Asylum

Panelists at an event organized by a rights group in Oslo on Tuesday criticized Norway’s approach to asylum applications from Turkish nationals, particularly those affiliated with the Gülen movement, a faith-based group outlawed by Ankara, and stressed that the Turkish government’s crackdown on the group has not abated.

The event, which aimed to shed light on human rights violations in Turkey, featured detailed accounts of ongoing persecution and called for more thorough assessments of asylum applications by Norwegian authorities.

Turkey accuses the Gülen movement, a faith-based group invested in education and relief work throughout the world and inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, of masterminding a failed coup in July 2016. The movement strongly denies any involvement in it.

Following the failed coup, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government launched a massive purge targeting real and alleged members of the movement under the pretext of an anti-coup fight, removing over 130,000 people from civil service jobs.

The AKP had designated the group as a terrorist organization before the coup and jailed tens of thousands on alleged membership in the movement, seizing schools, universities, media outlets, companies and their buildings and the assets of individuals, corporations and organizations that were believed to have had ties to the organization.

Selcuk Gültaşlı, former Brussels bureau chief of the now-closed Zaman daily, opened the panel by discussing the relentless oppression of Gülen movement members in Turkey following the coup attempt in July 2016.

The Zaman daily, which was Turkey’s best-selling newspaper, was closed down by the Turkish government following the abortive putsch due to its alleged links to the movement.

Gültaşlı emphasized that the Turkish government continues to target members of the movement across all walks of life despite claims by some European governments that persecution has decreased and that they are basing their reasons for rejecting asylum applications from Gülen members on this.

Prof. Em. Dr. Johan Vande Lanotte, a former deputy prime minister of Belgium and reputed professor in international human rights law who has extensively studied the Turkish judicial system, argued that the foundations of the persecution have not changed.

He pointed to the Yalçınkaya case, where the European Court of Human Rights identified significant legal shortcomings in Turkey’s terrorism convictions. Vande Lanotte highlighted that despite some judicial reforms, the Turkish government’s stance towards the Gülen movement remains aggressively unchanged, with thousands still facing prosecution.

Teacher Yüksel Yalçınkaya was sentenced in 2017 to more than six years in prison over his alleged links to the Gülen movement.

His conviction was based on his bank account, labor union membership and use of a mobile messaging application called ByLock.

Turkish officials expressed their intent to implement the Yalçınkaya ruling as an isolated case instead of interpreting it as a precedent.

Experts such as the Turkish Bar Association and prominent jurist Tolga Şirin have called on the Turkish government to abide by the Yalçınkaya judgment.

In the meantime, reports indicated ongoing waves of detention of people over ByLock use despite the Yalçınkaya ruling.

Following the coup attempt in 2016, the Turkish government summarily removed some 4,000 judges and prosecutors from their jobs due to alleged Gülen links.

Many experts and observers said the post-coup purges had a chilling effect on the remaining members of the judiciary.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has also been accused of replacing the purged judicial members with young and inexperienced judges and prosecutors who have close links to the ruling AKP.

In a development that confirmed the erosion of the Turkish judiciary, Turkey was ranked 117th among 142 countries in the 2023 Rule of Law Index published by the World Justice Project (WJP) in late October, dropping one place in comparison to the previous year.

Ragnar Nes, a Norwegian philosopher and human rights activist, provided personal anecdotes to illustrate the severity of the situation. He described his experiences with Turkish communities and the intense polarization that persists.

Jørgen Lorentzen, a Norwegian literary scholar, questioned the integrity of a recent country information report by Norwegian authorities, which has been used to deny asylum claims. He criticized the superficial nature of the report, noting that it undermines the gravity of the ongoing human rights abuses in Turkey. Lorentzen called for immediate action to address the discrepancies in the asylum process, stressing the need for a thorough, evidence-based approach.

Ola Elvestuen, a member of the Norwegian parliament, acknowledged the criticism and expressed concern over the potential misjudgments in asylum decisions. He emphasized that individual cases of persecution should not be overlooked due to broader political dynamics and affirmed the importance of upholding Norway’s reputation as a champion of human rights.

The panel also featured emotional testimony from Turkish asylum seekers, including Müberra Bilgebal, who shared her family’s plight following her father’s imprisonment for his affiliation with the Gülen movement. Her account underscored the ongoing risks faced by returnees to Turkey, challenging the notion that the situation has improved.

