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Appendix 14 -Torture/Non-refoulement Claim Cases

Year
Made Determined Withdrawn or Taken No Further Action Outstanding
(Cumulative)
before 2005 53 0 4 49
2005 211 1 30 229
2006 528 43 54 660
2007 1,584 82 51 2,111
2008 2,198 179 132 3,998
2009 3,286 0 1,037 6,340
2010 1,809 214 1,186 6,749
2011 1,432 932 802 6,447
2012 1,174 1,575 1,154 4,892
2013 491 1,813 778 2,792
2014 8,851 1,047 978 9,618
2015 5,053 2,339 1,410 10,922
2016 3,838 3,218 1,561 9,981
Total on Torture/
Non-refoulement Claims
30,508 11,443 9,177 9,981

The Court of First Instance of the High Court held in December 2008 that the Administration should provide legal assistance to a torture claimant during the screening process and provide suitable training for the decision makers. The Immigration Department (ImmD) then suspended all screening works.
The Legislative Council passed the Immigration (Amendment) Ordinance 2009 in November 2009, making it an offence for illegal immigrants to take any employment or establish or join in any business. The ImmD implemented the enhanced administrative mechanism in December 2009.
This includes 93 reviewed cases.
On commencement of the Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) on 3 March 2014, there were 2,501 outstanding torture claims. Separately, 4,198 persons have lodged non-refoulement claims on applicable grounds (other than torture) (in which 2,962 cases were lodged by rejected or withdrawn torture claimants), making a total of 6,699 non-refoulement claims pending determination on commencement of the USM.