E/CN.4/2005/85/Add.3 page 17 69. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) informed the Special Rapporteur about its work on trafficking in persons. It offered the Italian Government advisory services on assistance to the victims of such trafficking and had run projects to prevent trafficking in Italy. The organization had also been managing voluntary return programmes for Albanians since 1999. 70. A multidisciplinary inter-ministerial committee on female genital mutilation had been established to decide on appropriate responses and keep the phenomenon under close observation. The committee had drawn up national guidelines on female genital mutilation for health professionals, social workers and others. The Government had supported a bill classifying female genital mutilation as an offence and increasing prison sentences for those performing such acts on Italian citizens or Italian residents from 6 to 12 years even if the mutilation is perpetrated abroad. Asylum-seekers 71. The residence permits granted to asylum-seekers do not allow them to work and would seem to be granted between three and five months after an application is submitted. The permit confers the right to a taxpayer number, a health card and a daily subsidy of €17.56 for 45 days which appears to be paid six months later on average. As an alternative to the subsidy, asylum-seekers may be housed in a reception centre. 72. In Milan, the Special Rapporteur visited two reception centres operated under the National Asylum Plan, one for men and the other for women and children. The managers commented that it was usual for a father to be separated from the rest of the family and frequently not to find a place in another centre. They also mentioned the difficulties such people encountered in finding accommodation when required to leave the centre after six months there, which often left the National Commission for the Right of Asylum (Commissione nazionale per il diritto di asilo)22 unable to locate them. 73. Generally speaking, it seems that the Commission rules on applications for asylum a year after they are submitted; according to the Ministry of the Interior, the Commission grants refugee status to not more than 6 per cent of applicants. Some NGOs expressed reservations about the interpretation services provided to asylum-seekers submitting declarations. In the event of an appeal against an adverse decision, the Commission may apparently request the competent police department, on the basis of a favourable opinion, to issue a humanitarian residence permit for one year. 74. With the help of the Scalabrinian Missionary Sisters, the Special Rapporteur was able to meet a group of immigrants and asylum-seekers. Some of them complained of the conditions in which they lived, in abandoned buildings in Rome’s Stazione Tiburtina (popularly known as “Africa Hotel”), after their asylum applications were turned down. The buildings were said to house some 600 people from Eritrea, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. One young woman commented that she lived in a single overcrowded room with another 20 people. During the visit, the Special Rapporteur told the Ministry of the Interior that she was extremely concerned about these people’s living conditions. She told the authorities that teenaged girls in the Stazione Tiburtina ran a risk of sexual abuse in such circumstances.