Migrant landings in Malta down by 33% last year

Migrant landings in 2020 decreased by 33% when compared to the previous year, figures published by the National Statistics Office show.

There were 29 boat landings with 2,281 persons being brought to Maltese shores. This represents a decrease of more than 1,100 over the previous year when 43 boat landings saw the arrival of 3,405 migrants.

The NSO said that 85.8% of arrivals came from African countries, while the remaining 15.2% were citizens of Asian countries.

January was the month with the highest number of arrivals, with a total of 553 individuals, and five boat landings.

This was followed by arrivals in February and June, at 436 and 426 individuals, respectively.

A total of 2,482 applications were lodged with the International Protection Agency (IPA) during 2020, down by 39.3% from 2019. Of these, 74.3% were males aged between 18 to 34.

Malta ranked second after Cyprus in the number of asylum applications per million residents across EU member states.

The largest proportion of the total applicants came from Sudanese citizens (18.1%), followed by Bangladeshi, Eritrean and Nigerian citizens, at 10.6%, 9.1% and 8.9%, respectively.

A total of 728 appeals on first instance decisions were filed with the International Protection Appeals Tribunal in 2020, a decrease of 8.3% from the previous year.

During 2020, the International Protection Appeals Tribunal processed 565 appeals, of which only 1.6 per cent resulted in a positive decision with the rest being rejected. Malta had the fifth lowest share of positive final instance decisions on appeals amongst the 27 EU member states.

Resident population of open centres and other institutions increased by 23.3%, with the majority (81.6%) residing in Hal Far.

The majority of the residents (83.7%) were males, while 31.2% and 13.7% were Sudanese and Eritrean, respectively.