U.N. loses role in asylum claims
Immigration Department acts on court ruling to announce it will be sole judge in refugee cases, but critics voice concern for existing claimants
All asylum seekers arriving in Hong Kong are to be screened by the government under a mechanism starting in March, a year after the Court of Final Appeal forced a rethink on the issue.
The top court ruled in March last year that the government could not simply rely on the UNHCR to decide whether someone was a refugee, and must assess all cases independently and fairly.
The Immigration Department will take responsibility for assessing all such claims, and the UN refugee agency, which has run the screening programme for asylum claimants, will have no further role.
However, leading human-rights lawyers say the new process has been rushed in and lacks detail about transitional arrangements for the fate of existing torture claimants in the city.
Refugee advocates had been complaining for years that the lack of a unified system caused long delays because asylum and torture claims often overlapped.
In a statement yesterday, the government said all "non-refoulement" cases - those claiming that expulsion or extradition would expose them to risks - would be handled under the new Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) from March 3.