The AMIF project

The project involves a number of RFSL branches, which are given the opportunity to have employees to conduct Newcomer activities and offer counselling. Through the project, RFSL can also offer extended asylum legal advice. The project funding has enabled RFSL to build a stable structure and a professional organization that underpins the work and has the capacity support volunteers.

One of the major challenges is that asylum-seeking LGBTQI people often come into contact with RFSL only when they have already received a rejection of an asylum application. In most cases, the refusal is motivated by the fact that the asylum seeker has not been able to explain to the Swedish Migration Agency that they are LGBTQI people in a way that the authority considers credible. This is largely due to the fact that the asylum seeker is often not aware that the Swedish Migration Agency has very strict requirements on how the person must account for his inner emotional process, which they are expected to have gone through when they realized that they were an LGBTQI person.

Through proactive and outreach efforts, communication, information and collaboration with other actors who meet asylum seekers, the opportunities to reach asylum-seeking LGBTQ people with information that RFSL exists earlier increases. In this way, we have a greater opportunity to offer asylum legal advice in a timely manner, where we can explain in an understandable way what is expected of the person at the meeting with the Migration Agency and what the person’s rights are. 

In addition to advice and support regarding the asylum process itself, through the project, RFSL also offers social meeting places and conversation support from a counsellor. The social activities, often called “Newcomers”, are carried out locally by the RFSL branches involved in the project. They come up with different activities, based on the participants’ own wishes. Some also have a language café and activities that contribute to the asylum seekers being involved and influencing their own situation, such as being on the RFSL branch’s board, organizing demonstrations, writing debate articles or other things. Some also organize activities that increase the chances of establishment on the labor market, such as study visits to companies or volunteer work for a non-profit association.

With the counsellors, who are in six departments, the asylum seekers can receive psycho-social support. The extent of the support varies and can be adapted to the individual’s needs. 

With the support of the project, RFSL is also stepping up our advocacy work in asylum and migration issues. The work is based on the legal investigation that was published in 2020 and followed up in 2023. The investigation shows significant deficiencies in legal certainty in the trial of asylum applications of LGBTQ people. It mainly concerns impermissible demands for the asylum seeker to be judged as credible as an LGBTQI person, something that is against both international and Swedish law. The investigation, and its follow-up, also show that the motivations by the officers at the Swedish Migration Agency are based on prejudices and assumptions about what it is like to live as an LGBTQI person.

In order to change this, RFSL will work to an even greater extent to train administrators and lawyers, review decisions and make information available to the public, and more. 

No person should have to live in fear of persecution because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, and those who seek asylum have the right to be believed and receive protection.