The information was released this Tuesday by the president of the National Council for Refugees, João Dias, during the meeting to assess the registration of citizens of Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Liberia, which took place from March until this month.
According to João Dias, also the director general of the Migration and Foreigners Service of Angola, the country has 46,310 foreign citizens of various nationalities under international protection, of which 16,173 are refugees and 30,137 asylum seekers.
The transfer of refugee status to these citizens is being carried out on the basis of the provisions of the 1951 Geneva Convention, the status of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which recommended its application.
João Dias said that all covered citizens are being integrated into normal life, and that the beginning of the attribution of residence permits for their effective local integration is expected for the next quarter.
The registration was carried out throughout the country, with Luanda having 2,500 registrations, the largest number of the total of the survey, with the majority being Liberians, with 3324 citizens out of the 4166 registered.
For this year, the council also envisages, among the actions to be carried out in light of the program to improve the control of national borders and immigration, provided for in the National Development Plan 2018-2022, to create conditions for the general registration of refugees with a view to local integration of those who express the desire to remain in angolan territory.
Speaking to the press, the spokesperson for the meeting, Simão Milagres, said that the legalization of people is being dealt with first, stressing that there are children who are not able to enter the education system, hospitals, young university students who then in the end they have problems accessing diplomas.
"It will be a great victory and this will provoke another situation, which is the process of extraordinary legalization of all refugee citizens who are in the Republic of Angola", he said.
Simão Milagres, also director of the institutional communication and press office of the Migration and Foreigners Service, said that the legalization of refugees in angolan territory should take place after the process of ending the refugee status of the three countries.
"We want to do it in an organized way. For a long time Angola has never carried out censuses and fortunately, this set of guidelines is included in the National Development Plan 2018-2022, and we are just carrying out a set of actions that, in essence, it is already part of the State's intentions, in the various plans drawn up", he stressed.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, informed Simão Milagres, is the country with the largest number of refugees in Angola, stressing that the number of requests for political asylum that the country has been receiving is considerable, mainly from citizens of neighboring countries.
The migration commissioner stressed that combating illegal immigration "is another challenge" that authorities face.
