“En kultur af mistro” om folks reelle motiver til at søge asyl i f.eks. verdens rige lande gør det hele til en dyst mellem dommere, som mener de egenhændigt kan skelne fårene fra bukkene, og enkeltpersoner, der ofte formulerer sig dårligt under pres efter traumatiske oplevelser. JOHANNESBURG, 24 April 2013 (IRIN): Most asylum seekers arrive in host countries with no evidence to prove they have fled persecution. This means the success of their applications for refugee status depends largely on whether their stories are believed. But the credibility of asylum seekers is increasingly being called into question, particularly in countries that receive large numbers of asylum claims. Some migrants with no hope of acquiring (opnå) a visa legitimately resort to fabricating stories of persecution (forfølgelse), hoping to gain refugee status. This fact has contributed to the view that all asylum seekers should be treated with suspicion and that the majority of asylum applications are fraudulent (svindelagtige). It is a view that appears to have taken root among many of the officials who determine refugee status. A 2012 report by the Irish Refugee Council found that a “culture of disbelief” existed among refugee status decision-makers in Ireland, where only five percent of applications for refugee status were granted in 2011, less than half the average acceptance rate in Europe. The UK approved 23 percent of the 26.000 asylum claims submitted in 2011. A recently released report by Amnesty International found that a quarter of the UK’s asylum rejections in the last three years were overturned on appeal. In 84 percent of such cases analysed for the report, the primary reason given by the immigration judge was that the case worker (sagsbehandleren) had made errors in their assessment of the claimant’s (ansøgerens) credibility. UNHCR: Give them the benefit of the doubt The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) handbook for determining refugee status does not contain specific guidelines on assessing credibility. But it advises that, in the absence of evidence to support refugee applications, applicants whose accounts appear credible should be given “the benefit of the doubt”. It also warns against making judgements based on personal views that the applicant may be an “undeserving case”. In reality, credibility assessments are heavily reliant on subjective judgements about an applicants’ honesty. Michael Kagan, who teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has researched credibility assessment in asylum cases. He told IRIN that “judges of all types in all countries tend to be overconfident in their ability to tell apart (skelne) people who are telling the truth from those who are not. “We have a centuries-old romantic idea that a judge or juror can look a witness in the eye and find the truth… It would be wonderful in so many ways if this were true, but it just does not work,” said he. He added that the challenge was greater for asylum cases than in most other areas of law: “These assessments must be made with people from other countries, through interpreters, with issues of trauma, shame and simple nerves making it hard for many honest people to appear coherent (optræde logisk sammenhængende).” Trauma undermines credibility Læs videre på http://www.irinnews.org/Report/97906/Culture-of-disbelief-works-against-asylum-seekers
