Our Italian member Diaconia Valdese recently released a report detailing the unlawful practices faced by asylum seekers inserted in the diaconal organisation’s projects.
The report finds that although the recent political situation had some negative effects on the access to rights for asylum seekers, the unlawful practices in the process of granting asylum and comprehensive rights to those seeking protection was in part due to the lack of knowledge and procedures of public officials. This had the consequence of excluding asylum seekers from a considerable portion of the rights and benefits they were entitled to.
The work carried out by Italy’s largest diaconal organisation also sheds light on how on what those unlawful practices were: asylum seekers were not within the national health system, were denied to be registered at city councils or again could not benefit from the right to be exempted from some taxes. These were more serious instances of a long list of public authorities’ obligations which were not carried out to benefit asylum seekers, with destabilising effects on their already vulnerable position.
The aim of the report was to map the situation at the national level to have a better understanding of what common actions can be carried forward by different groups while also allowing for the compilation of good practices that can be shared at both national and European level.
We congratulate our Italian members for their hard work and this important piece of information. In fact, we share the report’s objective in that Eurodiaconia’s Network Meetings aim to bring together different diaconal organisations across Europe to discuss a specific issue and have the opportunity to present their projects and share good practices. Our upcoming Network Meeting in Athens will indeed focus on Migration – we invite interested members to register by the 25th of October.
To know more about Diaconia Valdese’s work on the issue, please read the full report.
If you are interested in knowing more about our upcoming Migration Network Meeting, please visit our website.