The abandoned university building on the outskirts of Rome, colloquially known as Salaam Palace, was once a sparsely populated makeshift shelter where new arrivals from Africa — fleeing war, persecution and economic turmoil — squatted to create their own refuge.
Over the years, scattered mattresses were joined by sloppily plastered plywood walls, slapdash doors and scavenged furniture. Today, an irregular warren of tiny rooms includes a small restaurant and a common room. On a recent cold afternoon, a hammer clinked as a bathroom was added to a one-room apartment where an oven door had been left open for heat.
More than 800 refugees now inhabit Salaam Palace, and its dilapidation and seeming permanence have become a vivid reminder of what its residents and others say is Italy’s failure to assist and integrate those who have qualified for asylum under its laws.
Salaam Palace and an expanding population in shantytowns elsewhere are the result of what refugee agencies say is an Italian paradox surrounding asylum seekers.
“Italy is quite good when in the asylum procedure, recognizing 40 percent, even up to 50 percent of applicants in some years,” said Laura Boldrini, the spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Italy. “What is critical is what comes after.”
She and others involved in aiding refugees say that neglect and absence of resources add unnecessary hardship to already tattered lives and are creating a potential tinderbox for social unrest.
Italy has just 3,150 or so spots in its state-financed asylum protection system, in which refugees receive government assistance. Waiting lists are impossibly long, leaving many to fend for themselves.
“If you’re not lucky to get one of those, you’re on your own. You have to find a way to support yourself, learn the language, get a house and a job,” Ms. Boldrini said.
That has certainly been the experience of those in Salaam Palace. Some have been living in the building since early 2006, when it was occupied by a group of refugees with the help of an organized squatters’ association.
Most had fled war and other hardships in Sudan and the Horn of Africa. Nearly all have refugee status, or some form of protection, but they have been unable to find steady work in Rome. Italy’s economic crisis has made that challenge all the harder.
“We escaped one war to find another kind of war — 800 people crammed in a palazzo,” said Yakub Abdelnabi, a resident of Salaam Palace who left Sudan in 2005.
Last summer, Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe commissioner for human rights, visited Salaam Palace, and according to a council report issued in September, “witnessed the shocking conditions in which the men, women and children were living in this building, such as one shower and one toilet shared by 250 persons.”
Apart from volunteers, the residents had no guidance to help them find work, go to school or deal with administrative burdens, the report said. “This has effectively relegated these refugees or other beneficiaries of international protection to the margins of society.”
Local authorities can demand documents for social assistance, documents that are often impossible for the refugees to obtain. Occasional government-financed aid projects have had negligible effect, residents said.
Though immigrants are granted access to medical care, many are leery of navigating Italy’s labyrinthine national health system, which is why on a blustery December day, medical students had volunteered to provide flu shots to some residents of Salaam Palace, in a makeshift clinic amid cigarette butts and empty beer bottles.
“This is the worst time of the year, when the risk of epidemic is high,” said Dr. Donatella D’Angelo, the president of a volunteer association that provides weekly health care at Salaam Palace.
In recent weeks, she and her team of volunteers have provided more than 100 flu shots to residents. “It’s a drop in the bucket,” she said. “Look at the conditions they live in and tell me if they’re not likely to transmit the flu to each other.”
Those with health complaints are referred to state hospitals and clinics, but the doctors can do little about the psychological frailty that overcomes many.
“Depression, in various forms, is normal here,” said Dr. Marta Mazza, a volunteer.
