In Belgium, the reception crisis is taking a new step
This week, unaccompanied minors as well as families with children have not found a place in the Belgian accommodation system reserved for asylum seekers. The saturation of the reception system has lasted for a year. Until now, it only affected single men. With the approach of the winter period, the concerns of the associations are growing.
The crisis of the reception in Belgium has just franchised an additional degree. For the first time, this Thursday, October 13, families with children, registered as asylum seekers, could not find a place in the reception and accommodation system managed by Fedasil (the federal agency for reception of asylum seekers, under State supervision). Some 125 people are affected. At the beginning of the week, these are 21 unaccompanied minors who, despite their official registration, were also refused entry into the reception system.
However, these audiences had already been a priority for several months by the Belgian government, faced with the saturation of the reception system. “There, we are crossing red lines. The crisis that has been bogged down for a year is becoming even more serious”, worries Jessica Blommaert, in charge of international protection and reception issues for the Belgian network Ciré (Coordination Initiatives for Foreign Refugees ).
7,000 asylum seekers on the streets this winter?
Faced with the critical situation this week, Fedasil, which has not yet responded to our request for an interview, asked for reinforcement from the NGOs. These helped to find emergency solutions by paying hotel nights to a number of families and unaccompanied minors. “It is the NGOs that make up for the lack of action by the State”, points out Jessica Blommaert. The Ciré network has been campaigning for months, alongside other organizations, “for immediate sheltering in hotels. But this solution had been swept away by the government”, regrets the manager.
Contacted, the Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration, responsible for the means of the reception system, we convey the position of Secretary of State Nicole de Moor: “The sad reality is that the influx is increasing by disproportionately in only a few European Member States, including Belgium, and that this situation is no longer tenable. I have just underlined this again during my meeting with the European Commissioner, Ylva Johansson”.
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In the meantime, a “winter plan” will be released, the government announced this week. Its outlines are still vague: the plan is “still under discussion in the government”, tells us the State Secretariat for Migration and Asylum. Between 450 and 600 new places could be opened in Brussels, and work with the Brussels regional authorities strengthened. “In two days, it will be filled,” fears Jessica Blommaert. “We are talking about 7,000 asylum seekers who would be on the streets in winter: this is unheard of”.
Belgian daily Le SoirState Secretary Nicole de Moor explains: “The system is simply running up against its operational limits. Fedasil and its partners like the Red Cross and Rode Kruis cannot find enough personnel to make all the sites operational. There is no There’s no quick fix to that. Within the capacity constraints we have, we’re prioritizing the most vulnerable.”
A year-long crisis
In fact, in September, more than 4,000 people applied for international protection in Belgium. A recording, for a year. Nicole De Moor judges that Belgium is facing rare pressure: “On Monday, for example, 450 asylum seekers were trying to register at Pacheco [le siège de l’Office des étrangers où les demandes de protection sont enregistrées, NDLR] ; On Friday, they were 360. These are daily figures that we only saw during the crisis period of 2015″ – during the large arrivals of Syrians -, she explains in an official press release published on Tuesday.
But this reception crisis does not date from September. It has been the subject of regular alerts from NGOs for a year. In mid-September, a network of associations and NGOs (Médecins du Monde, Amnesty International, etc.) sent a roadmap to the Prime Minister Belgian.
Among the lines of work proposed: the establishment of a federal emergency plan, the implementation of a law allowing the transfer of beneficiaries from a community structure to individual housing after six months… Or, the guarantee of having a permanent capacity of 30,000 places.
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But this roadmap has not been relayed within the government. Nicole de Moor even expressed, through the presshis disagreement with certain proposals, and reveals that “NGOs are proposing things that we are already doing today”.
“Requisitioning staff”
For its part, Fedasil, which has already opened more than 5,000 places and hired 600 additional employees since the start of 2022, points above all to a problem of lack of staff. This lack leads in particular to longer processing times for asylum applications, and therefore to a minimum turn-over of reception places.
“We, on the proposal to requisition staff from Fedasil, the foreigners’ office and the Ministry of the Interior, for missions lasting several months”, indicates Jessica Blommaert. This had already been tried out, for a time, to register Ukrainians arriving in the territory at the start of 2022 and asking for protection.
“In the short term, 150 people will be released by other public services to help make the places currently available operational,” the State Secretariat for Migration and Asylum assures InfoMigrants. “A working group will be set up to fill the first needs in terms of personnel as soon as possible”, he adds.
The associations also propose to rely on the sites opened for the reception of these Ukrainian nationals, which have since been underused, such as the Ariane center in Woluwé. It was only this week that it began to receive other asylum seekers, including unaccompanied minors. But it quickly became full in turn: hence the lack of solutions for the 21 unaccompanied minors and their families this week.
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“We must both requisition staff; offer greater shelter in hotels, youth hostels and empty buildings; rationalize underused sites for Ukrainians…”, insists Jessica Blommaert. “There are a whole series of short and long-term solutions that would allow us to breathe and start to come out of this crisis”.