In closing, the panelists urged Norwegian authorities to re-evaluate their “country information” and ensure that decisions regarding asylum seekers are based on comprehensive and accurate reports. They called for continued international pressure on Turkey to address its human rights record and to support those fleeing persecution.

President Erdoğan has been targeting followers of the Gülen movement, inspired by Turkish Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen, since the corruption investigations of December 17-25, 2013, which implicated then-prime minister Erdoğan, his family members and his inner circle.

Dismissing the investigations as a Gülenist coup and conspiracy against his government, Erdoğan designated the movement as a terrorist organization and began to target its members. He intensified the crackdown on the movement following the abortive putsch in 2016 that he accused Gülen of masterminding. Gülen and the movement strongly deny involvement in the coup attempt or any terrorist activity.

In addition to the thousands who were jailed, scores of other Gülen movement followers had to flee Turkey to avoid the government crackdown.

Italy will allow a ship carrying 179 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean Sea to dock so medics can carry out health checks, the country’s foreign minister said on Friday.

Antonio Tajani said that Humanity 1, a German-flagged vessel, would head for Catania, Sicily, and “be able to stay in our territorial waters for the time necessary for us to examine all the emergencies on board”.

More than 1,000 migrants who were trying to reach Europe are currently aboard three rescue boats, and Italy has faced mounting pressure to let the humanitarian ships dock.

The charity rescue ships, including the Norwegian flag-bearing Ocean Viking and Geo Barents, have been at sea off Italy for more than a week waiting for permission from Rome to dock.

The Norwegian-flagged vessels have more than 800 people on board and are sailing off Sicily, while the German-flagged Humanity 1 has 179 people, including more than 100 unaccompanied minors and a seven-month-old baby with her mother.

“We will accept all those people, for example because they are minors, or because, according to what we know from the media, they are pregnant women or with young children, or people with fever”, Mr Tajani said.

But he warned that “all those who do not meet these criteria will have to be removed from our territorial waters by the ship”.

Norway ambassador to Italy said. it will not take in almost 1,000 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean.

In an email statement to Reuters, ambassador Johan Vibe said Norway had “no responsibility” to take in the people on board two private Norwegian-flagged vessels.

The Norwegian ambassador’s response came after Italy’s new Prime Minister Georgia Meloni suggested that the countries under whose flags the ships are operating should take in the rescued migrants.

Italy sent letters last week to the embassies of Germany and Norway, saying non-government organisation (NGO) ships flying their flags were not following European security rules and were undermining the fight against illegal immigration.

“The primary responsibility for co-ordinating the work to ensure a safe port for those in distress at sea lies with the state responsible for the search-and-rescue area where such assistance has been rendered.

“Neighbouring coastal states also have a responsibility in such matters,” Mr Vibe’s statement said.

The German embassy on Wednesday urged Italy to provide help swiftly, saying the NGO ships made an important contribution to saving lives at sea.

On Thursday, the charity SOS Mediterranee, which operates the Ocean Viking, said it had asked Greece, Spain and France.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin told RMC-BFMTV that international law said Italy should take in the migrants, but also said that Paris and Berlin were ready to offer assistance.

“We have told our Italian friends, together with our German friends, that we are ready to take in, clearly as we have done in previous cases, some of the women and children so that Italy is not alone in receiving them,” he said.

Search-and-rescue co-ordinator for SOS Humanity, Nicola Stalla, called the “blockade at sea” a “disgrace” and said delays in disembarking could have “life-threatening consequences”.

Petra Krischok, a press officer at the German NGO, SOS Humanity, who is aboard the vessel, posted on Twitter that the migrants were sleeping on the deck and could soon face rough seas after days of good weather.

In a video posted on the social media platform, a doctor on Humanity 1, said people aboard were getting sicker and suffering from skin problems, psychological stress; some showed signs of having experienced violence.

Earlier in the week, the Italian interior minister Matteo Piantedosi told the Corriere della Sera daily newspaper that Italy “cannot take in migrants who are picked up at sea by foreign ships operating without any planned co-ordination with the authorities”.

Migrant numbers have surged in Italy over the past week, with more than 6,200 people arriving since October 27 compared with 1,400 in the same period in 2021, according to government data.

The latest figures from the UN refugee agency show there have been just over 83,000 sea arrivals in Italy this year.

The European Court of Justice has ruled that EU countries may not dismiss asylum applications on the ground that Norway has already rejected them.

Germany cannot turn an asylum seeker away on the ground that they have already been rejected in Norway, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on Thursday, May 20. The verdict means that German immigration authorities have to re-examine the application of an Iranian national.

