In asylum seekers’ center Ter Apel, about 350 children without parents are currently being cared for, while officially there is only room for 55 unaccompanied minors. About fifty of these young people are forced to stay in the waiting room of the Immigration Service IND on the site. There are no beds there. The children spend the night on a chair. There is no guidance, just security. They get food (microwave meals) and drinks, they can go to the toilet, but there is no shower. Sources tell that NRCthe figures and circumstances are confirmed by the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA).
Emergency workers on the ground are very concerned about the well-being and safety of the children. Unaccompanied minors are the most vulnerable group of refugees. In Ter Apel, these children are usually taken care of in a separate place on the site, more or less separated from adult refugees. After their asylum application, it is the rule that they are accommodated within a few days in shelters especially for young people throughout the Netherlands. Those places are full. The IND also struggles with backlogs. Seven supervisors are present during the day for the three hundred young people who are not in the waiting room of the IND, but who are staying at the regular reception center in Ter Apel. At night there are two.
fire letter
The rights of children in Dutch refugee centers are being violated, their safety is at stake, concluded the Justice and Security Inspectorate and the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate in June this year. At the time, inspectors counted 170 unaccompanied minors during a visit to Ter Apel. So there are now twice as many.
In a ‘fire letter‘ The inspectorates wrote to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD) that COA employees ‘have no room for individual attention’. “Room checks are no longer carried out frequently, which deteriorates hygiene, and meals are no longer eaten together because the dining room is not suitable for the large group.” The atmosphere is restless, the inspectorates wrote, there is nuisance. “There is no good view of safety.” An employee now adds that children were found who had hardly eaten for days.
The COA already sounded the alarm last year. At the end of October, the summit warned the Ministry of Justice and Security that safety and quality of life are under pressure in asylum seekers’ centres, that guidance is substandard and that the workload is “unacceptably high”. Since then, the pressure in the asylum reception has only increased. Almost one in three COA employees in Ter Apel is sick at home.
Also read: Despair is growing in Ter Apel: ‘Go back. Waiting here makes no sense’
Inside the application center, access for journalists is restricted. The problem is now also clearly visible to the outside world in front of the overcrowded application center. Refugees have been sleeping on the grass in front of the closed gate for weeks. This week there were more than ever: seven hundred people. During the day, women and children are removed from the group and given shelter in an emergency shelter. But at night, according to various sources, it is difficult to filter all unaccompanied minors from the group. Sometimes they also sleep outside at night. Hundreds of refugees were taken to emergency shelters in buses on Friday evening. The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate had raised the alarm about the situation on the field in front of the application centre. According to the Inspectorate, there is “a great risk” of an outbreak of infectious diseases.
In total, more than ten thousand underage refugees are staying in Dutch refugee centers. According to the inspections, in June there were 8,800 children and young people in families and 1,450 without parents.
In April, Children’s Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer visited the unit on the site in Ter Apel where this group resides. She concluded that children are “mentally neglected.” At the time, there were 113 minors without parents. These young people need attention and contact, Kalverboer told NRC at the time. “They come from a situation of acute stress. Then you expose them to total neglect. What do you think will happen then? You are exacerbating their problems. The government is responsible for that.”