One year after starting Reception program offers protection to only 13 Afghans
A year ago, the federal government promised to take in 1,000 threatened Afghans per month. According to SPIEGEL information, the goal is missed by a long way.
By Matthias Gebauer and Marina Kormbaki
With some delay, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ( SPD ) launched a “federal admission program” exactly a year ago, for example for threatened journalists, human rights activists and lawyers: From now on, around 1,000 people were to enter Germany every month; The program is scheduled to run until the next federal election in September 2025. At the time, Baerbock spoke of an “exertion of strength,” and the minister promised: “We won’t let up.”
However, the program’s record so far is poor: only 13 people have entered Germany through the program. This emerges from a report by the organization “Reporters Without Borders,” which SPIEGEL has received 100,000 calls for help.
Eight selection rounds by the federal government took place by the end of September. A total of 210 main applicants were selected – including family members, the number of candidates for leaving the country amounts to 571 people. But the visa process was only opened for 20 Afghans. One year after starting the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated massively, especially for women, since the Taliban came to power Photo: Samiullah Popal / EPA
The traffic light government came into office in autumn 2021 with the intention of offering protection to particularly vulnerable Afghans. This was one of the early lessons of the Germans’ chaotic evacuation mission in Afghanistan a few weeks earlier, when the Taliban took power in the country. With some delay, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ( SPD ) launched a “federal admission program” exactly a year ago, for example for threatened journalists, human rights activists and lawyers: From now on, around 1,000 people were to enter Germany every month; The program is scheduled to run until the next federal election in September 2025. At the time, Baerbock spoke of an “exertion of strength,” and the minister promised: “We won’t let up.”
However, the program’s record so far is poor: only 13 people have entered Germany through the program. This emerges from a report by the organization “Reporters Without Borders,” which SPIEGEL has received.
The demand, on the other hand, is much greater: According to the paper, around 100,000 calls for help have reached the 74 civil society organizations that are supposed to recommend people to the federal government who are eligible to leave the country. Since neither the federal government nor the non-governmental organizations are present in Afghanistan, people who receive approval must first travel to the Pakistani capital Islamabad with valid documents and a visa. So-called security interviews are carried out in the German consulate there. Bottleneck in security checks according to Reporters Without Borders, this point is proving to be a bottleneck in the process. An interview lasts up to four hours. Both the main applicant and family members over the age of 16 would have to undergo this. Last summer, ten officers were deployed for security checks. “This means that fewer than five tests can be carried out per day,” says the paper from “Reporters Without Borders”.
By the end of August, only 270 security checks could be carried out. However, these are mostly so-called old cases – i.e. applications from Afghans who want to leave the country and who had already received a confirmation of admission before the start of the federal admission program. The temporary suspension of the program may have contributed greatly to the delay. The federal government completely stopped the visa process for people from Afghanistan between March and June 2023 – there had previously been indications of attempts at abuse in Islamabad. The program started again in the summer with stricter security checks.
Reporters Without Borders” wants less bureaucracy The organization “Reporters Without Borders” is massively critical of the slow admissions process and is calling for bureaucratic hurdles to be removed. She accuses the federal government of passing on the majority of the effort to civil society organizations. “From the initial communication with those affected through an intensive examination of the risk situation to the compilation of the necessary documents, the entire responsibility lies with the so-called ‘authorized reporting bodies’,” it says in their paper. In view of the long-standing German deployment on site, the federal government shares responsibility for the poor security situation in Afghanistan.
In addition, “Reporters Without Borders” criticizes the lack of willingness to cooperate on the part of the Pakistani authorities when issuing visas for people who are supposed to appear at local German offices. The security procedure also needs to be restructured. Lengthy security checks are only necessary if the applicants are unknown – which, however, is not the case with the many journalists and human rights defenders on the lists. “Where they are really necessary, they can also be carried out in Germany,” says the paper.
In this country, political support for the federal admission program has recently declined significantly. The Union factions and also the FDP called for the program to be ended. The current tense situation in the municipalities when it comes to accommodating refugees is unlikely to help the SPD and the Greens push the program forward with great vigor.