© UNHCR/Lucrezia Vittori

Last updated: 24 October 2023

The Asylum Capacity Support Group Dialogue Platform held its first technical meeting on Thursday, 21 September 2023. 

The meeting was organized in a virtual format from 3:30 to 5:30 pm CET (with English, French and Spanish interpretation available).

The meeting provided an opportunity to a) highlight State practices in the application of prima facie approaches to refugee status determination and the processing of manifestly well-founded asylum applications to manage backlogs and address large scale arrivals including in situations of onward and mixed movements; and b) discuss the challenges, lessons learned and way forward to enable a wider and more effective implementation of such approaches.

Mr. John Hutchings, Assistant Deputy Chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada presented and co-moderated the meeting alongside Ms. Elise Currie-Roberts, Chief of the Asylum Systems and Determination Section of UNHCR. The meeting also include presentations by Ms. Emily Horton, Head of Asylum Backlog Policy, Home Office, United Kingdom, Ms. Amarilis Busch Tavares, Eligibility Coordinator, National Committee for Refugees, Ministry of Justice and Public Security, Brazil, and Mr. Auguy Lukuka, Director of Protection, National Commission for Refugees, Democratic Republic of Congo.

A concept note and draft agenda of the meeting is available in English, Français, Español, and Arabic.

For further information, please refer to the outcome report, which outlines the key findings from the presentations and discussion.