US embassy cable - 05LJUBLJANA549

UNCLAS  LJUBLJANA 000549 
 
SIPDIS 
 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
DRL/CDA FOR CDELL 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PHUM, PREF, SI 
SUBJECT: SLOVENIA: UNHCR COUNTRY DIRECTOR MEETS WITH COM 
 
 
1. (U) Summary: On July 21, UNHCR Director for Slovenia Greg 
Garras met with COM to discuss the state of Slovenian asylum 
policy at the end of his three and a half year tenure. 
Garras lamented that Slovenia,s asylum policies have 
continued to regress under the current center-right 
government - a process which had begun with the previous 
government just prior to EU accession in May 2004.  Garras 
told COM that Slovenian caseworkers rely excessively on 
"manifestly unfounded" determinations of asylum status to 
quickly dismiss applicants without a thorough hearing. 
Garras also said that asylum and human rights NGOs in 
Slovenia have a difficult time sustaining themselves since 
the government gives them little funding and they operate in 
an environment that is not conducive to private  fundraising. 
 The UNHCR office in Slovenia will close in August 2006, at 
which point a regional office in Budapest will handle 
Slovenian asylum issues.  End Summary. 
 
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GoS Asylum policy "Withering on the Vine" 
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2. (U) On July 21, UNHCR Director Greg Garras paid a farewell 
courtesy call on COM.  Garras told COM that Slovenia,s 
asylum procedures, as currently applied, deny asylum seekers 
a fair hearing and may contravene both EU regulations and 
international standards.  Garras noted that the GoS had made 
significant progress towards building a fair and effective 
asylum system prior to EU accession but that its efforts 
dropped off precipitously after Slovenia joined the EU in May 
2004.  Because the current system is under funded and lacks 
personnel, there is pressure on caseworkers to process claims 
quickly and to give applicants a cursory hearing. 
 
3. (U) Garras told COM that an April 2005 Supreme Court 
decision upholding a determination based on the "manifestly 
unfounded" clause of international asylum law has led the GoS 
to dramatically increase the number of applications rejected 
on this basis, creating opportunities for abuse.  Though the 
accelerated "manifestly unfounded" procedure is a legitimate 
part of asylum policy when implemented with the appropriate 
safeguards, the potential for abuse is great when these 
safeguards are circumvented.  Garras told us that from 2003 
to 2004, the number of cases rejected using the accelerated 
"manifestly unfounded" procedure jumped from 42 (4 percent) 
to 245 (21 percent).  Garras was concerned that since most 
asylum seekers transit through Slovenia to other EU 
destinations, hasty denials based on perfunctory hearings 
could not only preclude legitimate asylum seekers from 
staying in Slovenia, but also prevent them from being able to 
seek further review elsewhere within the EU.  Garras told us 
UNHCR had tried to impress upon the GoS that asylum 
caseworkers needed to thoroughly investigate and exhaust all 
potentially legitimate bases for asylum before making a 
"manifestly unfounded" determination, but that his protests 
had "fallen on deaf ears." 
 
4. (U) Garras also said that asylum caseworkers paid 
insufficient attention to identifying victims of human 
trafficking and that a UNHCR-funded project to inform asylum 
applicants of their rights to legal counsel and appeal had 
recently been curtailed by the GoS, ostensibly because of 
limited personnel. 
 
5. (U) In a separate development on June 20, Slovenia,s 
Human Rights Ombudsman, Matjaz Hanzek, issued a statement 
claiming it was illegal for the GoS to require asylum-seekers 
to sign a statement renouncing their claims once they leave 
the premises of Slovenia,s asylum center.  He said that such 
signed statements interfered with asylum seekers, freedom of 
movement and criticized the fact that such waivers were 
presented to asylum seekers only in Slovene. Director of the 
Migration Department at the Ministry of Interior Matjaz 
Dolzan defended the practice stating that it seeks to prevent 
abuse of the asylum system. 
 
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NGO Affairs in Slovenia 
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6. (U) Garras told COM that asylum and human rights NGOs have 
struggled to find funding in Slovenia and that the GoS has 
been slow to implement a framework that would make more money 
available.  Most asylum-related NGOs do not receive funding 
from sources other than UNHCR.  Although an EU fund for 
asylum issues exists, the government channels this funding 
towards its own asylum programs and rarely uses it for NGO 
development. To this end, UNHCR plans to organize workshops 
for local NGOs on private sector fundraising.  The UNHCR,s 
Asylum Law Legal Clinic designed to train asylum adjudicators 
has met with greater success.  The program seeks to addresses 
 
some of the main problems facing asylum caseworkers, 
including lack of adequate training and professional ethics 
due to high burn-out and turnover rates, low pay, and a 
general lack of experts on asylum issues. 
 
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UNHCR,s Slovenia Office to Close in August 2006 
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7. (U) Garras told us UNHCR,s Slovenia office will close 
permanently in August 2006.  After this time, Slovenian 
asylum issues will be addressed from the regional office in 
Budapest, which also handles asylum issues in Hungary, 
Slovakia, and Poland. 
 
 
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Comment 
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8. (SBU) The GOS, backsliding on asylum issues is 
disappointing.  The misuse and potential abuse of the 
accelerated asylum procedure seriously undermines the 
integrity of the asylum system, which on paper is a model 
system. The problem does not lie in "manifestly unfounded" 
determinations per se, nor does it lie with Slovenia's legal 
framework for asylum processing, but rather with the 
allegedly improper implementation of asylum procedures. 
There is hope that UNHCR,s vocal protests may have had an 
effect, however, since Garras told us after our initial 
meeting that a subsequent meeting with Interior Ministry 
State Secretary Bojan Trnovsek resulted in an expression of 
much greater willingness to address UNHCR,s concerns.  With 
the closure of the UNHCR,s Ljubljana office, post will 
coordinate closely with the regional UNHCR director in 
Budapest to continue to monitor Slovenia,s asylum process, 
and will continue to press the GoS to bring its practices in 
line with UNHCR standards. 
 
9.  (SBU) COMMENT CONTINUED.  The potential misuse of asylum 
policy is part of a broader pattern of behavior demonstrating 
Slovenia's insularity and perhaps also a vulnerability about 
its national identity as a small nation.  Given the 
persistent hand-wringing in the press and at the highest 
levels of the GoS about the country's dwindling birth rate, 
it might otherwise appear as if Slovenia's restrictive asylum 
and immigration policies were counterintuitive.  It is 
telling that most asylum seekers in Slovenia are in transit 
to other destinations and that Slovenia has a reputation for 
being a difficult place for foreigners to integrate. 
Although there is some evidence that increased travel 
opportunities and student exchange programs are diminishing 
the fear of the "outsider," at least within the younger 
generation, even younger Slovenes tend to cringe whenever the 
subject of opening their borders is broached.  END COMMENT. 
ROBERTSON 
 
 
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 2005LJUBLJ00549 - Classification: UNCLASSIFIED 


 
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