Dutch court orders government to improve migrant centers

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A Dutch court has ordered the government and its asylum-seeker accommodation agency to significantly improve conditions at overcrowded and unsanitary emergency migrant housing facilities. The ruling Thursday by a civil court in The Hague came in a summary case brought by the Dutch Council for Refugees amid an ongoing crisis in the Netherlands that has forced hundreds of migrants to sleep outdoors in squalid conditions while waiting to register their asylum claims. The court says the government “has the obligation to accommodate asylum seekers in a dignified manner.” It ruled that current conditions in a reception center in the northern Netherlands and other emergency accommodation does not meet basic European standards.