One remaining Egypt office for asylum applicants as UN refugee agency reduces services amid funding crisis

The United Nations refugee agency announced it will soon reduce the number of locations where it accepts asylum applications, closing the service at offices in both Zamalek and Alexandria citing a lack of funding.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) will now only accept asylum applications at its main headquarters in October 6 City, which is also the only office in the capital for refugees and asylum seekers to access any of the agency’s services.

The asylum registration process was already slow before the closures, as the agency struggles to accommodate the number of applications it receives, particularly from Sudanese who were displaced by the war and other foreign nationals rushing to gain official refugee status in the face of the government’s push to regularize the status of refugees and migrants in Egypt.

People fleeing their home countries must first apply for asylum before gaining full refugee status, a process often marked by long waiting times that put those seeking safety in Egypt at risk, with consequences as serious as deportation in some instances, Sudanese asylum seekers previously told Mada Masr.

UNHCR has decided to limit the number of offices where it offers registration services due to budget cuts amid a global decline in funding for humanitarian services, the agency’s Egypt office spokesperson Christine Beshay told Mada Masr. It will therefore halt registration services at its Alexandria branch starting June 15, she explained, after earlier decisions to close its Zamalek branch, and cut the number of agency staff and services offered. 

While the Alexandria branch will remain open and provide other services, all asylum application appointments originally scheduled after mid-June in Alexandria have been relocated to the UNHCR’s main headquarters in October 6 City, she explained.

The agency will also move all the services it provided at its Zamalek office to the main headquarters, Beshay told Mada Masr last week, explaining that the decision was made “as part of our effort to save costs rather than use up our funds.”

The agency was forced to drastically reduce its services provided to over 958,000 refugees and asylum seekers in Egypt, as the United States and other funders cut external, humanitarian and developmental aid, causing a major funding deficit. 

A UNHCR statement in March noted that the agency received less than half of its funding goal last year, while another report noted it has been struggling to raise funds this year as well.

With declining resources, the agency has also reduced its staff, causing a major impact on its ability to provide its services in a timely manner, with long waiting lists now facing asylum applicants or refugees who wish to close their files and return home, Beshay explained.

The process for gaining asylum through UNHCR was already slow before the reduction of services, with hundreds of thousands of Sudanese asylum seekers travelling to register at the agency since the war began in Sudan. A push from the government last year for all refugees and migrants in Egypt to regularize their status has also caused a spike in the number of people applying to the agency.

Without refugee status, asylum seekers in Egypt are not necessarily safe, even when they have applied for their cases to be reviewed. 

In the waiting period between applying for asylum and their asylum interview, many Sudanese nationals have been deported by police because they their only proof of application was a paper slip with their interview appointment, a document police may not always recognize because “it looks like a paper that anyone can make,” as Sudanese asylum seekers previously explained to Mada Masr.

An agency statement issued last week also acknowledged the increasing number of Syrian refugees in Egypt wishing to close their files with the agency and return to their country since the fall of the Assad regime. Although UNHCR is unable to provide any financial assistance to the returnees amid the funding crisis, it is working with partners to find alternative ways to provide assistance to those returning to Syria, the statement added.

The funding and staff deficit have also led UNHCR in recent months to shrink its cash assistance program for refugees and suspend all medical services it provides except for emergency life-saving procedures.

In December, Egypt ratified its first national law on the asylum-seeking process, which would see the government take over many of the functions currently performed by UNHCR, including the discretion to grant refugee status. It will also codify prohibitions on certain rights and freedoms for registered refugees.