'Conflicts in Afghanistan Don't Affect Everyone'

Sweden is burning. Based on an article by Fredrik Beijer, General Counsel, Sweden's Migration Agency.

Get It Try It

NORRKÖPING SWEDEN (Rixstep) — Per Holfve is right in that the Migration Agency has the responsibility for assessing and drawing conclusions regarding security in Afghanistan, writes Fredrik Beijer. But responsibility is regulated and does not fall on one individual. To describe this democratically established distribution of responsibility an excuse, only because one doesn't agree with the conclusions, is to make things a bit too easy.

Let's start with the situation in Afghanistan. Of course the Migration Agency is responsible for assessing and drawing conclusions about the security situation. That's what we do. We regard the security situation in Afghanistan as very serious. That's also why 83% of all Afghani minors without custodians, the so-called 'unaccompanied minors', are granted protection with a residence permit in Sweden.

At the same time, we've made the assessment that there are still huge differences in security in different parts of the country. Our assessment is that the conflict has not reached the level where it affects everyone in the country, the level needed to grant all those who come here the right to stay here.

It's not strange that this issue affects people. The difference between Afghanistan and Sweden is enormous, but the right to asylum is meant to protect people from those things enumerated in our legislation.

The Migration Agency therefore monitors the situation in Afghanistan closely, and it's clear that the situation there is serious, and has grown worse in the past year. But we still judge all asylum applications on an individual basis, and from the needs of the individual for protection. Precisely as regulated in our laws and rules. We make an assessment and arrive at a decision thereafter.

If someone makes an incorrect assessment, this can be appealed to a Swedish court who will then make an independent assessment.



When we now hear voices clamouring for amnesty, it's important to once again remember what kind of system we have in Sweden. If one finds it necessary to do something that goes beyond the judgement of the Agency and the courts, it's beyond the mandate of the Migration Agency and requires new legislation. It can be, for example, a matter of general amnesty for a specific group, or the fact that we can no longer apply the alternative of internal asylum (there being places in the home country where one can still live).

When we receive new information about the security situation, we update the relevant parts in, for example, a statement of judicial position. These updates are most often a matter of specific parts of the situation in a country, and are most often not a general assessment about the overall security situation in a country.

This is our assignment and our responsibility. And we at the Migration Agency carry out our duties.

In a democracy, not all public power is concentrated in the hands of a single individual, but is shared between legislators and those who carry out the law. This means that it's politicians who are responsible for passing the legislation, agencies for carrying it out, and courts for making sure the assessments of the agencies are correct.

Pointing out this division of responsibility in our society is not an evasion - it's a statement of fact.

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