With rulings on Syrian asylum claims frozen, a couple wait and worry

The regime collapsed two months after they arrived.

On 7 December, Mahmoud Alabed and his wife Ashrqut were in an asylum shelter in Co. Donegal, glued to their phones, as rebel forces entered Damascus, switching between Arabic language news sites and Facebook, said Alabed.

Over the previous days, rebel groups had claimed more and more ground without much pushback.

Then all of a sudden, Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which drove the country into a civil war in 2011 by crushing dissent, used chemical weapons against ordinary Syrians and displaced over six million people, was gone – Assad fled to Moscow.

Alabed and his wife don’t have any relatives or Syrian friends in Ireland yet, he said. So, they called family and friends in other parts of Europe to share their joy and celebrate.

They were ecstatic, Alabad said in Arabic, smiling.

But then, shortly after, they heard the Irish government was pausing decision-making on asylum applications from citizens of Syria. “We thought it was a rumour,” he said.

Alabed and his wife are among around 400 people who are impacted, according to official figures.

They’ve been left in limbo since the announcement of the pause on 10 December, with no end in sight.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice said the Minister had decided on the pause on final decisions to allow time to evaluate the country’s situation. People can still open new applications, though.

“A temporary pause in issuing decisions allows for the situation to stabilise to some degree, after which a proper assessment of those applications can be made,” they said.

One possible result is that the Irish government concludes that Syria is now safer, and people from Syria become less likely to get asylum here.

Alabed and his wife say they are anxious about what the Irish government will do next. They had a perilous and expensive journey to Europe, and aren’t ready to go back, Alabed says.

The situation in their province, Daraa, is dicey and too unstable to risk losing the safety they’ve fought so hard to find, he says. “We’re not hopeful about the future and situation there.”

Neither Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Labour Party spokesperson on justice, nor Jim O’Callaghan TD, Fianna Fáil spokesperson on justice, nor Pa Daly TD, Sinn Féin spokesperson on justice, responded to queries sent Thursday on their positions on this pause.

Is the pause legal?

There are questions about whether the law allows such pauses, the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) said in a press release last month.

Nick Henderson, CEO of the IRC, said the government had told them before that the law didn’t allow for any freezes on the asylum process.

In the past, the IRC had asked the International Protection Office (IPO) to pause the procedure for rough-sleeping applicants while they’re grappling with homelessness, he said in the press release dated 10 December.

If the law really does allow for pauses like this, the government should clearly communicate with Syrian people seeking asylum and offer a timeline for when the pause will end and a new plan for what will happen then, Henderson said.

Wendy Lyon, partner and solicitor at Abbey Law, says a newer version of the EU’s Asylum Procedures Directive does allow for a pause. But Ireland hasn’t opted into that. Just the older version, she said.

The new version of the directive – which Ireland isn’t bound by– says member states might postpone concluding an asylum case when “determining whether a situation of uncertainty prevails in the country of origin of an applicant”.

But the earlier 2005 version of the EU law – which Ireland opted into in February 2011 – doesn’t mention pauses and postponements.

“It is in the interest of both Member States and applicants for asylum to decide as soon as possible on applications for asylum,” it says.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not directly respond to a query sent last week asking if it believes that the decision to pause rulings on asylum claims from citizens of Syria is compliant with the 2005 Asylum Procedures directive.

They didn’t say when decision-making would resume, either.

The importance of details

Lyon, the solicitor, says she worries that applicants may have cited only the war in Syria as their reason for seeking asylum in Ireland before Assad’s regime crumbled.

That would leave out details like which groups they were scared of, and whether they were Assad supporters or not, Lyon says.

Even though the war is over, they might still be in danger, but this might not be apparent from their application put in while the war was still ongoing. This could work against them.

It had happened to one of her clients before, she said.

“The cultural mediator wrote down for them ‘My country is at war’, and when I took issue with this, he insisted it was all they needed to say,” said Lyon.

Since November 2022, the Department of Justice has been asking those seeking asylum to fill out an asylum questionnaire on the same day they open a case at the IPO office.

Rushing people to fill out forms leaves those who are not fluent in English reliant on interpreters and “cultural mediators” – who are contractors for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) –  with no legal advice unless they have access to private solicitors.

A spokesperson for the Department of Justice did not directly respond to a query asking if cultural mediators are allowed to make important calls like that.

They said these workers have to stick to a code of conduct set by the IPO and the International Protection Appeals Tribunal.

Alabed, the Syrian man here with his wife Ashrqut, said they mentioned the war and bits of information about their personal circumstances for the questionnaire.

They don’t speak much English, though.

Their asylum interview, which happened before the regime’s fall, was super quick, Alabed said.

“The interview was about 20 minutes,” said Alabed in Arabic.

He said the asylum officer mostly confirmed their personal details, like their names, ages, and family situation.

Times are changing

In 2017, Alabed and his wife lost their home in the Daraa province of Syria. Daraa – the birthplace of the Syrian uprising – was at the heart of the civil war, and their home crumbled as the bombs came down one day, he said.

They’ve been renting and staying with relatives since, just waiting to seize a moment to get out, he said. “We decided to leave a long time ago.”

The only route out was dangerous and cost lots of money, he said. They’d put everything they had into getting out, said Alabed.

The depiction of Syria post-revolution as somewhere safe that all the Syrians abroad can return to isn’t really accurate, said Alabed. “We don’t feel that there is a future for us there because the situation is so chaotic right now.”

Henderson, the CEO of the Irish Refugee Council, also said that if and when Ireland starts ruling on asylum claims from Syrian citizens again, it shouldn’t “automatically consider Syria a safe place”.

“Just because of the downfall of the Assad regime, given the extremely fluid security situation,” he said.

The Department of Foreign Affairs’ travel advice for Syria is currently “Do Not Travel”.

On 26 December, Deutsche Welle reported on violent clashes in the province of Tartus in Syria.

Even if the violence ends and the country stabilises, there are other reasons people can and do flee their countries and seek asylum elsewhere.

Under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention, persecution or discrimination because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group are all grounds for getting refugee status.

And those who don’t qualify for refugee status and who can show that they may still face harm or degrading treatment if returned to their place of birth can also get subsidiary protection and live and work in their new country.

Henderson, the CEO of IRC, said it was dismaying that two days after the fall of the Assad regime, some European countries were “rushing to deport and return Syrian people”. “[It] is completely inappropriate,” he said.

The EU’s 2005 Asylum Procedures Directive allows for annulling of refugee statuses granted previously in circumstances including if there’s been a “change of the conditions on which the recognition was based”.

But it calls on member states to give people an opportunity to argue against revocation in such circumstances.

The Irish government hasn’t said anything about deporting or cancelling out anyone’s refugee status, though.

But for those who have not yet had a decision on whether they will be granted asylum or not, there is nothing to do but wait.

Alabed worries about what the Irish government will decide to do, he said. More than anything, because he is worried about his wife Ashrqut, he said.

She’s pregnant, said Alabed, shifting the camera to a young woman with long black hair. The woman waved and smiled.