Denmark has become the first European Union member state to revoke from Syrian refugees their residency status, claiming that some parts of Syria are now a safe place to return to. Last year, the Danish Office of Immigration issued a report that found the situation in and around Damascus had improved to an extent that refugees from that area are no longer qualified for protection under Danish immigration law. This law, passed by the left-wing government in power in 2015, granted Syrians asylum due to the level of violence ongoing in the country and gave the government the power to re-evaluate and revoke this status in case of improvements in the Syrian territory. Such an “improvement,” however, is easily questionable.  

After ten years of conflict, Bashar al-Assad is back in control of most of Syria, with frontline fighting limited to the northern territories. However, the regime’s intelligence represents a threat feared by many, with more than 100,000 people detained, tortured, and forcibly disappeared since 2011. According to Human Rights Watch, arbitrary arrests are particularly widespread in former rebel-held areas. Hiba al-Khalil, a Syrian refugee who settled in Denmark in 2015, told The Guardian that just being out of Syria for so long is “enough to make you look suspicious to the regime”.

Rebuilding in most areas of the country is lacking; basic services like water and energy supply are scarce, and inflation has brought the food prices up by 230 percent last year with nearly 60 percent of the population lacking access to sufficient food.

Denmark’s decision, other than being strongly politically driven, has also another deeply worrying consequence in that it will likely disproportionately affect women over men. Syrian men are generally exempt from the new policy, as the Danish authorities recognise they are at risk of being drafted into the military or punished for evading conscription. Due to the way they were classified when they first arrived in Denmark, it is mainly women, children, and the elderly who face having their residence permits torn up. Going back to Syria, however, would not be as safe as the Danish authorities seem to think. Families are likely to be persecuted for having fled alongside their fathers, brothers, or husbands already in the regime’s sight and will be held accountable for their escape. Persecution of returning refugees includes arrests and torture, as reported by the Washington Post in 2019, and both the Syrian Network for Human Rights and the European Union’s asylum body have warned that voluntary returnees are at risk of detention, torture, and death.

The controversy of the situation lies in the fact that Denmark does not officially recognise the regime of Bashar al-Assad and therefore is not considering forced deportations. Instead, the state is offering Syrian refugees the possibility to return voluntarily with funding of around £22,000 per person. However, as most are worried for their safety, in 2020 only 137 refugees took the offer. For those who refuse to return, the only alternative is being kept in deportation centres. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has expressed concerns over Denmark’s policy, claiming that it could amount to a breach of the UN Refugee Convention, of which the country was the first to sign in 1952. The UNHCR representative for the Nordic and Baltic countries also stated how the recent improvements in Syria are not sufficiently stable to justify ending international protection for refugees. Concerns were echoed earlier this year by Amnesty International, which sent an open letter to Denmark’s Minister of Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye, warning him about the Syrian regime’s well-documented record of human rights abuses against political dissidents.

Giulia holds an Italian Law degree and is currently studying the GDL/LLM at London Southbank University. She has a passion for Immigration Law and for the respect of human rights in the workplace. She has experience working as a youth educator, as well as in the FinTech environment.

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