Navigation guide Refugee populations in the UK: Algerians - ICAR

This proposal was finally approved by the European Council in December 2003. The final text resembles
the original Dublin Convention even more closely than the proposal and may well be implemented more
effectively than the original regulation. 4
The Dublin Convention replaced an existing bilateral agreement on return of asylum seekers between
the UK and France (often called the ‘gentleman’s agreement’) signed in 1995. There has been
considerable debate in parliament on whether this agreement was replaced by Dublin, or was allowed to
lapse by the Labour government. Once it became clear that the Dublin Convention was not performing
as well as had been hoped, the UK government attempted to renegotiate the bilateral agreement 3 .
However, the situation of the Red Cross centre at Sangatte complicated the issue and this bilateral
agreement has still not been signed.
1 ECRE (2001) Comments from the European Council on Refugees and Exiles on the Proposal for a Council
Regulation establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining
an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third country national, ECRE, London; European
Commission (2000) Commission Staff Working Paper Revisiting the Dublin Convention SEC (2000) 522.
2 The Convention came into force in September 1997 and its use for Algerians was shaken by the case of
Detention
Aitsegeur. Following
of asylum
the House
seekers
of Lords judgement in this case the Convention virtually ceased to apply to
Algerians. The Danish Refugee Council undertook the only comprehensive empirical analysis of the workings of
the Dublin Convention from 1997 to 2000 (Danish Refugee Council, 2001, Analysis of the Dublin Convention,
Since available the early at http://www.flygtning.dk/publikationer/rapporter/dublin/dublin.pdf 1990s, Algerian asylum seekers have been more likely [accessed to be detained 4 May than 2004]). asylum This seekers study
of gives other no nationalities indication of (see separate statistics nationality section). groups 57
but reveals that in 1998 and 1999, approximately 20% of all
asylum applications to the UK were investigated under the Dublin Convention.
3 The question of renegotiation was first discussed at the Anglo-French summit in Cahors on 9 February 2001
(Guardian 6.2.01) but this was unsuccessful.
4 Collyer (2004 forthcoming).
Anti-terrorism legislation
From 2000 onwards, Algerians have been disproportionately affected by anti-terrorism legislation and its
implementation.
There have been two important acts:
• The Terrorism Act (2000) defined terrorism as an international issue for the first time and proscribed a
number of organisations including the Algerian Groupe Islamique Armée (GIA), (added to Schedule 2).
• The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001) related terrorism explicitly to immigration and
asylum (in part 4) and allowed for indefinite detention without charge for individuals ‘suspected’ by the
Home Secretary of being linked to terrorism.
The French government has been openly critical of the British and German positions on granting asylum to
members of the Algerian Islamist opposition since soon after the beginning of the conflict in Algeria. 58 The
Terrorism Act (2000) was an acknowledgement of their criticism. The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security
Act (2001) was a direct response to the events of 11 September 2001 and went further in granting the
Home Secretary considerable powers. The majority of individuals detained under both of these acts have
57 Home Office statistical bulletins (1990 – 2001).
58 In October 1994, the French Minister of the Interior, Charles Pasqua was openly critical of the British and German
governments for not acting on his request to ban the FIS (Le Monde 4.10.94).
Navigation guide to refugee populations: Algerians
©ICAR 2004, moral rights Michael Collyer
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