COA is about to collapse – NRC

The Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) is about to collapse. In Ter Apel, the largest asylum seekers center in the Netherlands, almost one in three COA employees has dropped out. This is shown by research by NRC and is confirmed by COA.

Many people drop out at other COA locations as well. Absenteeism is now 9 percent throughout the Netherlands – almost twice as high as the national average. In the meantime, COA is looking for staff: a thousand unfilled vacancies must be filled before the end of this year, in addition to the more than four thousand people who work for COA.

Almost a year ago, COA sounded the alarm with the State Secretary. In October, the COA top wrote in a letter to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD) that the reception “threatened to fall below human scale”, confirms a spokesperson, “for both residents and employees”.

After that, the crisis only deepened. The reception organization is no longer able to fulfill its legal task: to receive asylum seekers in a ‘humanitarian way’, says COA itself. Due to working under high pressure and the long days, she no longer sees a solution for the situation.

The organization now accommodates 43,000 people, but there must be more: COA must have arranged 51,000 reception places by the end of this year. That is not for Ukrainian refugees: they are received by municipalities. There are even four thousand reception places available for Ukrainians, also because municipalities do not want to receive refugees from other countries in those places.

The problems at COA are not only caused by more asylum seekers coming to the Netherlands. Asylum seekers stay for months and sometimes years longer in asylum seekers’ centers because the Immigration Service IND is struggling with major backlogs. Moreover, if a request is granted, they cannot leave: municipalities are making fewer houses available for asylum seekers than agreed. COA also barely manages to find new locations for asylum seekers’ centres.

Against own policy

In addition, COA underestimated how many minors would apply for asylum on their own. In 2021 there were almost 2,200, more than double the number of a year earlier. In order to be able to take care of everyone, young people are currently cared for between adults before their eighteenth birthday. This goes against their own policy, because young people are extra vulnerable to exploitation. But according to a spokesperson, it was “the only option” to “continue to offer a place to stay” for the youngest group of unaccompanied minor refugees.

In order to receive all young people according to agreements, COA had to open “ten extra locations” in the past five weeks, according to the spokesperson. “Even in view of the staff shortage, that is not realistic.”

According to experts, COA does not adhere to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This states that European member states must offer and protect human dignity, including asylum seekers. Asylum seekers are entitled to housing, clothing and food or financial compensation. “If you let people sleep on a chair or outside on the floor, you don’t comply with that,” says Karen Geertsema, lecturer in migration law at Radboud University.

At the beginning of July, Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland announced that it would go to court if the government and COA have not improved the situation in asylum seekers’ centers before 1 August. Refugee Work holds the central government and COA liable “for the harmful and inhumane conditions in the asylum reception”.

A 2019 survey of 2,800 COA employees found that nearly half of the staff had been verbally abused, intimidated or threatened by a resident multiple times in the past two years. More than a quarter of the respondents indicated that they had been treated inappropriately by a colleague.

Reception cruise ships p. 10 Read more about the crisis at COA in NRC Weekend