São Paulo – The number of refugees that live in Brazil almost doubled since 2011. According to data released by the National Committee for Refugees (Conare) in Brasília, Brazil received 8,400 refugees. In 2011 they were 4,218 and, until the end of last year, 7,609. Since the beginning of this year up to August, the country issued refuge to 791 foreigners. These people left their countries due to conflicts or persecutions.
The increase in the number of foreigners in this type of situation forced Conare to adopt measures to speed up its services. The announced was made this Wednesday (19th), World Humanitarian Day.
Conare will now offer its services to asylum-seekers in regional offices in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre, some of the cities that receive the highest number of requests. Before, the Ministry of Justice needed to move its staff. Besides, interviews will now be made via teleconference to speed up the processes in the new offices and in Brasília.
Conare also announced that it would increase the number of staff that work in the analysis of the asylum requests. Up to 39 employees will be moved in from other sectors of the government to work in the agency. Besides, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will hire ten advisers to support the team of eligibility officers that analyses the requests at the Ministry of Justice.
To ANBA, UNHCR`s spokesperson in Brazil, Luiz Fernado Godinho, said that the measures announced by the government meet an increasing demand. “It`s an answer from the government to a new situation. Before there was one level (of requests), which has changed in the last few years. It`s an answer from the government to rearrange Conare, to speed up the processes and to increase qualification of the staff to analyze the asylum requests”, he said.
According to data from Conare, besides the 8,400 refugees admitted, Brazil has 5,148 foreigners with rejected requests and 12,668 requests to be analyzed. Syria is the main country of origin of refugees in Brazil: 2,077 people until August. Angola, with 1,480 people stands at second place, followed by Colombia (1,093), Democratic Republic of Congo (844), Lebanon (389), Palestine (272), Liberia (257), Iraq (250), Sierra Leone (169) and Bolivia (151).
In this calculation, the 45,607 requests made by Haitians are not included, since these citizens receive residence permits due to humanitarian issues and not refugees status.
According to data from UNHCR, 59.5 million people left their homes in 2014 in the world, of which 19.5 million were refugees. It`s a record-breaking number caused by the increase in the number of conflicts.
Campaign
The Ministry of Justice launched a campaign in social media to expand the receiving and assistance dedicated to refugees. Testimonies of refugees will be published via the hashtags #refugiados (refugees) and #CompartilheHumanidade (Share Humanity), with the latter being a partnership with the United Nations.
“Refugees are people that lost too much: relatives, homes, work, and also the possibility of remaining in their own country. Brazil works to receive and help them recover their dignity, offering an opportunity to live”, said the National Secretary of Justice, Beto Vasconcelos, in a statement released by the ministry.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
