THE AFRICAN COURIER. Reporting Africa and its Diaspora! The African Courier is an international magazine published in Germany to report on Africa and the Diaspora African experience. The first issue of the bimonthly magazine appeared on the newsstands on 15 February 1998. The African Courier is a communication forum for European-African political, economic and cultural exchanges, and a voice for Africa in Europe.
The duration of asylum proceedings in Germany increased again last year, the Federal Ministry of the Interior has reported.
In 2022, it took an average of 7.6 months for a decision to be made by the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, one month longer than in 2021, according to a response by the Ministry to a question from the Left Party.
According to the report, the procedures for people from Nigeria took particularly long, namely more than a year. The processing time for asylum applicants from Somalia and Ghana was also above average, at around eleven months each.
People from Afghanistan only receive a decision after an average of 9.1 months. This is unacceptable, especially since they are almost always recognised as needing protection in the end, explained Clara Bünger, the Left Party’s spokesperson on refugee policy.
Asylum applications of persons from Turkey, Georgia, Serbia, Morocco, Tunisia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, among others, were processed in half a year.
There were almost 218,000 initial applications for asylum last year. This corresponds to an increase of around 47 per cent. The main countries of origin of those seeking protection were Syria and Afghanistan. The more than one million war refugees from Ukraine did not have to go through the regular asylum procedure, but were granted protection status via the EU directive activated for this purpose for the first time.
Felix Dappah
