South Africa: UNHCR helps South Africa tackle huge asylum backlog

The UN refugee agency has been conducting training sessions for state officials hired as part of the South African government's drive to improve its capacity to tackle the huge backlog of asylum seekers. Although the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), which determines who is a refugee using criteria agreed by UNHCR, has been processing more asylum cases in recent months, this increase has been outstripped by the number of new applications, which totalled 32,558 in 2004. By the start of this year, the number of pending cases had climbed to some 115,000. The record number of pending asylum applications - far in excess of what the DHA staff could handle - prompted the government to launch a strategy that included dramatically improving its ability to tackle the backlog. UNHCR is providing training, advice and materials to support this effort to raise the capacity both of staff and their equipment.