Marine Le Pen spoke out in favor of welcoming Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war led by Russia. For the candidate of the National Rally, on BFMTV, their situation has nothing to do with asylum seekers who fled the conflict in Syria at the time. “There is has a difference, unquestionably. The Syrian refugees who left Syria were almost all men. This raises questions, I find. In a war, we are not surprised to see women, children and the elderly leave the combat zones. Which is surprising when you only see men intervening.“
Over the last ten years, women represent more than 40% of these requests for protection from Syrians, according to reports from Ofpra, the French office for the protection of refugees and stateless persons. In 2020, 958 women applied for asylum out of 2,170 files submitted by Syrians. Syria is one of the three countries of origin whose women are the most represented among the applications.
And among the Syrians who have obtained international protection in France after applying for asylum, 92.6% live with family, according to data from the French Office for Immigration and Integration. In summary: contrary to what Marine Le Pen says, the Syrians who left their country were not “almost all men“.
Marine Le Pen also affirms that unlike the Ukrainians, the Syrians or the Afghans were not really fleeing the war: “The people who are responsible for granting or not granting refugee status refused to grant this status in more than half of the cases, because in reality it was not justified. It was in reality a diversion of the right of asylum.“
It is wrong again. Last year, of all asylum applications from Syrians, 78.3% were granted protection by Ofpra. Of this total, two-thirds of applicants obtain refugee status and one-third subsidiary protection. Contrary to what Marine Le Pen suggests, this subsidiary protection is not proof of a misuse of the right of asylum. It is awarded to a person who proves that he is exposed in his country to the risk of the death penalty, execution, torture or even a serious and individual threat to his life.