The Spanish Government will have to grant asylum to some 1,400 minors from Mali under the guardianship of the Canary Islands, many of whom have been on the islands for more than a year, wherever it has places for them, complying with a mandate that has nothing to do with the application of the reform of the Immigration Law.
This was stated this Thursday by the Canarian president, Fernando Clavijo, when asked how the ruling of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court, which accepted the precautionary measure requested by the autonomous community, whose child protection services have been responsible for these children until now, will materialize in nine days.
Clavijo stressed that this ruling has nothing to do with the mandatory distribution among all the Spanish autonomous communities, under the new article 35 of the Immigration Law, of a good part of the more than 5,000 unaccompanied migrant minors who have arrived to these islands in cayucos and pateras and who have not requested international protection.
"The Supreme Court ruling determines that all minors who are eligible for asylum or international protection and request it have the right, and it is the State that has to provide it. What it is telling the Spanish Government is what we have been telling them for a year and a half, that all unaccompanied minors from Mali, some 1,400, are not the responsibility of the autonomous community, but of the State Administration," he said.
The precautionary measure dictated by the Supreme Court expressly mentions the approximately 1,200 minors who have already applied for asylum in the Canary Islands or have expressed their willingness to do so, mostly from Mali and Senegal, but the Government of the Canary Islands argues that it can be extrapolated to all the children who do so from now on.
In the case of Mali, beyond the particular circumstances alleged by each minor, there is a general protection recommendation issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), given the situation of war, jihadist terrorism and violence that this Sahel country has been experiencing for years.
According to the Canarian president, the High Court "has been forceful in telling the State that it has failed to fulfill its duties because it is its responsibility and gives it ten days to move to the national refugee system."
Clavijo has admitted that the materialization of this judicial pronouncement will mean an economic relief for the Canary Islands, since it will no longer bear the cost of their guardianship and reception, although he regretted that "for more than a year these minors have seen their right to belong to an international reception system by the State violated."
"Now we have to collaborate among all to reverse this situation and, on the other hand, apply article 35 of the Immigration Law to distribute those minors who are not susceptible to be in this international protection network," he asserted.
Fernando Clavijo believes that the State will have to contact the Canary Islands, a community that "will collaborate, as it has always wanted, because what it wants is to protect the minor."
"Given the deadline, of nine days now, the reasonable thing is that the State Administration contact us and we start working so that this distribution can be done protecting a minor who has already seen his rights violated for more than a year," he added.
Fernando Clavijo made these statements before attending the inauguration of the new facilities of the KPMG consultancy in the islands in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
