Netherlands taking "unacceptable risks" in deporting families to Afghanistan: Child rights organizations

The Netherlands should immediately stop deporting asylum seeker families with young children to Afghanistan, according to UNICEF and Defense for Children in their annual report. According to the organizations, Afghanistan is becoming more dangerous by the day and the Netherlands is taking unacceptable risks by sending children back there, AD reports.

"The Netherlands takes an unacceptable risk", Martine Goemans of Defense for Children said to the newspaper. "People are being deported too easily." Since 2014 Afghanistan has been the scene of an increasing number of violent incidents and attacks, involving more and more civilian casualties. 

Afghan children currently forms the largest group in Dutch detention centers - centers where failed asylum seekers await deportation back to their home countries. Last year the Netherlands deported 10 children to Afghanistan.

Last month State Secretary Klaas Dijkhoff of Security and Justice, who is responsible for the asylum policy, said that the Netherlands' deportation procedures are very "careful" and that a good deportation policy is important to society, according to RTL Nieuws. "It is known that the security situation in parts of Afghanistan is worrying. But that does not warrant that not a single asylum seeker can be deported.", he said in response to questions from parliament.