Amnesty International and Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland are both concerned about the fate of Bahraini asylum seeker Ali Mohammed Al-Showaikh. The Netherlands deported him to the Gulf nation of Bahrain in October and he was arrested upon arrival, RTL Nieuws reports.
According to the human rights organizations, there are strong indications that Al-Showaikh was abused or even tortured, and that he was forced to sign a confession.
The situation in Afghanistan is still very dangerous, and people sent back to the country run the risk of being kidnapped, tortured and killed, according to 10 aid organizations. They call on the Dutch government to stop deporting asylum seekers back to the country, RTL Nieuws reports.
Unions, associations and interest groups had mixed reactions to the Rutte III government's plans for the future. While some are carefully optimistic about what the Netherlands will hold in the coming years, the new government agreement left others with only concerns, according to reactions on the Volkskrant's liveblog of the agreement presentation.
Dutch swimming union KNZB is calling for obligatory swimming lessons for asylum seekers, following the drowning of a 16-year-old Syrian boy in a swimming pool in Venlo on Monday. The union doesn't necessarily want every asylum seekers to get a swimming diploma, but "every child must get compulsory experience with water and swimming", Alice Schols of the KNZB said to RTL Nieuws.
Dutch refugee organization VluchtelingenWerk and ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's are working together to try and convince European politicians to take in more vulnerable asylum seekers from shelters across the world. Today they launched a campaign titled Home Safe Home, AD reports.
"This is one of the biggest problems of this moment. We are talking about it in the Netherlands for the first time. We have young supporters and we want to activate them for this", Laura van Geel, social mission manager of Ben & Jerry's said to the newspaper.
From now on refugees in the Netherlands will as far as possible be housed in a municipality where there is work that suits them, Minister Lodewijk Asscher of Social Affairs and Employment announced in a letter to parliament. Up until now refugees were distributed more or less randomly, the Telegraaf reports.
Over the past three years refugee jobs programme Startbaan helped nearly 800 refugees towards work. A third of them now have a paying job, according to figures Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland released
In the future asylum seekers should not be sheltered in a large tent camp such as the Heumensoord camp in Nijmegen, according to the Board for the protection of Human Rights and the National Ombudsman. The massive tent camp with nearly 3 thousand residents has too little privacy, meaningful activities and living expenses, which is harmful to the asylum seekers health and safety, the two institutions concluded in a report following a visit to the camp
Thousands of refugee children in the Netherlands have little access to childcare and education. They also often have to move from one shelter to another more than once. All of these factors have a negative impact on their development.
Theaters, stages and cinemas around the Leidseplein in Amsterdam donated the proceeds of ticket sales on Wednesday to refugee charity VluchtelingenWerk Nederland. This amounted to some 37 thousand euros.
Kids who receive asylum in the Netherlands have to find a place in a school within in three days, but Dutch primary schools are completely unprepared for the arrival of large numbers of child refugees.
The Salvation Army is now also helping with coordinating all relief operations for refugees in the Netherlands, focusing on the collection, sorting and distribution of clothing - something that is sorely needed, according to a spokesperson.
Employees working at the four asylum application centers in the Netherlands are regularly confronted with aggressive behavior from the asylum seekers. They have to deal with harassment, verbal abuse, threats and sometimes even physical violence.
Traffickers that smuggle Syrian refugees into Europe make use of a "smuggling folder" to inform the refugees on the various countries in which they may get asylum, including benefits, housing situations and the chances of getting a residency permit. In this folder, the Netherlands is described as the promise land
A growing number of Dutch residents are giving asylum seekers shelter in their own homes. This involves both recognized asylum seekers who are waiting for the municipalities to find them a home and failed asylum seekers who can not return to their own country and are trying to yet get a status through humanitarian reasons.
A group of Hague asylum seekers without legal status have to be out of the winter shelter for the homeless by no later than Saturday. The Hague made that emergency shelter available two months ago after the evacuation of the cracked Sacrament Church.
The Integration Barometer 2014 of VluchtelingenWerk shows that less than half of the refugees (46 percent) in the Netherlands have a paying job.
A group of Iraqis who have been denied asylum in The Netherlands are squatting in front of the doors of the refugee organization VluchtelingenWerk Nederland on the Surinameplein in Amsterdam.
The medical professionals who cared for the Georgian girl, Renate, who was sent back to Poland in November 2012, did not make any mistakes
Only aggressive and criminal asylum seekers will end up in jail behind bars. The other asylum seekers stay in an open door prison or must report regularly.
This is written in the vision on the future of detention of foreigners of State Secretary Fred Teeven (Security and Justice). The plan now goes to the Cabinet, he told the Volkskrant. With this future approach, the VVD Minister meets an explicit wish of coalition partner PvdA.
