contribution so far has been very limited, accounting for little more than 1 per cent of all asylum applications filed in the European Union”.
The representative also stressed the need for adequate communication and coordination mechanisms to be put in place and for the efforts made in this process by autonomous regions, municipalities, universities, NGOs, public and private institutions, trade unions and political groups to be taken into account. “Spain now has a magnificent opportunity to collaborate and to build, to give the refugees options for the future”.
Further information on action taken by the Office of the Ombudsman and additional documents.
