A European language detection software to determine asylum seekers’ country of origin:
Questioning the assumptions and implications of the EUAA’s project
Since 2017, Germany has used an Artificial Intelligence (AI) language recognition system to verify asylum seekers’ claims regarding their country of origin before the asylum interview. Inspired by the German experience, in 2023 the European Union Asylum Agency (EUAA) announced a project to develop a European language detection software for determining asylum seekers’ country of origin. The tool will be made available to all EU member states and complemented by a second-line pool of language analysts. This blog post raises attention on the EUAA’s project and questions the assumptions on which automatic language indication is based as well as its implications on the overall credibility assessment of asylum seekers’ nationality claims and, more fundamentally, on the right to seek asylum.
Cecilia is a PhD candidate in Law at the University of Sussex. Her research focuses on the identification of stateless asylum-seekers in Europe, with a particular focus on the cases of Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Before joining the University of Sussex, Cecilia worked for several years in refugee protection and statelessness prevention and eradication with UNHCR and different NGOs in Italy, the Middle East, and Africa, and conducted research on smuggling of migrants and trafficking in persons with UNODC.