Farah stares at her hands. Every now and then she looks up at her interpreter, who sits quietly beside her. In the Utrecht courtroom, six employees from the emergency shelter for undocumented migrants where she now sleeps are watching as she tries once again, sixteen years after her first asylum application, to obtain status in the Netherlands.
Farah first applied for asylum in Ter Apel in 2009. She says she belongs to an ethnic minority in Somalia that is systematically discriminated against. Her husband was murdered, and she herself was abused and raped. Fleeing was her only option, she explains. But the IND does not believe that Farah comes from Somalia. Because she has no identity documents, a language analysis is carried out. It concludes that she does not speak the language of her stated region of origin. Her application is rejected.
After her asylum application was rejected, Farah ended up at DTenV, the agency that oversees repatriation and departure. In theory, these two implementing organizations complement each other: the IND arranges protection, the DTenV departure. But in the case of Farah and many others, research by De Groene Amsterdammer and Lost in Europe shows that both options are impossible. They end up in illegality. And the House of Representatives now wants to make that a criminal offense.
Read a more extensive version of this article on SmallStreamMedia.
