According to EU Helpers, Thuringia has decided to halt deportations of Yazidi women and minors to Iraq until at least April. This announcement relates especially to them.
With over 200,000 Yazidis living there, Germany is currently the country with the largest Yazidi diaspora in the world. The radical group Islamic State (IS) overran the Sinjar Mountains in northern Iraq in 2014, uprooting the Yazidi community that had lived there for centuries, and this is when InfoMigrants claims that the Yazidi population in Europe began to rise.
Germany declared this year that the actions against the Yazidi community from 2014 to 2018 were genocide, acknowledging the horrors carried out by IS. Between 300,000 and 700,000 Yazidis are estimated to have resided in Iraq before to the IS assault, according to the European Parliament. This led to a widespread exodus as the community abandoned their homes to avoid being cleared of what the extremist organization considered to be "un-Islamic influences" in the area.
The state of North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany was the only area to forbid the deportation of Yazidi minority members prior to Thuringia's declaration. Government statistics indicates that less than half of Iraqi Yazidis in Germany have their refugee petitions fully granted, despite the formal recognition of the Yazidi genocide.
There are still a great deal of Yazidis awaiting final verdicts; out of the 4,706 asylum cases that Iraqi Yazidis submitted to Germany, 2,420 have been denied. After their request for international protection was denied, the Yazidis organized protests in October outside the German lower house of parliament (Bundestag) and other government buildings.
Protesters expressed dread of being sent back to Iraq, especially in light of the government's decision to permit the deportation of people whose asylum applications had been denied. A hunger strike was even used by some protestors.
As the grip of IS has decreased in Iraq, fewer Yazidis from that country have been able to obtain asylum in Germany. Data from the European Union Agency for refuge (EUAA) indicates that 48.6% of Yazidis were granted refuge in 2022.
Moreover, of the about one million applications filed to EU+ nations in 2022, Germany—which has been recognized as the primary destination for asylum seekers within the EU+—received almost 244,000 of them. The 27 EU member states plus Norway and Switzerland are collectively referred to as EU+.
The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) granted asylum to 35,316 applicants in November 2023 alone, bringing the total number of applications approved annually to 304,581.
The Federal Office completed 242,185 asylum cases during that time. Germany registered 325,801 asylum applicants between January and November 2023; this included 304,581 first-time applications and 21,220 second-time applications.