On November 20, the International Day for Children's Rights, 158 organizations - including the Netherlands Committee of Jurists for Human Rights (NJCM) - called on the Dutch government to improve conditions for refugee children.
The organizations have joined forces to call on the Dutch government to adhere to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This convention sees children of asylum seekers first and foremost as children - children with the same rights as any other child in the country. But the current care of these children is inadequate in several respects.
'They deserve to be children'
Currently, more than 10,000 refugee children are living in asylum centers in the Netherlands. They are being moved around, lack proper access to education and health care and don't get the stability and security that is precisely needed. This may affect the rest of their lives.
"At the moment, children are damaged by the lack of care," says Karin Kloosterboer, an expert in children's rights and thechairman of the Working Group on Child in AZC (which means "asielzoekerscentrum" - asylum center), which initiated the call. "These are often children who have been through a lot and are sometimes traumatized by war and the perilous journey they have behind them. They deserve to come here to rest, to find stability and to be children."
Stories of asylum seekers' children
"Along the way we saw terrible things: a mother and a two-month-old little girl both died because they hadn't eaten enough. I thought: It does not matter if I die, if I can help other people. From then on, I decided to give the food I had to small children. I was afraid they would otherwise die, too." Amjad, 12 years.
"Through the pouring rain and up to our ankles in mud, we were walking in the woods. My clothes and backpack were soaked and so they were extremely heavy. I had no idea where I was going and was afraid. My brother was somewhere else in the group. And so we lost sight of each other. It was scary, but we had to go on to finally arrive to the border between Serbia and Croatia." Alaa, 15 years.
"School is very important to me. In Gilze, I could not go to school. Now we are in Sweikhuizen, I go to school in Sittard. I do my utmost and study every night. Because there is nobody who speaks our language, I need to study hard to be able to talk with people. I work so hard in the evenings that I am often ahead of the lessons." Siromi, 15 years.
Call to the Netherlands
The appeal calls for child-friendly and small-scale shelters, a permanent location, support for parents in the care for their children, well-regulated education, childcare and psycho-social assistance for children with traumas. The call is addressed to the Dutch government in the hope that these children receive the attention they are entitled to.
"The Netherlands is able to help these children. Now is the time to improve the situation. The period of childhood has no U-turns," said Kloosterboer.
See the call and the participating organizations here.
The call was initiated by the Working Group on Children in AZC (reception centre), a coalition of UNICEF Netherlands, Defence for Children, VluchtelingenWerk (Dutch Council for Refugees), Stichting Kinderpostzegels Nederland (a charity that collects funds through the selling of special mail stamps) and Kerk in Actie (the diaconal department of the Protestant Church).
