A Dutch court on Thursday ordered the government and its firm to house asylum seekers in particular situations in overcrowded and unsanitary emergency migrant housing.
A civil court ruling in The Hague came in an abstract case brought before the Dutch Refugee Council amid an ongoing crisis in the Netherlands that has forced many migrants to sleep outdoors in miserable situations while waiting to sign their asylum claims. .
“The state. . . has a legal responsibility to welcome asylum seekers with dignity,” the court said in a statement. It found that existing situations at a reception center in the north of the Netherlands and other emergency shelters met critical requirements. European standards.
Board President Frank Candel welcomed the decision.
“It is a transparent and binding decision, but it is not yet a cause for joy,” he said. they have to sleep in a tent, gym or reception room.
Candel said the organization had handled the case “with great regret” as some 18,000 asylum seekers have recently been held in Dutch accommodation centres in what he described as “damaging conditions”. He said the crisis is not the result of a sudden backlog of asylum claims. , still years of political failure.
Outdoor conditions at a centre in the north of the town of Ter Apel have become so bad over the summer, with around 700 other people forced to sleep outdoors, that the Dutch branch of Médecins Sans Frontières sent a team there, the first time the aid company had been deployed in the Netherlands.
The minister in charge of the asylum system, Eric van der Burg, said in a statement that he shared the considerations raised by the Refugee Council.
“At the moment, we are providing asylum seekers with what we perhaps did in recent years,” he added.
He said the government is asking all Dutch municipalities to help obtain minor asylum seekers as soon as possible.
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Follow AP’s policy on migration issues in https://apnews. com/hub/migration
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