The Home Office is leaving thousands of Afghans in limbo in the UK

As anticipated in my article published in September 2024, the Home Office immigration statistics published on 27 February 2025 demonstrated a huge fall in the grant rate for Afghan asylum claims in the last three months of 2024. This follows the change in the Home Office policy position in its country policy and information note on ‘Fear of the Taliban’ – which effectively finds that the Taliban would not have a significant interest in the vast majority of returnees.

What do the statistics show?

The UK continues to receive a high number of asylum claims from Afghanistan, with 8,508 claims making it the second biggest nationality in 2024. This reflects the ongoing poor security and humanitarian situation in Afghanistan.

After the collapse of the Afghan government, the Home Office published a country policy and information note (“CPIN”) that effectively acknowledged that all perceived opponents to the Taliban were entitled to international protection. This meant that between the first quarter of 2022, immediately after the updated CPIN, and the fourth quarter of 2023 there were only 127 refusals out of 11,672 grants of international protection: a grant rate of over 99%. The high rate of recognition meant that Afghanistan was included in the list of countries for the streamlined asylum process, alongside Libya, Eritrea and Syria.

In the last quarter of 2023, 48 Afghans had their protection claims refused compared with 4,697 grants, a recognition rate of 98.5%.

It is extremely jarring that the newly published immigration statistics record that in the last quarter of 2024, following the publication of the new CPIN, over 2,050 Afghans had their asylum claims refused compared to 1,859 individuals who were granted international protection. This a recognition rate of just 47%.

Surprisingly, given the Taliban’s position on women, the figures also indicate that 26 women had their asylum claims refused, although it is difficult to know the precise reasons without sight of the decisions.

Following the publication of the new CPIN and last year’s trend, it seems likely that the recognition rate will continue to fall in 2025 – meaning an increase in asylum refusals and tribunal appeals.

The mounting refusals are set in a context where it has been reported that the Home Office’s position is that:

Enforced or voluntary removals [to Afghanistan] are currently paused and cannot be progressed at present. This is due to the Taliban informing the UK that they will no longer accept travel documents issued from the Afghan embassy in London.

The UK government’s position is that they do not recognise the Taliban as an accepted foreign government. There is currently no timescale for when this will be resolved.

So it is likely that many Afghan asylum seekers will have their claims refused but with no intention or ability of the Home Office to try to remove them for the foreseeable future.

What are the consequences?

There are very serious consequences for thousands of Afghan asylum seekers. These individuals may have already been through a lengthy legal process; including facing inadmissibility action and possible removal to Rwanda before having their claims admitted to the United Kingdom.

Many will have made a traumatic and dangerous journey across Iran, Turkey and Europe lasting months or years. Now they face months or years living in legal limbo; without status but not removable. They will be unable to work, rent or move forward with their lives.

My experience is that my Afghan clients (who were formerly considered for removal to Rwanda) have now been given perfunctory and poorly-reasoned refusal letters that relied on the new policy position, including reliance AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2020] UKUT 00130 (IAC) and rejected the credibility of their accounts.

Many of these clients would have been granted asylum if their claims had been decided just a few months earlier. Now their cases have been left to the mercy of the overburdened tribunal system. It may take years for their appeals to be processed.

They will be left in limbo without the stability of knowing whether they will be permitted to stay in the UK. This is despite the UK’s policy position being that the Taliban are not the legitimate government of Afghanistan and refusing to establish relations with them.

Unfortunately this situation seems unlikely to change for some time. The most likely way for this impasse to end is for the Upper Tribunal to publish a country guidance case to determine who, if anyone, can safely return to Afghanistan. Given the procedural hurdles any case would have to overcome before reaching the Upper Tribunal to become a country guidance case, it could be a number of years before this urgently needed clarity is provided.

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