The Diplomat in Spain

Representatives of NGOs before the Congress./ Photo: TD

Eduardo González. 21/06/2016

Around fifteen prestigious non-governmental organizations gathered yesterday in front of the Congress of Deputies on the occasion of the celebration of the World Refugee Day.

During the event, the NGOs (ACCEM, Ayuda en Acción, CEAR, Entreculturas, Justicia y Paz, Médicos del Mundo, Movimiento por la Paz, Intermón Oxfam, Red Acoge and Save the Children, among others) presented a programme including eleven “urgent and feasible” measures to guarantee the compliance of Spain’s international obligations as regards asylum and refuge.

These measures “should have been set in motion by now, even with an interim government”, according to the secretary general of the Spanish Committee to Help Refugees (CEAR in its Spanish acronym), Estrella Galán. In any case, the objective of NGOs is to start applying them “during the first one hundred days of the new Government”, since these are “urgent measures facing an unbearable reality”.

NGOs claim the compliance of Spain’s commitment to relocate and resettle 17,680 refugees in two years; the passing of the Regulations of Asylum, “which have been delayed throughout seven years”; meeting the deadline of six months for the resolution of asylum applications, guaranteeing human rights in the southern border and repealing the section of the Law on Security that provides legal care for “on-the-spot deportations”. 

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They plan to meet “all” the parties after 26-J to see “where they stand” 

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NGOs also demand the improvement of the Spanish reception system and the end of “the reasons leading to emigration”. At a European level, they claim the reform of the current Common European Asylum System and that those agreements with third countries do not interfere with human rights.

According to Galán, NGOs plan to meet with “all the parties” after the election of 26 June to transmit these eleven proposals to them, since “the right of asylum is not a matter of parties or ideologies, it is an international responsibility”. “We will see where they stand and, once the Government is formed, there will be new meetings to see how they honour their commitments”, she warned.