Dutch government to appeal ruling over poor accommodation for refugees

The Dutch government is to appeal a scathing court ruling ordering it to provide shelter of international standard for refugees and asylum seekers. The appeal is on the grounds that the timescale of nine months stipulated by the judges is not long enough.

Within hours of the court’s injunction last Friday, minister for justice Eric van den Burg, rather than promising to respond as quickly as possible, blamed the accommodation crisis on the country’s local authorities because they failed to provide permanent housing in their areas.

Responding to the chronic overcrowding crisis, particularly at the country’s main reception centre in Ter Apel, Mr van den Burg said the vast majority of local authorities had not earmarked any long-term accommodation for refugees for more than 10 years.

Temporary provision

The figures, ironically from the resettlement agency COA, show that three of the richest 25 authorities made provision for refugees, while all 25 of the country’s poorest authorities had made some degree of temporary provision.

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In total, 194 of the 345 authorities have not made any accommodation available – usually because of local opposition – although some have at times provided short-term emergency help.

Two former cruise liners to be used as refugee accommodation with education and daycare facilities docked in Amsterdam and Ijmuiden last week. Although they have a capacity of at least 1,000 people each, and will be operational this month, the scale of the problem is daunting.

According to the COA figures, 18,500 more beds are needed this year.

More than 16,000 people granted refugee status are still living in COA centres because of a shortage of housing in the wider community.

Unsafe facilities

As a result, new refugees arriving at Ter Apel to find a backlog of hundreds before them cannot be “processed” because there is nowhere to send them – and they end up sleeping in a former sports hall with “primitive”, unsanitary and unsafe facilities nearby.

At one point, some 300 unaccompanied minors were living at the centre.

Many local authorities have remained apparently unmoved by the scale of the crisis, which reached its nadir with the death of a three-month-old baby at Ter Apel in August.

The COA statistics show that rather than increasing since the overcrowding crisis began during the summer, the number of beds for asylum seekers has fallen by 1,250.

“We are doing all we possibly can to improve the situation, but the reality is that we’re dependent on local authorities before we can do anything”, the minister said.

He warned that the government would introduce legislation to force the authorities to provide more beds unless they did so voluntarily – a move that would inevitably cause a political storm in more prosperous areas.