We are publishing a table with Malta’s asylum statistics for 2022. It should not be an NGO doing this, but neither the International Protection Agency nor the Home Affairs Ministry publish asylum statistics, either annually or on a regular basis.

What are we publishing?

In the AIDA report for Malta covering 2022, we included data relating to Malta’s asylum procedure. The report contains information on new applications and decisions taken. For the sake of brevity and to provide the most relevant information, the AIDA report only provides a snapshot of the entire information. It is only here that you will find the full Malta asylum statistics for 2022.

In the table you will find the full statistics presented by Country of Origin of applicants. You will find information on applications (new and subsequent), and decisions broken down by the kind of decision taken. 

Data relating to applications and decisions on Temporary Protection, relating to people fleeing the war in Ukraine, is not included. The Ukrainian applicants listed in the table are therefore persons who applied for international protection (refugee status and/or subsidiary protection), probably because they were deemed ineligible to apply for Temporary Protection. 

What is our source?

We would only publish such information if we had a trusted and official source. In fact, the information was provided to us by the International Protection Agency, but only after we filed a Freedom of Information Request.

Why are we publishing this information?

We firmly believe that these statistics should be automatically published by the Agency or by the Ministry in an open and transparent manner. Access by the general public to information held by the State is a key element of a healthy democracy, as it allows us all to properly understand what is happening with our affairs.

Only by understanding what the State is doing, and how it is doing it are we able to be active participants in Malta’s democracy. With information, we are able to decide whether we are happy with the state of affairs, or whether we think something’s not quite right.

We hope this table is useful, and look forward to the day when Malta publishes its data of its own initiative…also so that we can focus on the other things we do!

You can find the table here.