Portugal receives 80 Afghan refugees, bringing total to 178 so far
The refugees have been provisionally housed in reception units in Greater Lisbon, and are later to be transferred to autonomous housing across the country.
Portugal’s government has received 80 Afghans, most of them members from the national women’s football team and their families, bringing the total number of citizens welcomed after the humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan to 178, it announced on Monday.
In a joint statement, the Ministry of National Defence, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Internal Administration said that the arrival of this group on Sunday was the result of a joint operation involving the authorities of Portugal and the US.
The refugees have been provisionally housed in reception units in Greater Lisbon, and are later to be transferred to autonomous housing across the country.
In late August, the minister of internal administration, Eduardo Cabrita, said that Portugal had the financial capacity to host “hundreds” of Afghan refugees, with the priority for women, children, activists and journalists.
“In Portugal we have the financial capacity, under the Asylum and Migration Fund managed by the Ministry of Internal Administration, to welcome with current resources people in the hundreds,” Cabrita said.
Speaking to journalists from Portugal in Brussels at the end of a meeting of European Union interior ministers on Afghanistan, Cabrita said it was “a question of resource management” and that “Portugal’s priorities are defined” and based on receiving people from the most vulnerable groups, that is, “women, including female judges, children, human rights activists and journalists.”
Hours after the cabinet office minister, Mariana Vieira da Silva, had said that Portugal could receive a total of around 400 people, Cabrita said that it could be “a little beyond that” while rejecting the idea of setting a quota, stressing rather “the ability to assume this responsibility in the hundreds.”
The Taliban conquered Kabul on 15 August, concluding an offensive that began in May, when the withdrawal began of US military forces and others from North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states that had been in the country since 2001, following the hunt for Al-Qaida after the terror attacks of September 11 2001.
