Italy: New report questions government’s ‘safe countries’ decree for migrants and asylum seekers

Rome: A recent report, authored by ActionAid and Openpolis, found that at the end of 2023, nearly 40 percent of migrants hosted in Italy’s Reception and Integration System (SAI) centers, so at the time considered to be in need of some form of protection, came from countries subsequently designated by the current government as ‘safe.’

In late 2024, Italy’s right-wing coalition government passed a decree declaring a list of 19 countries ‘safe’. Those countries were listed as: Albania, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Morocco, Montenegro, Peru, Senegal, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Tunisia.

The decree was partly aimed at bolstering the mechanisms that would allow the Italian government to send non-vulnerable migrants rescued in international waters by the Italian coast guard to have their asylum claims processed in specially-built centers in Albania.

The first three small groups of migrants to be sent by Italy to the Albanian centers came originally from countries like Bangladesh and Egypt that appeared on this new list of countries considered ‘safe.’

However, even the new list didn’t convince Italian judges tasked with allowing the asylum assessment in Albania to go ahead. Because of an earlier ruling by a European court, which indicated that even if most of a country could be considered safe, if parts of it were not, or if some groups or individuals might not in danger in that country, then the whole country could not be considered unilaterally ‘safe.’

Now, according to a recent report by two organizations the NGO ActionAid and the Openpolis foundation in Italy, nearly 40 percent of migrants hosted in Italy’s (SAI) reception and integration system centers at the end of 2023 actually hailed from countries now listed as ‘safe’ under that decree.

This finding indicates that just a year before the decree was passed, the Italian authorities were offering some form of protection or assessing asylum claims coming from countries they later declared to be ‘safe.’. Most of those housed in SAI centers hold some form of protection status, or are considered to be eligible for it, explains Europe’s Asylum Infomation Database AIDA.