The reception of refugees in the Netherlands threatens to fall through a “humane lower limit”. That’s what the Red Cross says. According to the organization, there is hardly any more attention for essential basic needs.
The Red Cross says it is very concerned about the quality of emergency shelter and the lack of additional reception locations. As a result, vulnerable people will soon lack essential access to medical care, unsafe situations will arise because men, women and children have to stay in large spaces and there will be no attention for psychosocial support for traumatized people.
The Red Cross has recently supported the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) in receiving people who arrive in the Netherlands. Recently, for example, it has been about Afghans who have fled their country after the takeover by the Taliban.
Director Marieke van Schaik says that “a critical limit in the emergency reception of refugees is now being reached quickly”. According to her, the COA locations are overcrowded, something a COA spokesperson confirms to ANP news agency. For the fifth night in a row, people had to on camp beds and chairs sleep at the central emergency shelter for asylum seekers in Ter Apel.
Lack of privacy
Outgoing State Secretary Broekers-Knol of Justice confirmed the problems last Wednesday. She emphasized that 11,000 so-called status holders are still in asylum seekers’ centers, when they should have left there by now. “That makes it difficult to accommodate new people.” According to her, the system has not stalled, but there is a peak.
Van Schaik now says that “people cannot sleep in halls on camp beds for long periods of time without any form of privacy”. She also warns about the risks of people moving from one location to another.
Constantly moving house is especially harmful for children, she says. “Their safety cannot be sufficiently guaranteed when large groups of people are brought together. At the moment there is only attention for how we can accommodate people. We really have to take steps for humane reception in this situation.”
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