UNCLAS LJUBLJANA 000549

SIPDIS


SENSITIVE

DRL/CDA FOR CDELL

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM PREF SI
SUBJECT: SLOVENIA: UNHCR COUNTRY DIRECTOR MEETS WITH COM



1. (U) Summary: On July 21, UNHCR Director for Slovenia Greg
Garras met with COM to discuss the state of Slovenian asylum
policy at the end of his three and a half year tenure.
Garras lamented that Slovenia,s asylum policies have
continued to regress under the current center-right
government - a process which had begun with the previous
government just prior to EU accession in May 2004. Garras
told COM that Slovenian caseworkers rely excessively on
"manifestly unfounded" determinations of asylum status to
quickly dismiss applicants without a thorough hearing.
Garras also said that asylum and human rights NGOs in
Slovenia have a difficult time sustaining themselves since
the government gives them little funding and they operate in
an environment that is not conducive to private fundraising.
The UNHCR office in Slovenia will close in August 2006, at
which point a regional office in Budapest will handle
Slovenian asylum issues. End Summary.

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GoS Asylum policy "Withering on the Vine"
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2. (U) On July 21, UNHCR Director Greg Garras paid a farewell
courtesy call on COM. Garras told COM that Slovenia,s
asylum procedures, as currently applied, deny asylum seekers
a fair hearing and may contravene both EU regulations and
international standards. Garras noted that the GoS had made
significant progress towards building a fair and effective
asylum system prior to EU accession but that its efforts
dropped off precipitously after Slovenia joined the EU in May

2004. Because the current system is under funded and lacks
personnel, there is pressure on caseworkers to process claims
quickly and to give applicants a cursory hearing.


3. (U) Garras told COM that an April 2005 Supreme Court
decision upholding a determination based on the "manifestly
unfounded" clause of international asylum law has led the GoS
to dramatically increase the number of applications rejected
on this basis, creating opportunities for abuse. Though the
accelerated "manifestly unfounded" procedure is a legitimate
part of asylum policy when implemented with the appropriate
safeguards, the potential for abuse is great when these
safeguards are circumvented. Garras told us that from 2003
to 2004, the number of cases rejected using the accelerated

"manifestly unfounded" procedure jumped from 42 (4 percent)
to 245 (21 percent). Garras was concerned that since most
asylum seekers transit through Slovenia to other EU
destinations, hasty denials based on perfunctory hearings
could not only preclude legitimate asylum seekers from
staying in Slovenia, but also prevent them from being able to
seek further review elsewhere within the EU. Garras told us
UNHCR had tried to impress upon the GoS that asylum
caseworkers needed to thoroughly investigate and exhaust all
potentially legitimate bases for asylum before making a
"manifestly unfounded" determination, but that his protests
had "fallen on deaf ears."


4. (U) Garras also said that asylum caseworkers paid
insufficient attention to identifying victims of human
trafficking and that a UNHCR-funded project to inform asylum
applicants of their rights to legal counsel and appeal had
recently been curtailed by the GoS, ostensibly because of
limited personnel.


5. (U) In a separate development on June 20, Slovenia,s
Human Rights Ombudsman, Matjaz Hanzek, issued a statement
claiming it was illegal for the GoS to require asylum-seekers
to sign a statement renouncing their claims once they leave
the premises of Slovenia,s asylum center. He said that such
signed statements interfered with asylum seekers, freedom of
movement and criticized the fact that such waivers were
presented to asylum seekers only in Slovene. Director of the
Migration Department at the Ministry of Interior Matjaz
Dolzan defended the practice stating that it seeks to prevent
abuse of the asylum system.

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NGO Affairs in Slovenia
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6. (U) Garras told COM that asylum and human rights NGOs have
struggled to find funding in Slovenia and that the GoS has
been slow to implement a framework that would make more money
available. Most asylum-related NGOs do not receive funding
from sources other than UNHCR. Although an EU fund for
asylum issues exists, the government channels this funding
towards its own asylum programs and rarely uses it for NGO
development. To this end, UNHCR plans to organize workshops
for local NGOs on private sector fundraising. The UNHCR,s
Asylum Law Legal Clinic designed to train asylum adjudicators
has met with greater success. The program seeks to addresses

some of the main problems facing asylum caseworkers,
including lack of adequate training and professional ethics
due to high burn-out and turnover rates, low pay, and a
general lack of experts on asylum issues.

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UNHCR,s Slovenia Office to Close in August 2006
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7. (U) Garras told us UNHCR,s Slovenia office will close
permanently in August 2006. After this time, Slovenian
asylum issues will be addressed from the regional office in
Budapest, which also handles asylum issues in Hungary,
Slovakia, and Poland.


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Comment
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8. (SBU) The GOS, backsliding on asylum issues is
disappointing. The misuse and potential abuse of the
accelerated asylum procedure seriously undermines the
integrity of the asylum system, which on paper is a model
system. The problem does not lie in "manifestly unfounded"
determinations per se, nor does it lie with Slovenia's legal
framework for asylum processing, but rather with the
allegedly improper implementation of asylum procedures.
There is hope that UNHCR,s vocal protests may have had an
effect, however, since Garras told us after our initial
meeting that a subsequent meeting with Interior Ministry
State Secretary Bojan Trnovsek resulted in an expression of
much greater willingness to address UNHCR,s concerns. With
the closure of the UNHCR,s Ljubljana office, post will
coordinate closely with the regional UNHCR director in
Budapest to continue to monitor Slovenia,s asylum process,
and will continue to press the GoS to bring its practices in
line with UNHCR standards.


9. (SBU) COMMENT CONTINUED. The potential misuse of asylum
policy is part of a broader pattern of behavior demonstrating
Slovenia's insularity and perhaps also a vulnerability about
its national identity as a small nation. Given the
persistent hand-wringing in the press and at the highest
levels of the GoS about the country's dwindling birth rate,
it might otherwise appear as if Slovenia's restrictive asylum
and immigration policies were counterintuitive. It is
telling that most asylum seekers in Slovenia are in transit
to other destinations and that Slovenia has a reputation for
being a difficult place for foreigners to integrate.
Although there is some evidence that increased travel
opportunities and student exchange programs are diminishing
the fear of the "outsider," at least within the younger
generation, even younger Slovenes tend to cringe whenever the
subject of opening their borders is broached. END COMMENT.
ROBERTSON


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2005LJUBLJ00549 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED



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