In 2009, Norway rejected an Iranian man’s application for asylum and turned him over to Iranian authorities. In 2014, he submitted another asylum application — this time in Germany. The German court refused his claim because Norway had already rejected him. After the Iranian asylum seeker appealed against the German administrative court decision, the case was referred to the European Court of Justice. 

Norway asylum decisions not applicable in EU states

Germany and Norway are both signatories to the Dublin Regulation, according to which asylum applications must generally be handled in the countries in which migrants first arrive in Europe. The Regulation seeks to prevent people from submitting several applications across the continent and ensure the same level of protection throughout the bloc.

According to the European Court of Justice, when it comes to asylum seekers, Germany cannot treat Norway in the same way as an EU member state. Norway participates in the Dublin procedure but not in the other EU asylum rules, according to the court. Thus Norway’s decisions in asylum cases are not binding on the EU states. 

A German court had stated that, due to similar immigration systems in Norway and Germany, it would be unlikely that someone whose asylum claim had been rejected in Norway would subsequently be granted asylum in Germany. However, the argument failed to persuade the Luxembourg court.

(With KNA, EDP, and AFP)

Article 2 of the European Union’s main treaty proclaims that the EU “is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.”

“These values are common to the member states,” the document states.

But earlier this month, Norway — which is not an EU member but guarantees human rights in its constitution — granted temporary political asylum to Polish human rights activist Rafal Gawel, his wife, and their small daughter. Oslo agreed with his contention that Poland’s populist government had significantly eroded the independence of the country’s judiciary.

“I simply showed that at the moment in Poland most of the courts have been taken over by politically empowered persons,” Gawel told to media in a telephone interview from Oslo. “Therefore, we cannot say that there is an independent judiciary in Poland, independent of executive-branch and government influence.”

Gawel, 47, is the founder and head of the Center for Monitoring Racist and Xenophobic Behavior in the eastern Polish city of Bialystok. In January 2019, he was sentenced to two years in prison after being convicted of fraud, forging signatures, and faking financial documents. He denies the allegations and says his conviction was political persecution for his center’s activity exposing far-right extremism.

Gawel, who also cited threats from far-right groups that he says have contacts with Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party in his asylum application, is the first Pole to be granted political asylum in the West since Poland joined the EU in 2004 — and in fact, since the end of communist rule and the Cold War 15 years earlier.

The nationalist-populist PiS took over the Polish government in 2015 and has been accused of dismantling the country’s democratic institutions and of promoting right-wing extremism.

“Slowly, slowly, Poland is moving toward [being] a fundamentalist, Catholic country,” Gawel asserted. “The worst thing is that Polish populists…have noticed that it is a huge advantage to frighten people and consolidate their voters around fear…. Every few years PiS changes the narrative a little and pushes its followers to fear homosexuals or refugees or Muslims.”

Alarm bells over the PiS’s judicial reforms have been sounding since at least 2015. According to a European Commission report last month on the state of the rule of law in the bloc, the reforms “have increased the influence of the executive and legislative powers over the justice system and therefore weakened judicial independence.”

‘Fundamentally Deviating Interpretation’

Similar concerns have been voiced for years over Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his nationalist Fidesz party. Hungary was downgraded to “partly free” on the Freedom In The World index issued by the U.S.-based NGO Freedom House. It accused the Fidesz government of instituting “policies that hamper the operations of opposition groups, journalists, universities, and nongovernmental organizations…whose perspectives it finds unfavorable.”

In 2019, the respected Central European University, partially funded by Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros, withdrew most of its activities from Hungary following a two-year campaign against it by the Fidesz government. The EU, the U.S. government, and academic institutions around the world denounced Budapest’s actions as an assault on academic freedom.

Roland Freudenstein, policy director of the Brussels-based Martens Centre, which is associated with the center-right European People’s Party, said Poland and Hungary presented a unique problem within the European Union because they are endorsing a “fundamentally deviating interpretation” of EU treaties.

“What we have in [these] two countries, we now have a fundamentally deviating interpretation of the treaties,” he told RFE/RL. “And it is extremely hard to mend this and to come back to a unified interpretation of the treaties with the political parties that are in power in those two countries.”

Poland and Hungary, Freudenstein said, “claim that rule of law is based on national traditions and that there is no genuinely valid European definition of the rule of law.”

“That’s the root of the problems we have in the European Union at the moment,” he added.

