Official reports on safety in the countries of asylum seekers are made public again. David van Weel (Foreign Affairs, VVD) announced this week this week Parlor. This brings the cabinet back to an earlier decision that the previous foreign minister, Caspar Veldkamp (NSC), took in May to no longer “actively” publish the reports.
That decision received a lot of criticism, because the official reports form the basis of the admission policy for asylum seekers. By not revealing the official reports, it would not be transparent on which this policy is based. In that case “you can’t defend yourself,” said policy officer Anouk Donse of Amnesty International earlier NRC.
Official reports describe the safety situation of the most important countries of origin of asylum seekers, such as Syria, Yemen and Eritrea. Officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs write the reports based on information from embassies, NGOs, media reports and sources on the spot. The Ministry of Asylum and Migration then decides which asylum seekers receive protection.
Abuse
The cabinet wanted to keep the messages secret because asylum lawyers and human smugglers would abuse the information. Asylum seekers would tailor their flight story to the official message to shed their chances of a residence permit.
New official reports about the situation in Syria, Yemen, Eritrea and Libya were not published this year by the government’s decision. The decision came to light in the spring after asking from NRC About the long-awaited report on the security situation in Syria after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime at the end of last year. The residence chances of tens of thousands of Syrians who have applied for asylum in the Netherlands depends largely on this message.
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The official report on Syria was still published in June, after a decision by the court in Roermond in proceedings that a Syrian asylum seeker had filed against the Ministry of Asylum and migration about his rejected asylum application. A few weeks later, the official reports about Yemen and Eritrea were also published after WOO requests (Open Government Act).
The “practical elaboration of the decision” and a negative advice from the Advisory College of public access and information management (ACOI) have led the official reports to be actively made public again, Minister Van Weel now writes in the letter to Parliament. At the same time, Van Weel writes, the cabinet is looking for a different way in which “potential abuse” of information from the official reports “can be prevented”.
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