CIVIC ASSISTANCE COMMITTEE Russia as a Country of Asylum Report on the implementation of the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees by the Russian Federation Moscow 2015 The report was prepared by the Civic Assistance Committee. On 20 April 2015 the Russian Federation Ministry of Justice registered the Civic Assistance Committee as an organisation fulfilling the function of a foreign agent. The report was published from the funds of the grant provided to the Civic Assistance Committee by the All-Russian Movement “Civil Dignity” under contract No 268/2014/1 of 1 August 2014 and in accordance with the Instruction of the Russian Federation President of 17 January 2014 11-rp. Authors: E. Yu. Burtina, E.Yu. Korosteleva, V.I. Simonov FOR FREE DISTRIBUTION TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Clarification on terminology used CHAPTER 1. THE 1951 CONVENTION AND RUSSIAN LEGISLATION 1.1. 1951 Convention rules that are implemented in the Law On Refugees 1.2. Norms of 1951 Convention that correspond to Russian legislation 1.3. Convention norms that do not have an equivalent in Russian legislation 1.4. Correlation between the Convention and other provisions of the Law On Refugees 1.5. Positive provisions of the Law On Refugees, that do not have an equivalent in the 1951 Convention. CHAPTER 2. ACCESS TO ASYLUM PROCEDURE 2.1. Information for persons arriving in Russia seeking asylum. 2.2. Access to asylum procedure at the territorial bodies of the Russian FMS 2.3. Access to the asylum procedure from detention facilities 2.4. Access to the procedure of asylum application at a border checkpoint 2.5. Access to the asylum procedure for Ukrainian citizens 2.6. Problems with access to the asylum procedure: the position of the Russian FMS CHAPTER 3. QUALITY OF PROCEDURE 3.1. Normative Regulations 3.2. The Asylum Procedure 3.3. Decisions CHAPTER 4. LOSS AND DEPRIVATION OF ASYLUM CHAPTER 5. RIGHT OF APPEAL 5.1. Legal basis 5.2. Creating obstacles against the realisation of the right to appeal 5.3. Administrative appeals to decisions on asylum 5.4. Observance of the right of refugees to judicial protection CHAPTER 6. DOCUMENTS CHAPTER 7. GUARANTEES OF NON-REFOULEMENT 7.1. Administrative expulsion 7.2. Deportation at the decision of the FMS bodies 7.3. Extradition and abductions CHAPTER 8. IMPLEMENTATION OF REFUGEES’ RIGHTS 8.1. The rights of refugees undergoing a status determination procedure and of persons granted temporary asylum 8.2. The rights of recognised refugees CHAPTER 9. NATURALISATION CONCLUSION Annex 1 Annex 2 Annex 3. Table 7 (to Chapter 5) INTRODUCTION This report has been prepared by the Civic Assistance Committee as part of the "Right for Asylum" project (01.09.2014-31.08.2015). This project was completed thanks to a grant provided by the All-Russian public movement "Civil Dignity" on the basis of contract No. 268/2014/1 of 01.08.2014 and in accordance with Presidential Decree No. 11-RP of 17.01.2014 issued by the President of the Russian Federation . The report describes Russia’s asylum system and analyzes its compliance to standards set out in the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol. In spite of the fact that Russia joined the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol in 1992, and the system of asylum in the Russian Federation began to develop in 1993 when the Russian Federation's Law on Refugees was issued, such a report is published for the first time. The fact that it was the Civic Assistance Committee (the Committee) that undertook the preparation of the report is to be quite expected. The Committee is the oldest Russian NGO that provides support to refugees. The organisation was founded in 1989 by a group of not indifferent Muscovites when the first wave since the Great Patriotic War flow of refugees (victims of the Armenian pogroms in Azerbaijan) flooded into Moscow. Until that time no state institutes working with refugees had ever existed either in the USSR or Russia. Whilst protecting the rights of refugees and other groups of forced migrants the Committee had to interact with the Federal Migration Service (the FMS of Russia) and its territorial authorities on a regular basis. This interaction began from the very moment the FMS of Russia was created in 1993 and proceeds unto this day. The forms of interaction vary. The Committee sends, almost on a daily basis, inquiries and petitions on specific cases and regarding general questions about working with refugees both to the FMS and to its territorial authorities. It also assists refugees in filing appeals against decisions taken by the bodies of the FMS of Russia while lawyers engaged by the Committee represent their interests in court sessions on the appeal of these decisions. The staff members of the Committee have made multiple trips to Temporary Accommodation Centres for refugees and displaced persons that are within