The Diplomat
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has committed to collaborate with the Ministry of the Interior in the procedures for the recognition of international protection cases.
According to the 2009 law regulating the right to asylum and the Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the Ministry of the Interior is responsible for procedures on asylum, refuge, statelessness and protection of displaced persons, with a special focus on the investigation, processing and resolution of international protection procedures leading to the recognition of refugee status. The work is carried out through the Directorate General for Domestic Policy, to which the Subdirectorate General for International Protection and the Asylum and Refugee Office (OAR) report.
In addition, one of UNHCR’s functions is to promote agreements with governments for the implementation of measures to improve the situation of refugees, in accordance with the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 New York Protocol on the Status of Refugees, both ratified by Spain in July 1978. In addition, the aforementioned Spanish law of 2009 attributes to this UN agency a relevant role in the procedure for the recognition of international protection.
For all these reasons, and in application of the Framework Cooperation Agreement between Spain and UNHCR, signed in Geneva on December 9, 2002, the Undersecretary of the Interior, Isabel Goicoechea, and the UNHCR representative in Spain, Sophie Muller, signed last December 15 in Madrid an international agreement guaranteeing the agency’s participation in the procedure for the recognition of international protection. The agreement, published in mid-January in the Official State Gazette (BOE), came into force on the same day it was signed.
To carry out this function, the UNHCR Office in Spain will have five jobs specialized in international protection, who will perform their work as UNHCR staff, and the Ministry of the Interior undertakes to finance the agency’s participation in the procedure for the recognition of international protection by providing an amount of 290,850 euros for the 2022 fiscal year.
