From morning to night, Eric's* days are filled with nothing but waiting. This 17-year-old migrant from Central Africa arrived in Tunisia in September 2023 with one aim: to obtain international protection and live safely in the country. But for months, the system has been at a standstill.

The young man filed his asylum application in January 2024. For a few months, he received financial assistance from the Tunisian Council for Refugees (CTR) to find accommodation while his application was being processed. But the assistance stopped in April and since the beginning of the summer, the asylum application procedure of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has been suspended.

Eric calls the UN agency almost daily in desperation, only to receive the same response each time: “The determination of refugee status is suspended until further notice.” He recorded a call to the agency on September 5 and shared it with InfoMigrants, where an official is heard repeating that the suspension "is not the decision of the UNHCR."

Eric is baffled. He crossed half a continent at 16 in the hope of finding a place to live in safety. "My whole problem is to be protected. I'm here only to apply for asylum", the young man pleads. He says he will not try to take to the sea, for fear of dying in the Mediterranean.

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Repression against organizations helping migrants

According to information obtained by InfoMigrants, the asylum application procedures managed by UNHCR in Tunisia were suspended in June at the request of the Tunisian authorities. However, assistance intended for people already under the protection of the agency as well as activities intended for refugees are maintained.

The Tunisian Constitution recognizes the right to political asylum and Tunis has ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention. A draft law on the right to asylum was even prepared but the text was never adopted, the Tunisian online media Nawaat explained in February 2021. Without a legal framework, asylum and protection issues are therefore delegated to the UNHCR.

"The recognition of the right to asylum requires an overhaul of the laws on the status of migrants, particularly with regard to labor law, in order to facilitate their integration," Romdhane Ben Amor of the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) told Nawaat.

The precise reasons for this suspension are not known. But this new obstacle in the asylum process is part of the Tunisian government's ongoing crackdown on human rights and migrant associations in the country.

Last May, the president of the anti-racist association Mnemty and the former president of the Tunisian branch of France Terre d'Asile were arrested and placed in police custody. In the press, President Kais Saied attacked "associations and organizations" that, according to him, receive "astronomical sums of money from abroad.” "These associations whine and shed tears in the media. Most of their leaders are traitors and mercenaries," he claimed.

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'We no longer have any assistance'

Since then, the associations have kept a low profile and most have ceased their activities to help migrants, leaving migrants even more destitute. Deprived of the financial aid he had been receiving since the beginning of the year, Eric had to leave the apartment he was renting in April and is now living on the streets in Tunis.

"All the associations have been closed, we no longer have any assistance. I was thrown out in April because I could no longer afford to pay the rent. Since then I have been sleeping outside, I’m trying to find a place where there are no young people who will attack me," Eric says.

"I don't know what I'm going to do. Every day, I go to a café to connect to internet, I don't do anything else,” the young man told InfoMigrants. He is now thinking about going to another country.

*First name has been changed

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