Sophie Pornschlegel, a political scientist with the European Policy Center, another Brussels-based think tank, noted that although the Gawel case involved non-EU member Norway, there have been examples of EU members Germany and the Netherlands declining to extradite Polish nationals using similar arguments.

“They don’t trust the justice system there, which is a huge issue because it is the basis of European cooperation to have mutual trust in the justice system, not only for citizens, but, of course, also for the single market,” Pornschlegel told RFE/RL.

She added that the fact that the union works on the basis of unanimity makes it difficult to confront members on questions of fundamental values.

“One of the big issues I see is that European values are seen as a political or policy field like any other policy field, without realizing that these are the fundamental values we base our cooperation on,” she said. “There should be a difference there in how you treat those issues compared to economic policy, climate change policy…. When those values are not respected anymore, then we have a real issue which goes beyond the kind of daily political interests and differences we may have.”

Real Change ‘Must Come Locally’

Stefan Lehne, a visiting scholar with Carnegie Europe, is more sanguine about the situation, although he acknowledges that the EU has “a big problem in quite a number of countries, specifically in Hungary and Poland.”

However, he said, the recent European Commission report on the rule of law found “there are problems in just about every member state.”

“There is nothing like a place where the rule of law is freely flourishing,” he told RFE/RL.

Lehne argues that the European Court of Justice may be the bloc’s best mechanism for rebuilding its values consensus, and said that the court had “become a little bit more active” in taking on rule-of-law matters.

“Both in the case of Hungary and Poland, there have been a number of judgements recently which ultimately have been implemented by the governments and led to changes,” he said.

Ultimately, however, he pins his hopes on Hungarian and Polish citizens, noting that Fidesz has suffered losses in recent municipal elections. “Similarly, in Poland, change is possible and the civil society in both places is alive,” he told RFE/RL. “It’s an uphill struggle and it will take some time, but fundamental change only comes locally.”

Gawel, who has vowed to continue his monitoring of the far right in Poland from Oslo, expressed similar hopes for Poland. “Poles are in general outspoken supporters of the European Union,” he said. “We, as a nation, have always valued the achievements of the West and Western civilization. We have always aspired to belong to it.”

“Everything will depend on whether democratic forces will be able to gain a voice in Poland or whether the PiS will continue to rule,” he concluded.

In the meantime, he has three cases against the Polish government currently pending in the European Court of Human Rights.

A report from the Norway’s official statistics bureau that shows immigrants now account for nearly half of Norway’s population grow, a trend that follows the agency’s report that ethnic Norwegians will be a minority in the country by the end of the century.

Last year, 52,000 people immigrated to Norway, which nearly equals the amount of 54,500 children born in the country in 2019, according to Statistics Norway.

The Norwegian statistics bureau identified stable migration as one of the main trends in population growth in Norway, while on the other hand,  the declining births and an aging of the population are negative trends for Norway.

Statistics Norway also points to certain municipalities with rapidly falling populations, which serves as a major economic and population drag on those regions. Many young people leave for cities and other economically strong areas, leading to fewer children born and a sense of decline for those regions most affected.

Last year, net migration to Norway amounted to 25,300 people, but the country of 5.3 million has consistently seen its share of newborns decreasing each year, with native born reaching a peak in 2009 with 61,800 births.

Due to these trends, the average age of Norwegians jumped by 0.23 percent to 40.5 years.

Given the increasing number of migrants in the country, there are worries about the decline in the ethnic Norwegians population. According to journalist Helge Lurås of the news outlet Resett, ethnic Norwegians are on their way to “become a minority in their own country”.

Resett analyzed the data on newborn children with an immigrant background and compared them with the net migration data. There were 42,300 people with an immigrant background and 37,000 newborns with an ethnic Norwegian background. In conclusion, Resett found out that in 2019, at least 53 percent of children born in Norway had a foreign background.

The fertility rate of ethnic Norwegian women (1.50) compared to women with an immigrant background (1.87) is another unfavorable factor. Women with an African background have an even higher fertility rate, which stands at 2.6 children per mother.

The 2017 report of Statistics Norway, predicting that 52 percent of the population will have an immigrant background by 2100, seems increasingly likely.

This watershed moment could even occur before then.

Currently, about 18 percent of the population in Norway has an immigrant background. In the younger age group, the percentage is even higher, exceeding 30 percent.

In the past, the Norwegian population was highly homogenous. In the late 1970s, ethnic Norwegians made up 98 percent of the population. Nowadays, except for Norwegians, the most numerous foreign groups are Poles, Swedes, Somalis, Lithuanians, Pakistanis, and Iraqis.

