Reception Policies, Practices and Responses Hungary Country Report.

Abstract

This report shows how the inhuman border protection and protection policies of the Hungarian government have triggered an adverse refugee reception environment. This is despite very few numbers of refugees currently in the country and even minimal number of people in the current reception system. As we have raised in the previous WP2 Hungary Border Management country report,1 there are grave cases concerning the implementation of the EU directives affecting the delivery of refugee reception policies as well. Moreover, the hostile reception policies are not only affecting refugees, but also activities as well as the morale of the humanitarian workers in the country. Hence, the hostility towards refugees starts with the political discourse that retains perennial crisis narrative, hits border management practices, ripples into reception policy, and has an adverse impact on the more general delivery of humanitarianism in the country. To this extent, this report finds the following. • The Hungarian reception policy follows a centralised, top-down model regarding asylum and immigration policy. It involves both the Police and Armed Forces. • Transit zones have essentially become the only reception facility. They also function as de facto detention centres. • As of December 2018, there were only three people hosted at the existing reception facilities. There is only one designated facility for vulnerable asylum seekers, except the Children’s Home in Fót. We cannot establish the number of asylum seekers in these facilities at the moment of writing. • Effectively, the transit zones operate as reception facilities. We have discussed the situation in the transit zones in detail in WP2 Border Management country report for Hungary. • The government is using the “crisis situation caused by mass migration” narrative in order to curb asylum seekers’ rights. • Asylum-seekers have no access to labour market. • While there are food provisions in the reception centres, due to the “constant state of crisis caused by mass migration”, travel allowances, reimbursement of educational expenses, financial support to facilitate potential return is now suspended. • Even food provisions are dire. The food provisions in the transit zones are limited to canned food, and the asylum seekers have no access to diverse or healthy diet unless social workers provide them. The Hungarian government used starvation as a tactic to force the asylum-seekers leave the transit zone back to Serbia from August 2018 to May 2019. • Sexual minorities have been verbally abused and/or threatened by security guards in one of the reception centres. • The activities of the humanitarian actors for service provision and intervene on behalf of the asylum-seekers are extremely limited. This also removes any possibility of an independent overview of the activities of the Hungarian officials. • The Hungarian government has institutionalised its own Charity Council at the expense of leaving independent humanitarian agencies out. However, it is not very clear what kind of services these agencies provide in the transit zones. • There is no “welcome culture” to talk about in the Hungarian case as the Hungarian government has successfully generated a supportive public audience for its reception policies.