The Diplomat
In 2020, the Ministry of the Interior’s Office for Asylum and Refugees (OAR) resolved a total of 116,614 international protection cases, almost double the 62,592 resolutions of the previous year.
According to the Ministry’s report, the figure is an all-time record and confirms the trend that has been in place for the past two years. Specifically, in 2018 only 12,889 petitions were resolved.
In terms of the petitions registered, and according to the provisional data, 88,762 applications for international protection had been submitted throughout Spain by 31 December, compared to 118,446 applications registered in 2019. This is therefore the first time since 2011 that more files have been resolved than registered, a change in trend that is enabling the stock of pending applications to be reduced.
By nationality, the main countries of origin of applicants for international protection in 2020 were, in that order, Venezuela, Colombia, Honduras, Peru and Nicaragua. By place of filing, the Community of Madrid is in the lead with 33,871 applications, followed by Catalonia (9,614) and the Community of Valencia (9,060).
In addition, the Asylum and Refugee Office resolved a total of 3 154 applications for statelessness status by 30 November, the highest ever in this procedure. In 2019, 1,993 cases were resolved. As for applications, in this case with provisional data as of 31 December, 825 petitions were filed in 2020, compared with 1,691 registered in 2019.
As a result of this momentum, the OHR has managed to significantly reduce the stock of requests for statelessness status, from 4,375 files in 2018 and 4,100 in 2019 to 1,379 requests currently pending. Statelessness status is a procedure which makes it possible to identify, among applicants, persons who are not considered nationals by any State and who claim to be stateless within the meaning of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.
According to the Ministry of the Interior, these numbers of decisions have been made possible by the measures put in place to improve the functioning of the OAR. The extraordinary public employment offer launched in July 2018 by the government has enabled the office’s staff to increase fivefold, from 60 to the 291 jobs expected by the end of the process, in addition to 192 interim staff members. In addition, a new computer application is being developed, scheduled for March 2021, and improvements have been made to the statistical data of the Asylum and Refuge Office.
