In the asylum facility in Humenné in eastern Slovakia. (source: Sme)
Moreover, 41 people were granted supplementary protection which is provided on the basis of reasons other than asylum. The Interior Ministry halted 128 asylum application proceedings and 120 applicants failed to obtain asylum. Two people obtained Slovak citizenship last year, the SITA newswire reported.
Since 1993 a total of 58,160 people have applied for asylum in Slovakia, of whom 653 succeeded. Supplementary protection was granted to 672 people and 235 people were granted Slovak citizenship.
Zuzana Števulová, director or the non-governmental organisation Human Rights League specified that countries of the European Union can grant refugees asylum or supplementary protection. Yet there are differences in reasons for which these are granted. Asylum is being granted on the basis of the Geneva Convention, i.e. when a person is persecuted for one of five specific reasons: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. It is also possible to grant asylum based on humanitarian reasons. Supplementary protection is being granted for different reasons.
“On the territory of the EU also other forms of protection than asylum have been always granted,” said Števulová, adding that the definition of asylum, as it covers only five concrete reasons, does not cover all situations when human rights may be violated and the person is worthy of protection. Such cases involve granting of protection to people sentenced to death which neither Slovakia nor the EU acknowledge or to people endangered by a war conflict in their home country.
