Special charter flights to take failed asylum-seekers home have increased in frequency, and Iraqis are being returned to parts of the country which are still unsafe, in contravention of UNHCR guidelines for the handling of Iraqi asylum applications, it says.
The deportations are handled by Frontex, a Warsaw-based agency set up to coordinate operations between European Union (EU) member states in the field of border security, and their planes can carry returnees from several different countries. The most recent (on 22 September) had failed asylum applicants from Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands and the UK.
One of the UNHCR's complaints is that the information provided by those countries is usually sketchy, varies from country to country and is given only very late in the process. In the case of last week's flight, Sweden told the UNHCR the names and dates of birth of those being sent home, but not their destinations. The UK provided details of where its rejected claimants were going but not their identities.
No country told the UNHCR how many of the passengers being put on board the plane were going home voluntarily, and how many were being deported against their will, but reports from Baghdad say police had to be called to escort some of them off the plane.
A spokesperson for the UNHCR, Sybella Wilkes, called for states sending home asylum-seekers to be more transparent. "We are aware when a flight is leaving," she told IRIN, "but we don't know until the last minute who is on board or which countries they are coming from." Full story: IRIN, London, 29 September 2010 (IRIN)