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Executive Summary for December 16th

We review the latest issues related to refugees, including Germany’s deportation of Afghans, a European Union migration-linked aid deal with Niger and a surge in asylum applications in Mexico.

Published on Dec. 16, 2016 Read time Approx. 2 minutes

Germany Deports Afghans Under Deal to Expedite Returns

A group of 34 Afghans has been deported from Germany to Afghanistan, the first deportations under an agreement to expedite Afghan returns.

The Afghan men had all had their asylum claims rejected. Around one-third had been convicted of crimes in Germany, interior minister Thomas de Maizière said.

The deportation flight was meant to take 50 people, but six had last-minute appeals before the courts and 10 others went into hiding, he added.

Afghans were the second-largest national group of asylum seekers entering Europe last year after Syrians. Germany and the European Union both reached deals with Afghanistan in October to facilitate the return of Afghans who had not been granted asylum.

Some 12,500 Afghans have been ordered to be removed from Germany, the Associated Press reported.

Afghans in Germany also receive financial incentives to go home voluntarily, and de Maizière said about 3,200 of them had chosen to leave this year.

E.U. Gives Niger Millions in Aid to Curb Migration

The European Union has made a deal with Niger, a key way station for African migrants traveling north to Europe, to curb migration flows.

European nations, including Germany, France and Italy, will give Niger 610 million euros ($635 million) under the agreement, the latest example of Europe’s aid-for-migration policy.

E.U. officials said the aid is intended to help Niger tackle the root causes of migration, including poverty, as well as tighten border controls and combat smuggling networks.

Many migrants pass through Agadez in Niger en route to North Africa, from where record numbers have taken boats to Europe – only for many of them to die at sea.

“It’s unbearable, these dramas happening in the desert and at sea, and Niger is ready to do its part to bring this suffering to an end,” the west African republic’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, said after the E.U. deal was announced.

Critics of the E.U.’s aid-for-migration policy question whether aid actually reduces the root causes of migration. Human rights groups are concerned that the deals could empower repressive regimes and prevent refugees reaching places of asylum.

Asylum Applications Surge in Mexico

Mexican officials expect the number of Central Americans applying for asylum to continue to grow rapidly over the coming year.

The number of people fleeing gang violence in El Salvador and Honduras, and a devastating regional drought, has surged this year.

Mexico received 3,424 asylum applications in 2015 and is on track to get 8,000 more this year, Cinthia Perez, a director of Mexican refugee agency COMAR, told Reuters. If applications continue to rise by the present 9 percent a month, they will reach 22,501 by the end of 2017, she said.

Some 72 percent of asylum claims were successful in 2016, an increase from around 40 percent in 2013, Perez added.

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