The existing Asylum Law of the Republic of Serbia was adopted in 2008 as one of the conditions for signing the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union. The adopted law was not bad, as all the actors of the system evaluated it at the time. On the other hand, the situation at that time was not bad either - in 2008, only 77 expressed intentions for asylum were recorded in Serbia. There was one center for the accommodation of asylum seekers in Banja Koviljača, which had capacities even larger than necessary, the procedure for obtaining asylum functioned according to the law... According to Miroslava Jelačić, a legal analyst of the non-governmental organization 484, everything worked at that time because the migration flow at that time was, colloquially speaking, much simpler.
The situation is becoming more complicated and complex since 2010. By the end of this year, 2014, the competent authorities will have over 7000 expressed intentions, which is a hundred times more than six years ago. The law, or the asylum system, on the other hand, fails to respond and adapt to new changes and new needs.
It is precisely these drastic changes in the characteristics of the migration flow and the inflexibility of the system that are the reasons why changes in the law have begun to be considered. "We should not forget the process of harmonizing domestic legislation with the legislation of the European Union," says Miroslava Jelačić. The third motive for thinking about changes to the existing law is the legal gaps and inconsistencies detected in the text of the law itself, but also in practice.
Group 484 and the Belgrade Center for Human Rights therefore wrote the document "Improving the Asylum Law" in which proposals for changes to the existing law were presented. That proposal is a kind of picture of the shortcomings of the current system. The document was presented at the conference "The Asylum and Migration System: Two Stories" held on September 26 in Belgrade.
...and Miroslava Jelačić
"In working on this document, we first of all started from the relevant provisions of international law on the protection of human rights because they indirectly provide protection to asylum seekers and, on the other hand, significantly limit the actions of the state primarily through the interpretation of their supervisory bodies." We relied heavily on the provisions of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, as well as on the conclusions of the UNHCR Executive Committee. The European framework is the starting point, but the specificities of the Republic of Serbia were also taken into account, primarily the constitutional and legal order of the RS, the institutional and administrative capacities that the RS has at its disposal, and the economic and social factors that significantly influence the shaping of the law," Miroslava said. Jelačić.
Lena Petrović, legal advisor of the Belgrade Center for Human Rights, also spoke about the document.
SUGGESTIONS: Certain terms in the current law should be defined more precisely. The document introduced some new institutes such as the humanitarian refuge. The very term "asylum seeker" would be the person who expressed the intention to seek asylum, not the person who submitted the application.
The right to asylum has been expanded so that it now includes both refuge and subsidiary protection. Higher standards were prescribed in the principles of the law, primarily the principle of gender sensitivity, which until now was defined as the principle of gender equality.
Certain deadlines for taking official actions in the asylum procedure (such as the deadline for making a first-instance decision and the deadline for filing legal remedies) should be specified and clearly prescribed. This would shorten the procedure.
The provisions governing decision-making in the procedure and the reasons for making those decisions have been specified, considering that the current asylum law repeats the reasons for denial of asylum and rejection. In order to rationalize the procedure, a shortened procedure should be introduced, which would be carried out without holding an oral hearing and in case of inadmissible or obviously unfounded requests.
"We specially regulated the procedure at the border and in the transit zone of the airport, since that procedure was not regulated by law until now. Belgrade Airport is one of the few airports in Europe where such a small number of people are recognized as asylum seekers," said Lena Petrović. "We redefined the 'safe third country' institute." That would be a country that fulfills all the previous criteria with the new criterion that a safe third country is one where an asylum seeker can actually get asylum and that accepts to decide on a specific request after the competent authorities of Serbia declare themselves incompetent. We have provided certain criteria for determining the list of safe third countries and safe countries of origin. Above all, those criteria should be clear and transparent. After all, we have introduced a legal obligation to review those lists every six months and an extraordinary review if the situation in the countries on the list changes," said Lena Petrović.
For the period after the adoption of the asylum request, the amendment proposals envisage equalizing the scope and type of rights guaranteed to persons granted asylum and persons granted subsidiary protection. Also, it is foreseen that the right of residence is determined by the decision approving the request for asylum, so as not to create doubts about the exercise of the rights of the person who has been granted the right to asylum. The process of naturalization of refugees has also been facilitated. At the end of the presentation, Lena Petrović noted that these are only the most important of the proposals contained in the document "Improving the Asylum Law".
"We provide our proposals as a starting point for further discussion, without pretending to call this document a preliminary draft or a model of the asylum law." Our idea is that it should be the starting point for building a consensus. It is particularly important that we strived to reach a solution that would, to a certain extent, respect opposing opinions about the state's asylum system and those who primarily relate their actions to preserving the rights of asylum seekers. In the end, our appeal is that in the further work on the new law, we should try to come up with solutions that are implementable in practice, so that it does not happen that some of them remain just letters on paper", said Miroslava Jelačić at the end of her presentation.
