BERLIN – The German government arranged for ten Afghan families to be relocated to Germany on Monday after suspending the promised resettlement of at-risk Afghan refugees for months.
German courts had ruled in at least some two dozen cases that Berlin would need to honour previous commitments to issue visas that were part of a humanitarian scheme for Afghans facing particular threats after the Taliban took power in 2021.
The ten families, comprising 47 individuals, who were en route to Germany on Monday, only received visas after they went to court.
The German government, led by the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), had halted the resettlement of Afghan refugees who were previously promised admission in May, amid a wider crackdown on immigration.
The scheme relocated some 45,000 Afghans to Germany since 2022, including Afghans who worked for Germany’s armed forces prior to the fall of the Western-backed government in 2021. Reports alleging insufficient security screenings of arrivals raised doubts over the identity of some Afghan arrivals earlier this year.
Then in opposition, the CDU had criticised the flights as undermining efforts to reduce irregular migration. In July, the new CDU-led government not only halted resettlement flights from Afghanistan, but also suspended all voluntary humanitarian visa schemes, eyeing to terminate them permanently.
At this point, some 2,000 Afghan individuals, who were promised admission, are awaiting their departure to Germany in Pakistan due to the closure of the German embassy in Kabul – some of them for years.
Their situation has recently exacerbated as Islamabad is refusing to extend visas for Afghan refugees in transit and moved to expel hundreds of them.
(vib)
