Dutch government sends refugees to Afghan war

Translated from Dutch NOS radio today:

Family deported to Afghanistan, human rights organizations furious

A family with four minor children has been deported to Afghanistan today. Ten children’s and human rights organizations, including Defence for Children and Amnesty International, tried unsuccessfully to prevent the deportation. According to those organizations, Afghanistan is unsafe. …

According to the children’s rights organization Defence for Children, Afghanistan is too dangerous for the children. “Attacks and violence occur every day”, said Martine Goeman, lawyer at Defence for Children, in the NOS Radio 1 Journal. “Civilians are being killed. This is a vulnerable family. We are very concerned about this.” …

Last September, then State Secretary Harbers replied to parliamentary questions that 120 families with minor children were on the list to be deported. …

“We have concluded that Afghanistan is too unsafe“, said Emile Affolter, spokesperson for Amnesty. According to the Global Peace Index, Afghanistan is the most dangerous country in the world, last year that was still Syria. “And the violence is only increasing,” says Affolter. …

Human rights organizations point out that the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway are the only countries in Europe that deport families to Afghanistan. Also, the granting percentages for residence applications for Afghans are much higher in other countries. In Italy, for example, it is 98 percent, in France 67 percent, while in the Netherlands it is 35 percent.

The Afghan Minister of Migration this spring asked the Dutch government to stop deporting asylum seekers to his country. “The public domain is unsafe”, Minister Balkhi told Nieuwsuur. “For example, someone was deported from Sweden who died in a bomb attack. This can happen to anyone else who is deported.”