Over 8,000 foreigners submit applications on asylum in Moldova

Chisinau, 5 July /MOLDPRES/ - More than 8,000 applications on asylum in Moldova have been submitted to the Migration and Asylum Bureau since the beginning of the war in Ukraine. The Bureau’s director, Mihail Voda, today made statements to this effect at a news conference.    

According to Voda, over 7,100 applications are on behalf of Ukrainian citizens. ‘’In usual regime, we annually process up to 100 applications on asylum. On this period, such a big flow of applications has become a challenge for efficiently managing this process. At the same time, the number of addressings for getting permits of stay on behalf of foreign citizens, not only Ukrainian ones, increased by 30 per cent. This period proved us that the legal instruments held are efficient, in order to manage the requests received. Also, the Bureau’s employees worked more intensively also at the temporary centres, where needed assistance is provided to people who fled the war,’’ Mihail Voda said.    

About 6,000 out of the asylum seekers are men and over 1,200 are women and 650 children. Presently, there are 77,000 Ukrainian refugees in Moldova, of whom 50,000 – for more than 90 days.  

Foreign citizens can stay in Moldova temporarily, can ask for permit of stay or can get one of the four forms of protection, generally titled ‘’asylum’’:  status of refugee, humanitarian protection, temporary protection and political asylum.