the jurisdiction of the FMS of Russia where they have provided legal and humanitarian aid. In previous years representatives of the Committee participated in the activity of working groups developing laws in the area of migration and preparing Government Migration Policy. The chairman of the Committee, S. A. Gannushkina is still a member of the Government Commission on Migration Policy. Consequently not only the work of the Committee in assisting refugees, but also the activity of the bodies of the FMS of Russia has been reflected widely and in great detail not only in the database of the Committee where all requests from refugees and other migrants for support are documented but also in several thousand documents (letters from the Committee, replies, decisions of FMS bodies, complaints to them, reports on the work of the Committee, and reports on trips to Temporary Accommodation Centres (the TACs) and many others) stored in the archive of the Committee. Whilst representing refugees, the Committee had to contact many other agencies: most often the Ministry of Internal Affairs, health care authorities, social services, and the education authorities. That interaction has also been reflected in the database and archives of the Committee. Since 1996 the Human Rights Centre Memorial (the Memorial) has operated a Migration Rights program created to provide a network of free legal aid centres for refugees and other migrants in various regions across Russia. The Moscow centre of this network operates from the premises of the Committee as a public drop in centre. Consequently the lawyers from Memorial and the staff members at the Committee in fact work collaboratively. Since 1998 the Committee is a partner to The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (the UNHCR). Long-term cooperation with the UNHCR (participation in trainings organised by the UNHCR, consultations on specific refugee cases and joint discussions on affairs, applying the methodical and regional geographic literature published by the UNHCR) has given the staff of the Committee an idea of the international standards of working with refugees and enabled them to master the application of these standards. Thus, in preparing the "Russia as a Country of Asylum" report the Committee draws from a solid base of 25 years' work in the field of protecting the rights of refugees, long-term cooperation with the FMS of Russia and the UNHCR, as well as extensive factual and documentary material gathered as a result of this activity. When writing the report we planned not only to use the materials already available to the Committee relating to the practical work of assisting refugees but also to make special efforts to collect data necessary to analyse and describe two major elements of the asylum system in Russia: access to the status determination procedure and the procedure for appealing decisions of the bodies of the FMS of Russia on granting asylum at court. For this purpose we decided to organise regular monitoring in two ways: 1) monitoring the work of the departments which are responsible for working with refugees (the territorial authorities of the FMS of Russia in Moscow and the Moscow region), and 2) monitoring the metropolitan area court sessions on complaints about refusals to grant asylum. In addition, we considered it necessary to observe at court sessions on cases where administrative sanctions by means of deportation were imposed on asylum seekers and refugees. Committee staff and lawyers from Memorial often accompany refugees to refugee departments of the Office of the Federal Migration Service of Russia in Moscow (the UFMS – Migration Service of Moscow) and the Office of the Federal Migration Service of Russia for the Moscow region (the Migration Service of the Moscow region). Furthermore, we constantly hear stories from refugees about their visits to these offices at the drop in centre at the Committee and, therefore, the Committee has abundant material about the work of these departments at its disposal. In addition, the lawyers of Memorial have been representing the interests of refugees in the Moscow courts for many years and we are well aware of legal practice regarding asylum cases. Nevertheless, we considered it necessary to organise regular observations in refugee departments of the Migration Service and in courts, since the involvement of lawyers and the Committee staff in asylum request procedures or in judicial proceedings often doesn't allow them to keep records of all the details of the process or allow them to be reasonably objective. Besides, we expected that monitoring in the Migration Service of Moscow and the Migration Service of the Moscow Region would enable us to collect statistical information reflecting the accessibility of asylum seeking procedures. Two documents were produced to organise monitoring in courts: the monitoring program (by V.