Ministry of Interior to re-draft refugee quota at prime minister's behest

THE MINISTRY of the Interior announced last week it has initiated an expedited decision-making process on targeting the annual refugee quota, citing both the mistrust surrounding its earlier decision and a request from Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (NCP).

A new proposal for targeting the quota, it added, will be presented to the government as soon as possible.

The Ministry of the Interior on Friday also said it is seeking to “dispel suspicions” by publishing a handful of documents appended to the report it submitted to the Ombudsman for Equality in early November. The Ombudsman for Equality ruled earlier this month, citing documents it had requested from the ministry, that there is “a strong assumption” that the political leadership of the ministry had steered the preparatory work on the quota in a way that constitutes religion-based discrimination.

Iltalehti, for example, has reported that the political leadership had a stated preference for Christians.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in July proposed that Finland allocate about 150 spots in its quota to Syrian refugees in Turkey and 200 spots to Afghan refugees in Iran. The Ministry of the Interior was contrastively looking to reserve 250 spots for Congolese refugees in Rwanda and 120 spots for Venezuelan refugees in Peru.

Both Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo are Christian countries. The Finnish government has roughly halved its refugee quota for next year to 500.

Media reports also indicate that the government had attempted to employ religion as a selection criterion also for this year’s quota, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

The Ministry of the Interior on Friday explained that the intention of the political leadership was to make sure also next year’s refugee quota placed an emphasis on religious minorities within Syrian refugees.

“This is the Christians-related instruction that the political leadership brought to the official preparing the matter,” it said in its press release, seemingly suggesting media reporting had failed to detect the implied context of the guidelines.

The documents it published also shed light on the position of other arms of the central administration. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs, they reveal, had estimated that there is no particular need to receive Venezuelan refugees and voiced its support for receiving Afghan refugees, “especially because Finland has no other channels of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan”.

Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen (PS) continued to deny the suggestion that she sought to increase the intake of Christians and reduce that of Muslims in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat on Friday.

“It has nothing to do with religion,” she stated. “The UNHCR template also doesn’t have religions. We’re talking about vulnerable people, all of whom have the refugee status.”

The Left Alliance Parliamentary Group has announced it intends to submit a motion of no confidence against Rantanen. The Green Parliamentary Group has said it will back the motion if the details circulating in media prove accurate.

A final decision on how to target the refugee quota will be made in December.

Aleksi Teivainen – HT