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Humanitarian Admission for Afghans in Afghanistan
The Federal Admission Programme Afghanistan was launched by the German government in October 2022 after the withdrawal of the German army from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021. In principle, the programme is intended to give particularly vulnerable Afghans the opportunity to come to Germany by ways of a notice of admission from the federal government. The programme is initially planned to run until the end of the current legislative period in September 2025.
Procedure
Persons at risk in Afghanistan must register with so-called authorised registration offices. Authorised registration offices are civil society organisations (in Germany) that have specific knowledge of the group of persons eligible for admission and the conditions in Afghanistan.
Afghans at risk are sent a link with a list of questions which they must complete, and which is checked either by the same authorised registration office and/or the coordination office. All applications are checked according to the four-eyes principle. If a case is classified as plausible, the data is inserted into the federal government's selection tool. So called selection rounds take place on a regular basis, in which the submitted cases are analysed and a selection is made.
If there is a confirmation of admission, the persons travel to Pakistan with their families. From there, they are then admitted to Germany in accordance with section 22 (2) Residence Act (AufenthG).
Target group
The target group of the programme are Afghans at risk who are still in Afghanistan and who have become particularly exposed through their work in the areas of women's and human rights, justice, politics, media, education, sport or science, as well as people who are particularly at risk due to their gender, sexual orientation or gender identity or their religion. For both groups, it depends on the specific individual risk.
If a case is approved, admission is granted to the nuclear family (spouse and underage unmarried children) or, if credible, also to the same-sex partner. Other family members can only be admitted if there is proof that they are also at risk due to the activity or vulnerability of the main person.
Numbers and figures
1,000 admission commitments are to be issued each month (people in need of protection with their families) and the programme is to be implemented during the current legislative period (probably until September 2025). However, the federal admission programme is currently running very slowly. The first admission approvals were only granted months after the start of the programme, and the first 13 people did not enter the country until September 2023, almost a year after the admission programme was launched.
Criticism
In addition to the very slow start, there are numerous points of criticism of the Federal Admission Programme Afghanistan:
People at risk are forced to remain in Afghanistan as they are no longer eligible for the programme once they have left the country.
The programme and the way of selection of refugees is very non-transparent to outsiders.
State responsibility is outsourced to civil society organisations. Corresponding funds are made available to the coordination office, but none to the many associations and NGOs that participate.
It is up to the so-called authorised registration offices whether they publish and advertise their participation in the programme and thus risk overloading their own structures. So far, most organisations have decided against this for understandable reasons. For those individuals who are not in personal contact with a relevant organisation, this means exclusion from the programme - even if they meet the criteria of vulnerability.
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