The Inspectorate of Justice and Security and the Inspectorate of Health and Youth write in a fire letter that the government is not taking good enough care of children and young people in asylum reception. As a result, they have to deal with stress, violence, health problems and have poor access to care and education.
The inspectorates call on State Secretary Eric van der Burg (Asylum) in the letter to intervene. The Netherlands Council for Refugees agrees with this. “If children have not already suffered trauma in the country from which they fled, or on the journey here, there is a considerable chance that they will experience it here in the (emergency) shelter,” says a spokesperson for the Dutch Council for Refugees.
The asylum reception has been overcrowded for some time and due to the large crowds, employees are unable to provide adequate reception and guidance than they should. Despite warnings from the COA two months ago, little has improved. The asylum reception is “in a state of crisis”, the letter says.
On Friday, the cabinet announced that a crisis approach will be introduced for the asylum reception that has come to a standstill. State Secretary Van der Burg also said that the security regions have promised about three hundred extra reception places for the coming days. But the inspectorates doubt whether the extra measures will help.
Stress, violence, health problems
There are more than ten thousand minors in asylum reception, of whom 1,450 without parents or chaperones. Many of them have had a residence permit for more than fourteen weeks and should therefore have lived in a normal home for a long time.
According to the Inspectorate, minors are often “weeks and sometimes months longer” in the central reception location in Ter Apel than the three to ten days that actually stand for this.
When the inspectorate went to look at Ter Apel, there were 170 minors there without parents or supervisors. That is three times as much as is normally intended. The result is that they are not properly looked after; their rooms become dirty, they often do not eat together, they are robbed and an unsafe situation arises because groups of children and young people argue with each other.
It also often happens that children have to sleep too long in the night care. It closes at 6 am, forcing them to get up early.
“We see children every day who no longer want to eat and who even have symptoms of malnutrition. Children also regularly fall asleep during class because of fatigue,” says the spokesperson for the Council for Refugees.
‘Horrifying situation’
According to the Inspectorate, a reception center in Leeuwarden has been set up in such a provisional way that there is a “distressing situation” where children should not sit for a longer period of time, while that happens anyway.
The Council for Refugees calls the findings of the inspections “recognizable but nevertheless strong conclusions”. According to the refugee organisation, the conditions for children and other vulnerable groups in the overcrowded asylum seekers’ centers and emergency shelters in particular are completely unsuitable.
The inspectorates fail to understand that facilities for Ukrainians seem to be better arranged, and not all of those places are even used. They point out that discrimination is prohibited under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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