Netherlands gets tough with Somali asylum seekers

Somali asylum seekers will no longer be automatically accepted in the Netherlands. There has been too much fraud, says deputy justice minister Albayrak.

Whenever the sun comes out the residents of the Ter Apel centre for asylum seekers immediately emerge from their barracks. Many of them are from Somalia. The women wear long flowery dresses and bright-coloured headscarves. Some carry babies on their hips or wrapped to their chests.

The Netherlands are a popular destination for asylum seekers from Somalia. There were almost 4,000 of them last year - almost a third of all asylum seekers in the Netherlands. In the first two months of this year some 850 Somalis applied for asylum here, making them the second-largest group after the Iraqis.

People from central and southern Somalia benefit from what is known as "categorical protection": these parts of Somalia are so dangerous that its entire population is considered at risk. Somalia has been involved in a civil war since 1991 and there has been no effective central government since. As a result, several European countries - the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Hungary and Luxembourg - made asylum for people from Somalis virtually automatic.

Filing fingertips

Until now. In early April, Dutch deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak (Labour) announced a review of the categorical protection programme for Somalis. There has been too much abuse, she wrote to parliament.

Some Somalis have taken to filing off their fingertips to escape registration. Since 2003 all asylum seekers in Europe are fingerprinted to prevent so-called "asylum shopping". Asylum seekers are supposed to apply in the country of first arrival, but some people prefer to travel to another European country if they think they have a better chance of being accepted there, or after having been turned down in the first country.

There is also the matter of Somali foster children. After asylum has been granted, the refugee has the right to bring his spouse and children to the Netherlands. After DNA tests were introduced to verify blood ties there was a sudden peak in the number of Somali foster children. One Somali family claimed to have no less than 41 foster children.

Aybarak now wants to make Somali asylum seekers register any foster children immediately upon arrival. The children will only be admitted if the asylum seeker can prove that the foster children were an integral part of the family back in Somalia.

But according to Shamsa Said of the federation of Somali associations in the Netherlands (FSAN) there is no such thing as foster children in Somalia. There is no such thing as family either, at least not as we know it. Said is from Somalia and has lived in the Netherlands since 1993.

Group thinkers

"Here a family lives in one and the same house and it is the parents who raise their children. In Somalia children belong not to the parents but to the entire family. Children are often raised by people other than the parents. Your sister's child is just as much yours as it is hers. Your uncle's child is your responsibility too,"according to Said.

Somalis are group thinkers, she says. "I have lived here so long but I still find it difficult to think about myself. The first few years I still said 'we' when I was talking about myself."

But asylum lawyer Loes Vellenga says Somalis are now also being punished as a group. She compares Albayrak's new measures to a schoolteacher who punishes the whole class because of one pupil's mischief. "A few people have committed fraud and the entire population is punished," she says.

VluchtelingenWerk (RefugeeWork), a Dutch ngo supporting asylum seekers in the Netherlands, also calls Albayrak's approach "disproportionate". "Fraud needs to be punished," says its director Edwin Huizing, "but the decision to give a person protection or not should depend on the security situation in the country of origin, not on fraud."

Refugee Abdulahi is more understanding. Abdulahi (26) fled from Somalia to the Netherlands by himself five years ago; he now lives in a centre for asylum seekers in Bosmeer where he is taking an integration course. "I have heard the stories of Somalis filing off their fingertips," says Abdulahi. "I understand that Albayrak wants to tighten the rules. But she should be careful because the situation in Somalia has become even worse lately."

Individual basis

Shamsa Said agrees: everybody in Somalia wants out - by any means possible. The immigration service IND estimates that half of all Somali asylum seekers in the Netherlands have had some kind of help in getting here.

Albayrak admits it is "exceptional" to lift the categorical protection for Somalis at a time when the situation in many parts of the country is still critical. But she has no choice, she says.

Somali asylum seekers will now be judged on an individual basis. To determine if someone is really from central or southern Somalia - or from Somalia at all - a language test is used. Immigration officials also try to determine which clan an asylum seeker belongs to.

Shamsa Said wishes them luck. "There are no real family names in Somalia. It is: 'I am Ayaan, daughter of Hirsi who was the son of Said...' Sometimes you have to go back twelve generations to know for sure which clan you belong to," she says.