The rights of thousands of children in Dutch refugee centers are being violated on a large scale. They receive inadequate medical care, no education and hardly any guidance. Their living conditions are contrary to agreements as laid down in international conventions on the rights of the child.
That is what the Justice and Security Inspectorate and the Healthcare and Youth Inspectorate wrote on Monday in a “fire letter” to State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum and Migration, VVD). “The longer this situation lasts,” the inspectorates write, “the more harmful it can be” to children’s development.
The reception of asylum seekers has been halted for months. Last Friday, the cabinet announced a national crisis team to improve reception. The organization will be placed under the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism. In a letter to the House of Representatives, the cabinet wrote that it is necessary to decide “temporarily at a high official and political administrative level” how the reception and transfer of asylum seekers should be arranged.
Hans Faber, Chief Inspector of the Justice and Security Inspectorate, believes that the cabinet is applying double standards. Because while the reception centers for regular asylum seekers (from countries such as Syria, Yemen and Eritrea) of the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) have been overcrowded for some time, thousands of municipal shelters for Ukrainian refugees are empty. According to Faber, it is questionable whether the distinction in the reception of Ukrainian refugees and regular asylum seekers can be “objectively justified”, especially now that the children’s rights in the regular asylum seekers’ centers are “being squeezed”.
In total, more than ten thousand underage refugees reside in Dutch refugee centers: 8,800 children and young people in families and 1,450 without parents.
Supervision is missing
The inspections visited several centers. In the application center in Ter Apel, where asylum seekers first have to report, children and young people often stay for months, instead of the prescribed three to ten days. In that time they receive no education, no intake from youth health care and hardly any guidance.
The atmosphere among the single young people is bad, the inspectorates write. Supervision is lacking. “The vast majority of minors who do not demand attention are therefore left out of the picture and there is no good view of safety.”
Because the regular asylum seekers’ centers are overcrowded, the COA has set up dozens of emergency reception locations in recent months. While the locations are not suitable for longer stays, some families are trapped in emergency shelters for months.
In Leeuwarden, the inspections saw “a massive hall in a business park, where rooms have been realized by means of walls without ceilings and doors”. Children sleep badly because of all the unrest, so that they have little concentration at school.
In addition, families in emergency shelters are constantly moving from location to location, the inspectorates write. “The result is an interrupted continuous learning line and no continuity in guidance and care.”
Aid organizations Unicef Netherlands, Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland and Defense for Children also speak in a study that they publish on Monday about “unacceptable living conditions” of children. They write that “the emergency shelter, including the Ter Apel application center, is unlivable for children”. In their recommendations, they write that children should only be allowed to stay in the regular asylum seekers’ centers and that they should stay in one place during the entire asylum procedure.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of June 20, 2022