These are the countries that will receive Afghan refugees – El Financiero
On Sunday, August 15, the Taliban took control of Jalalabad, the last major city besides the Afghan capital, marking the militants’ victory. Moreover, Kabul and its five million residents are yours.
Against this background, Afghan citizens want to leave their country. Various countries support refugees. These are gaps among them:
Canada
It was the first country to provide aid to Afghan citizens, even before the fall of Kabul. The nation is ready to accept 20,000 refugees trying to leave the country, or have already done so.
The refugees will include journalists, human rights activists, government officials and members of religious minorities.
Albania
At the request of the United States, the country will temporarily host hundreds of Afghans who helped American forces during the long conflict in their country, and whose lives will be in danger if they fall into the hands of the Taliban after the withdrawal of the army. foreign forces.
Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said today that the US government has asked Tirana in recent days “to assess whether it can serve as a transit country for a certain number of Afghan political immigrants, whose final destination is the United States”.
Albania, which has a population of 2.8 million, mostly Muslims, is a member of NATO.
United kingdom
The government announced that it was ready to host 20,000 Afghan refugees, within hours of discussing a special emergency of the crisis arising from the Taliban’s return to power.
Kosovo
Part of the Afghans who helped US forces in Afghanistan and whom Washington wants to remove from the country, considering that their lives would be in danger if they fall into the hands of the Taliban, will first, and temporarily, resort to Kosovo. Monday Koha Kosovar newspaper.
“The door (Kosovo) is not closed to those who were forced to leave their homes without their guilt to avoid persecution and save lives,” the newspaper quoted the head of the Balkan state, Vuza Osmani, as saying.
The President of the Balkan state indicated that it was a humanitarian operation that was launched at the request of Washington to receive these Afghans without delay.
Germany
The German government aspires to evacuate about 10 thousand people from Afghanistan, as Chancellor Angela Merkel explained at a meeting of the leadership of her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as reported by various media.
“For all those who built on progress and freedom, especially for women, these are bitter moments,” the chancellor said at that meeting, according to eyewitnesses.
The government has insisted that the “absolute priority” is to “evacuate as many people in need of protection as possible”, both citizens and local collaborators, an issue on which all efforts are focused.
Mexico
On Wednesday, Marcelo Ebrard, Minister of Foreign Relations, reported that the Mexican embassy in Iran had begun processing refugee requests from Afghans.
“With the active participation of Guillermo Puente Urdorica, Mexico’s ambassador to Iran, we have begun to process the first asylum applications of Afghan nationals, especially the women and girls who requested it,” he said on his Twitter account.
North Macedonia
Macedonian Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani announced on Tuesday that he will host hundreds of Afghans whose lives may be at risk due to the Taliban’s takeover of the country.
The 386 temporary shelters that Skopje has decided to grant so far are intended primarily for people who have worked with the US organization National Democratic Institute (NDI), activists, human rights defenders, and relatives of staff of international agencies based in Afghanistan.
Uganda
The government of Uganda will host a minimum of 2,000 Afghan refugees, the Minister of State for Aid, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, Esther Anyakon, confirmed to EFE today.”
Due to the nature of the crisis Afghanistan is going through and the logistical problems of evacuating refugees, we still cannot confirm when these people will arrive in Uganda, but we are ready to receive them at any time, Anyakon said on Tuesday.
Uganda is currently home to about 1.5 million refugees, mostly from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Somalia and Rwanda, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Switzerland
Switzerland announced today that it will host about 40 Afghans who worked in the office of the Directorate of Development and Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kabul and that these employees and their relatives will be granted refugee status.
The authorities indicated that there will be a total of 230 Afghans who will enter the annual resettlement unit of 800 refugees from around the world planned in 2021, which will allow these people to obtain asylum once they arrive and are registered.
Regarding the reception of other Afghan refugees, the government indicated that the Ministry of Justice and the police will study the asylum applications it receives, but at the moment it does not plan to transfer a large number of Afghans directly to Switzerland.
Italy
There are about 500 people, including embassy staff and Afghan collaborators, whom Italy was able to evacuate in a continuous airlift it organized from Kabul after the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan.
At 0800 hours on Thursday, an Italian Air Force C130 took off from Kabul with 99 other Afghan citizens, and throughout the night another C130 took off from Kabul with 95 people on board.
On one of these trips, activist Zahra Ahmadi will arrive in the next few hours with her relatives and all employees of the Veronese Foundation, a medical organization that runs a breast tumor diagnostics center in Herat, open until a few days in 2013. Thousands of Afghans can access it for free every year.
Part of the Afghan refugees are being transferred to an army barracks in the town of Roccaraso, Abruzzo.
France
A military plane carrying more than 200 evacuees from France in Kabul arrived in Paris on Wednesday, the second of its kind one day after the first repatriation.
The Executive determined that besides the twenty-five French, there were 184 Afghanis, four Dutch, one Irish, and two Kenyans.
According to French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, these Afghans are members of “civil society in need of protection”.
Most of them were refugees at the French embassy in Kabul, which, for security reasons, transferred its services to the Afghan capital’s airport.
“Expedited procedures” have also been put in place so that they can obtain visas once “necessary checks” have been made to ensure “internal security”.
Brazil
The Brazilian government announced on Wednesday that Afghans wishing to seek asylum will be able to benefit from the same simplified mechanism that allowed Brazil to recognize some 50,000 Venezuelans as refugees, almost without papers.
The Ministry of Justice made it clear that, as Brazil already declared last December 2, that Afghanistan is experiencing a “serious and general violation of human rights”, any Afghan who wishes to seek asylum in Brazil will be able to obtain it without having to prove that they suffer persecution political or religious.
The decision of Brazil’s National Commission for Refugees (CONARE) to declare a systematic violation of human rights in Afghanistan “has been in effect since December” and makes clear that the Brazilian government is “interested in the international context,” according to a spokesperson for the Brazilian Ministry of Justice consulted by EFE.
With information from EFE.
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