Refoulement: Some NGOs, including Amnesty International, accused the government of encouraging refoulement by pressuring NGOs to limit rescues of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and encouraging the Libyan coast guard to take rescued migrants back to Libya, which UNHCR did not consider a “safe port” and which has not signed the applicable UN refugee conventions. UNHCR did not indicate that this constitutes a case of refoulement, but stated that it was looking into the legality of the country’s actions.
Access to Asylum: The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. NGOs and independent observers identified difficulties in asylum procedures, including inconsistency of standards applied in reception centers and insufficient rates of referral of trafficking victims and unaccompanied minors to adequate services. Interior Minister Salvini announced his intent to increase the number of asylum adjudicators but also issued a circular urging them to be more restrictive in granting humanitarian protection, claiming that many economic migrants were being erroneously granted legal status.
Regional adjudication committees took up to nine months to process asylum claims, depending on the region. When legal appeals were taken into account, the process could last up to two years. Interior Minister Salvini pledged to cut funding for migrant reception, protection, and integration, and devote more resources to expulsion of illegal migrants. He contended that the existing migrant reception system did little to integrate migrants and was a source of corruption.
Large numbers of migrants and refugees who arrived in the country since 2014, mostly across the central Mediterranean Sea from Libya, strained the asylum system. Between January and August, the government received approximately 38,000 asylum requests. Between January and September authorities granted asylum or other forms of legal protection to 23,700 persons.
Between January 1 and November 5, a total of 3,368 unaccompanied minors arrived in the country (see section 6, Children and section 7.c.).
Safe Country of Origin/Transit: The country is party to the EU’s Dublin III Regulation and its subsequent revisions, whereby members generally transferred asylum applications to the first EU member country in which the applicant arrived or returned applicants to safe countries of origin.
Freedom of Movement: The law permits authorities to detain migrants and asylum seekers in centers for identification and expulsion for up to 90 days if authorities decide they pose a threat to public order or may try to flee an expulsion order or pre-expulsion jail sentence. Government efforts to reduce the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea to the country on smuggler vessels were accompanied by restrictions in freedom of movement for up to 72 hours once rescued migrants arrived in reception centers. As of December 2017, 417 foreigners were held in five centers. The Council of Europe’s Committee on the Prevention of Torture (CPT) noted “several categories of foreign nationals may be prevented from leaving the “hotspots” [temporary centers], without a clear legal basis.”
Employment: Asylum seekers may work legally two months after submitting an asylum request. According to labor unions, including the Federation of Agroindustrial Workers, an affiliate of the Italian General Labor Confederation (CGIL), employers continued to discriminate against noncitizens in the labor market, taking advantage of insufficient enforcement of legal protection for noncitizens against exploitation. In addition, high unemployment in the country limited the possibility of legal employment for large numbers of refugees.
Access to Basic Services: Authorities set up temporary centers to house mixed-migrant populations, including refugees and asylum seekers, but could not keep pace with the high rate of arrivals and the increased number of asylum claims. On July 31, there were 160,458 persons housed in sites throughout the country. Some were housed in centers run directly by local authorities, generally considered of high quality, while the rest were in centers whose quality varied greatly and included many repurposed facilities, such as old schools, military barracks, and apartments in residential buildings. On April 10, the CPT reported that all the temporary centers it visited in June 2017 “regularly exceeded the official capacity” with concomitant degradation of living conditions. It found living conditions at the Caltanissetta Closed Removal Center overcrowded and the facilities in poor state of repair and under furnished. The sanitation facilities were in need of extensive repair. The CPT also reported services provided to migrants in the Lampedusa transit center were inadequate, and that insufficient places were made available in shelters for unaccompanied minors, resulting in prolonged stays at temporary transit centers. Representatives of UNHCR, the IOM, and other humanitarian organizations and NGOs reported thousands of legal and irregular foreigners, including migrants and refugees, living in abandoned buildings and in inadequate and overcrowded facilities in Rome and other major cities, and having limited access to health care, legal counseling, basic education, and other public services.
In some cases, refugees and asylum seekers who worked in the informal economy were not able to rent apartments, especially in large cities. They often squatted in buildings where they lived in substandard conditions with their children. On March 21, police forcibly evicted 100 migrants and refugees who had squatted in a building in the outskirts of Rome. NGOs and advocacy groups alleged that the Rome municipal government failed to provide alternative public housing for those evicted migrants who qualified for it, including refugees with legal status.
On August 10, 34 asylum seekers in Toscolano Maderno protested the lack of medical assistance, language classes, and vocational training in the migration center where they lived.
Durable Solutions: The government made limited attempts to integrate refugees into the country’s society with mixed results. The government distributed asylum seekers throughout the country and provided shelter and services while their requests were processed as well as some resettlement services after granting asylum. In cooperation with the IOM, the government assisted migrants and refugees who opted to return to their home countries.
Temporary Protection: The government also provided protection to individuals who may not qualify as refugees. Between January and September, the government provided humanitarian protection to 16,761 persons and subsidiary protection to 2,614 persons.