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Appendix 14 -Torture/Non-refoulement Claim Cases

Year	Made	Determined	Withdrawn or Taken No Further Action	Outstanding (Cumulative)
before 2005	53	0	4	49
2005	211	1	30	229
2006	528	43	54	660
2007	1,584	82	51	2,111
2008①	2,198	179	132	3,998
2009②	3,286	0	1,037	6,340③
2010	1,809	214	1,186	6,749
2011	1,432	932	802	6,447
2012	1,174	1,575	1,154	4,892
2013	491	1,813	778	2,792
2014	8,851④	1,047	978	9,618
2015	5,053	2,339	1,410	10,922
2016	3,838	3,218	1,561	9,981
2017	1,843	4,182	1,743	5,899
2018	1,216	5,467	1,102	546
Total on Torture/ Non-refoulement Claims	33,567	21,092	12,022	546

① The Court of First Instance of the High Court (CFI) held in December 2008 that the Administration should provide legal assistance to a torture claimant during the screening process and provide suitable training for the decision makers. The Immigration Department (ImmD) then suspended all screening works.

② The Legislative Council passed the Immigration (Amendment) Ordinance 2009 in November 2009, making it an offence for illegal immigrants to take any employment or establish or join in any business. The ImmD implemented the enhanced administrative mechanism in December 2009.

③ This includes 93 reviewed cases.

④ On commencement of the Unified Screening Mechanism (USM) on 3 March 2014, there were 2,501 outstanding torture claims. Separately, 4,198 persons have lodged non-refoulement claims on applicable grounds (other than torture) (in which 2,962 cases were lodged by rejected or withdrawn torture claimants), making a total of 6,699 non-refoulement claims pending determination on commencement of the USM.