Norway is considering taking in 600 refugees and asylum seekers from Libya, who are currently at the emergency transit center in Bugesera District, Rwanda.

This is part of plans from the Scandinavian country to halt the smuggling of migrants from the Mediterranean Sea.

Confirming the news, Norway’s Justice and Immigration Minister Joaran Kallmyr in a statement to The Associated Press, said: “For me, it is important to send a signal that we will not back smuggling routes and cynical backers, but instead bring in people with protection needs in an organized form.” 

“Therefore, the government has decided to collect 600 quota refugees from Libya, out of 800 in total, from the transit reception in Rwanda in 2020,” he added. 

Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan contribute largely to the number of refugees on the continent. According to UNHCR, 2019, 150,000 – 200,000 migrants left the East and Horn of Africa (EHoA) region traveling eastwards towards the Arab Peninsula and northwards towards northern Africa and Europe.

Norway isn’t the only country in Europe which has taken steps to resettle refugees. In 2017, the French government absorbed a group of 19 Sudanese refugees, 11 of them children, most of whom were selected from a refugee camp in Chad.

Meanwhile, Rwanda’s Foreign Affairs Minister Dr Vincent Biruta at his first media briefing said that his country is hosting about 300 refugees and asylum seekers of different nationalities at the Gashora Transit Centre.

Since 2015, the number of migrants risking their lives to enter into European Union territories increased as the regional body continues to find ways to stop refugees and other migrants from crossing the Mediterranean.

As part of an agreement signed between Rwanda, the African Union and the United Nations refugee agency in September, the East African country hosts a camp for people who have been evacuated from often chaotic, overcrowded detention centers in Libya. 

Two Bulgarian sailors have fallen overboard the cargo ship Stara Planina, which is currently located in the Norwegian Sea.

Hours later, the Norwegian Coast Guard terminated the search operation for the two sailors because of the chances that the victims survived due to weather conditions in the area are close to zero, Navibulgar told Media.

The Stara Planina ship was taking a regular course when this morning a 9-meter wave pushed the two sailors overboard. The incident occurred in extremely severe weather conditions – winds exceeding 20 meters per second and stormy sea, said Alexander Kalchev, executive director of BMF: The relatives of the sailors have been notified of the incident.

The captain of the ship immediately signaled to the Norwegian Rescue Coordination Center. Helicopters were sent there immediately by the Naval Service. The ship itself was 65 miles offshore. Bypass activities continue.

“According to the Norwegian Joint Rescue Coordination Center, under the current climatic conditions there is no chance for those who have fallen into the water to survive for such a long time,” the ministry said in a statement.

A total of 19 people sailed aboard the Stara Planina cargo ship – 18 Bulgarian citizens and one Ukrainian, Media reported.

Politicians are contributing to the increased anxiousness about immigration, which has been spurred by climate change and lack of rule of law, particularly in Mexico and central America, a former US Homeland Security Secretary has said.

Speaking at the GLOBSEC 2019 Bratislava Forum on Thursday, Michael Chertoff said that immigration had been “a big issue” for the US for a number of years.

“We have people who are fleeing from the northern triangle from the western hemisphere because there’s literally no control over the gangs that are preying on people,” he said. “So these major structural issues, whether it’s climate, lack of rule of law, real poverty or even disease and pollution, are driving people across borders.”

“It creates an exaggerated sense among many populations – of people feeling that not in control of their own destiny or their own country. I think that is the source a lot the stress we’ve seen, admittedly deliberately exacerbated by politicians or exploiting it.”

Mr Chertoff was Secretary of Homeland Security between February 2005 and January 2009, serving under President George W Bush.

Marietje Schaake, member of the European Parliament in Brussels, who was also speaking on the panel, said that Europe had learnt “some very painful lessons” on migration in recent years.

According to Eurostat, EU countries received over 1.2 million first-time asylum applications in 2015, more than double of that of the previous year. More than 1 million migrants crossed the Mediterranean Sea that year. Although numbers in the following years have sharply decreased, there are fears they will increase again due to conflicts in countries such as Libya that have caused people to flee.

“We have to step up the measures to make sure the people who have the right to asylum can come in, that we prevent all the worst case scenarios from happening, so Europe can influence other parts of the world,” said Ms Schaake.

She said she hoped that politicians “fanning the flames of fear” around immigration would come around and take the necessary steps to tackle climate change.

