Swiss Human Rights Group Pressures Bern to Accept More Refugees

Switzerland will be able to shelter more Middle East refugees escaping from region wars in the Middle East and Africa if it revises the Dublin Regulation revealing that the hosting country is responsible for asylum application, human rights watchdog organization told Sputnik.

LAUSANNE (Sputnik), Svetlana Alexandrova — Switzerland will be able to accept more asylum seekers fleeing wars in the Middle East and Africa if it revises the Dublin Regulation stipulating that the first EU member country entered by a refugee is responsible for processing their asylum application, an activist of the Swiss human rights watchdog organization Collective F told Sputnik on Tuesday.

"Because they came through the other EU member states, they have to be sent back according to the Dublin agreement, so it needs to be revised. We think that Switzerland can accept all refugees who are currently in the country," Aleene F. said, adding that Switzerland let the migrants in only if it could not prove they had arrived to the country via other EU state.

In order to draw attention to the migration issue, activists have erected an improvised barbed wire fence on the imaginary EU border in the middle of the square in the Swiss city of Lausanne.

The group is supporting migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and Syria through organizing a small camp in one of the churches in Lausanne. Aleene F. informed that 34 people had not been deported back to Italy or Spain owing to their initiative and support.

According to the Swiss State Secretariat for Migration (SEM), close to 40,000 people asked for asylum in Switzerland in 2015, more than twice the number registered in the previous year.

The organization's member noted that Switzerland used to provide a special housing for refugees with small rooms where several people could live before they got a small room or a studio if their application was accepted in Switzerland.

However, due to the number of migrants currently arriving to Switzerland, the situation with refugees' accommodation is tense as the Swiss authorities say they do not have enough place for people in these special camps. "Some of them have to live underground in the bunkers without proper air-circulation and light. It is really difficult living conditions without any privacy," Aleene F. highlighted.

The 1990 Dublin Regulation, signed by all EU members, stipulates that the first EU member country entered by a refugee is responsible for processing their asylum application. After the migration crisis escalated in 2015, some EU countries called for the system to be amended as it leads to a disproportionate amount of migrants in peripheral EU member states that cannot handle the influx.

Europe is struggling to find a solution to a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The EU border agency Frontex detected over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014.