Asylum seeker appeals backlog worsens due to RAASA funding cuts

THE defunding of the Refugee Appeals Authority of South Africa (RAASA) has come under scrutiny after the body revealed it is buckling under a backlog of 161 000 asylum seekers.

- NTSIKELELO QOYO

Only 70 976 of these are active appeals from asylum seekers fighting deportation orders, while 90 024 are people who can no longer be traced after abandoning their adjudication processes. The statistics were presented at the Home Affairs parliamentary committee meeting this week, where officials disclosed that RAASA’s adjudication panel had been slashed from 36 members to just nine following funding cuts by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This led to only 4 475 appeals being finalised in 2025.

The figures contained in the Asylum Seeker Management Report also revealed that just 55 190 people in South Africa currently hold recognised refugee status. In another disclosure, officials said RAASA chairperson Advocate Zilpha Raphesu told MPs the authority was now scrambling to recruit acting commissioners to tackle the backlog.

“From 2023 until last year, the project was left with only 10 members. In 2025, the High Commissioner wrote to the minister proposing that we needed to scale up performance because the numbers were not moving,” said Raphesu.