The number of asylum applications in Germany has risen significantly in the past year. In addition to around one millions Ukrainians seeking protection, almost a quarter of a million people from elsewhere submitted asylum applications in Germany in 2022.
According to the head of the German Development Agency GIZ, Germany has managed to bring around 24,000 people out of Afghanistan in the last few months.
After escaping the Taliban in August 2021, a group of Afghans spent over one year in five countries, living with great uncertainty before the small Baltic country of Latvia accepted them. InfoMigrants spoke to one of the Afghans refugees who made it to the capital Riga.
In the Afghanistan of the Taliban, listening to or playing music is considered a sin. The Afghanistan National Institute of Music has been closed since the hardline Islamists returned to power in Kabul in August 2021. The students and teachers of the school fled the country and found refuge in Portugal. Despite the difficulties of exile, they hope to revive their school and thus preserve the Afghan musical heritage.
Some 500 people gathered in Geneva on Thursday to highlight the suicide of an 18-year-old Afghan asylum seeker. He reportedly had taken his own life last week after being informed that he was to going be deported from Switzerland to Greece.