Ms Schaake said that she hoped the far right nationalists, who have recently come to the European parliament in droves after the May’s election results, will learn that “it’s often in our self-interest to impact peoples’ lives all over the world”.

Many refugees lose their papers and diplomas while fleeing, but without such documentation it may be difficult to get a job or enroll in a higher education institution in the host country. “The qualifications passport gives refugees the opportunity to use their skills in a new life situation, for the good of the person itself and for society”, says Norwegian Minister of Research and Higher Education, Ms. Iselin Nybø. Now, the Minister increases the financial support and the next step is to make the qualifications passport a global solution.

In 2015, the Council of Europe launched the European Qualifications Passport for Refugees project in the aftermath of Europe receiving the largest number of migrants since the second world war.

The qualifications passport entails that those who lack documentation and diplomas may receive a temporary assessment of their qualifications and education.

The goal of the qualifications passport is to provide refugees with opportunities in the labor market or in further studies, says Minister Nybø.

Increased financial support

So far, 249 individuals have been granted the qualifications passport. By the end of 2018, 21 refugees was enrolled at universities around Europe based on their qualifications  passports. Unntil now, the project has been in a pilot phase. Now the project is ready to scale up.

“The possibility to upscale the project is an important reason why we grant more money, so that even more refugees may receive a qualifications passport”, says Minister Nybø.

Norway, together with Greece and Italy, is among the countries that have contributed financially to the pilot project. In 2018, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research granted 550.000 NOK (approximately 55.000 euro), but due to promising results, Minister Nybø has now decided to increase the financial support for 2019 to 1 million NOK (approximately 100.000 euro). Minister Nybø is also open to continuing funding the project in 2020. This enables the Council of Europe to scale up the project, disseminate information and provide training to more evaluators so that more people can benefit from the project

In Norway, serveral stakeholders, including labor organisations, employer organisations, universities, university colleges and the refugees themselves, are very positive towards the qualifications passport.

Method developed in Norway

The idea for the project stemmed from The Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) in cooperation with their British sister agency. The qualifications passport is based on NOKUT’s own Recognition Procedure for Persons without Verifiable Documentation.

“We are proud that the method we have developed is now used internationally. We assist the Council of Europe with training and ensuring quality in the process to make sure that the project is able to reach its potential. We are pleased to see that the experiences from piloting the qualifications passport in countries such as Lebanon and Turkey show that the method has great value also in other parts of the world”, says Director General of NOKUT, Mr Terje Mørland.

Global potential

Today, nine countries participate with their experts in carrying out assessments, and the capacity to provide even more refugees with the same opportunity is steadily increasing.  Spain is currently experiencing a large wave of refugees, and is for the time being the most recent country to ask the Council of Europe for help regarding qualifications assessments.

“The qualifications passport project has the potential to help refugees worldwide, not only in Europe. Therefore, I have started discussing with the Council of Europe and UNESCO whether we together could turn this into a global project, and include other countries that also see the great potential. So far, I have received very positive feedback”, says Minister Nybø.

The Norwegian government has come under fire from pro-migrant groups after announcing it would be removing refugee status from some 1,600 Somalians and sending them back to Somalia, noting the situation in the country had improved.

The Norwegian government has said that Somalia now has a more stable government and the refugees no longer need the protection of the Norwegian state, Nettavisen reports.

Several pro-asylum seeker groups have spoken out against the move accusing the government of breaking international asylum rules, such as the Norwegian Organization for Asylum Seekers (NOAS) which argued that the conditions in Somali have not changed enough to justify stripping the migrants of refugee status.

“The Somali state can not offer effective protection,” said senior advisor to NOAS André Møkkelgjerd. The organisation is also challenging the decision to remove the refugee status of one Somali in court.

Norwegian State Secretary Torkil Åmland commented on the opposition to the move saying, “The fact that some organisations disagree with the strict asylum and immigration policy that this government is leading is not the same as breaking the rules.”

“The whole basis of the refugee convention is that there are only people with real protection needs that are entitled to stay. Neither the Constitution nor our international obligations mean that a foreign national is entitled to a particular type of permit in Norway,” Åmland added.

Migrants in Norway have become a strain on the country’s generous welfare system with individuals from migrant backgrounds making up half of the welfare recipients in the country.

A report from the Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research released last year also revealed that the longer migrants were in Norway, the more likely they were to be dependent on state handouts and less likely to be employed.

Despite the Norwegian people overwhelmingly resisting mass migration in previous opinion polls, the European Union has pushed for the country, which is not a full member of the bloc, to take in more migrants from Africa.