The Council for Refugees takes cabinet to court if asylum reception does not improve quickly | Politics

According to the Council for Refugees, the situation is ‘structurally substandard’. As a result, ‘for almost a year a large group of asylum seekers and status holders – including many children – have been living in degrading circumstances’, says the statement of liability that was sent to Eric van der Burg, the State Secretary for Asylum (VVD). If the situation does not improve before 1 August, the organization will ‘immediately’ initiate summary proceedings to enforce ‘the minimum standards for reception’.

“We are not going to accept this as the new normal,” said chairman Frank Candel. “The Netherlands has committed itself to international agreements that monitor the humanitarian lower limit. That lower limit is just there for when the going gets tough.”

The Council for Refugees points to recent investigations by the Justice and Security Inspectorate and the Health and Youth Care Inspectorate, which state that the poor conditions in the asylum reception lead to physical and mental damage. UN refugee organization UNHCR calls the reception in the Netherlands ‘unsustainable and unacceptable’ and the Red Cross considers the situation in Ter Apel ‘inhuman’.

The chance that the reception will improve before the deadline is nil. The cabinet is still struggling with the stalled asylum reception and the measures announced to avert the asylum crisis are not working or are barely working. For example, State Secretary Van der Burg has asked the 25 security regions to prepare 225 beds each for the emergency reception of asylum seekers, but not every region has yet succeeded in this.

_{Also listen to our political podcast:}

Asylum seekers who report to Ter Apel, but cannot get a place to sleep there, are now transported by bus to sports halls, which are sometimes on the other side of the country. Calder: ,,For refugees themselves, the problem is not solved if they get on a bus in Ter Apel to a tent with stretchers.”

Van der Burg said yesterday that he feared that tents would have to be placed again at the registration center in Ter Apel, where people were sleeping on chairs again this week, because all emergency shelters are full. “It will be tough again in the coming days, really exciting.”

The Council for Refugees is not confident that the recent agreements between the cabinet and municipalities will solve the problems. Municipalities themselves called the agreement ‘fragile’, says Candel. And the law through which The Hague can force municipalities to receive asylum seekers could be ‘the breakthrough’, says the VluchtelingenWerk chairman. That plan will be discussed in the Council of Ministers on Friday, but would not apply until 2023 at the earliest. “Meanwhile, every evening it can be that asylum seekers end up on the street. We are not going to wait for this, the time is up.”

Watch our news videos in the playlist below: