Report: The Swedish Migration Agency underestimates the risks for returnees to Afghanistan

What does the Swedish Migration Agency think when they believe that Afghan citizens can return to the Afghanistan of the Taliban? To get an answer to that question, we have reviewed a number of decisions and compiled them in a new report.

Since the Taliban’s taking over Afghanistan in August 2021, many other European countries have stopped deportations to Afghanistan and instead given the asylum applicants residence permit. However, in Sweden, more than 50 % of asylum applications from male Afghan citizens are rejected, although the refugees cannot be deported.

In order to understand the motivations given by the Swedish authorities, we have reviewed 20 rejection decisions. We also studied the EUAA land report from January 2023, which present a number of risk profiles that may come into question for being granted refugee status.

We found that terms like vague, general, without deep reflections, missing details are present in all the 20 verdicts. The demands on how to prove one’s apostasy/sexuality/Westernization are extremely high, specially difficult to fulfil for persons with a short education.

EUAA stresses that the risks for an individual are amplified if the person belongs to several risk profiles. But belonging to several risk profiles is not enough for the Swedish Migration Agency, that also demands individual refugee grounds.

When one compares the decisions with the EUAA report, it is clear that the Migration Agency interprets the indications as narrowly as possible, and does not include all paragraphs in their assessments. In several cases, there is no account taken to the situation of today in Afghanistan, and no “forward-looking assessment” is done.

Read the report: How do Swedish authorities judge the risk for returnees from Sweden to Taliban’s Afghanistan 2022 - 2023?

Download the report

Authors:

Ingrid Eckerman, founder of Stoppa utvisningarna till Afghanistan! (Stop deportations to Afghanistan!)

Karin Fridell Anter, President of Stöttepelaren (The Supporting Pillar)

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