UNHCR has studied quality of Swedish asylum decision-making

UNHCR Regional Office for Baltic and Nordic countries has just finished a two-year study of the quality of the Swedish asylum decision-making, conducted in cooperation with the Swedish Migration Board (SMB), and financed through the European Refugee Fund. The Quality report was published on 9 September, and presented to the media at a well attended press conference and to other interested parties in a seminar.

At the half-day seminar, key findings of the study were presented to SMB staff, asylum judges, Nordic NGOs, and others – some 100 in total.

- This project is yet another illustration of the excellent relationship between Sweden and UNHCR, said Hans ten Fed, UNHCR Regional Representative in the Baltic and Nordic countries.

In the Swedish quality project, which took place during the past two years, UNHCR analysed 200 decisions taken by the Migration Board and observed 56 interviews conducted at 11 units throughout the country. UNHCR also interviewed a number of decision-makers, other Migration Board staff and lawyers to find out how they think the decision-making can be improved. UNHCR looked at a number of factors that affect the quality of the decision-making, including the registration of applications, the legal advice, how the applicants are interviewed, the quality of interpretation, the legal argumentation and the evaluation of evidence. UNHCR did not look at particular decisions to see if they were correctly or incorrectly assessed.

UNHCR found that the Swedish Migration Board has high standards in its status determination procedures, and that all procedural safeguards are in place, well above international and European standards, when one considers for instance access to legal advice, oral hearings, and motivation of decisions.

- As the report makes clear, however, there is room for improvement. UNHCR considers the biggest challenges for the Migration Board to be to ensure harmonization of its practices and policies throughout its 14 asylum units and to ensure that the staff is provided with the tools required to carry out their very difficult work, said Liv Feijen, one of the two report authors.

– We have very much welcomed this study in order to help us identify areas in which we can improve. The report will serve as the basis for our continued development efforts, Dan Eliasson assures.

Mikael Ribbenvik, Director of Legal Affairs at the Swedish Migration Board, also welcomed the feedback and explained that the Board has been aware of some of the issues and is continuing to take action to solve them.

As with the UNHCR’s 1 campaign, an important point to acknowledge is that behind each application and case number there is an individual with a unique, personal history. Therefore it is of great importance that the Swedish Migration Board ensures the needed tools are given to guide the case workers in making well-informed decisions, as suggested by the study.

- I wish to emphasize that UNHCR was impressed by the commitment among the Migration Board’s staff and their eagerness to continuously improve their work. UNHCR would like to extend its sincere thanks to Dan Eliasson, to the Migration Board members of the project steering committee and to all the employees who participated in the project in different ways. We hope that the study can be useful not only for the case-workers in their day-to-day work, but also in the Migration Board’s continued work to improve the quality of the decision-making, said ten Feld, UNHCR Regional Representative.

UNHCR has conducted similar quality improvement projects in a number of other European countries such as the UK, Germany, Austria, Hungary and other countries in C. and S. Europe.

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