MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 - The Belgian minister for Asylum and Immigration, Annemie Turtelboom, has announced that illegal staying families with children are no longer to be detained in closed detention centres. From the start of October, such families will be placed in open family housing and assigned a case manager or ‘coach’.

The move comes following research carried out in February 2007 by Sum Research into alternatives to detention. The research found two particular problems areas with the detention of families, in that, it impedes the natural family dynamic by surrendering parental authority to a third party (the detention centre), and that the confinement of a child that has committed no crime is hazardous to that child’s development.

Ms Turtelboom has admitted that with the new system comes a certain risk, considering the possibility of families awaiting removal may abscond. However, she is confident that the new, more humane system will be a success.

Regarding the assignment of coaches, Ms Turtelboom has said, “they will have an essential role. They will humanely prepare these families for their return”. This idea of coaching has been adopted from Australian and Swedish models.

This announcement by Ms Turtelboom has come as a surprise to many Belgian NGOs. JRS-Belgium report they were informed of this project at its early stage, but are quite surprised at how quickly a decision has come. In general, Director of JRS-Belgium Christophe Renders SJ is supportive of the announcement and sees it as acknowledgement that the detention of minors constitutes a violation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

However, he is concerned the decision is somewhat hasty on behalf of the minister, given that she took the decision more or less on her own, making no attempt to consult with other actors in the field (bar the Aliens board who are in charge of the execution of the project).

“Many questions arise which need further clarification. Does the minister mean to stop the detention of all families with children, including the detained families who asked asylum at the border and the families who are detained in virtue of the Dublin II convention? Or does her decision apply only to the families who are staying illegally on the territory?” says Fr Renders.

Other issues that remain unclear is that of the role of the ‘coach’. Coaches are to be civil servants from the Aliens Office and this runs contrary to how the successful Australian scheme was operated. Coaches will be appointed only once all other procedures are exhausted, instead of from the very beginning of the stay of the families concerned. This means that coaches will orient the families only towards their return and will not counsel families regarding their alternatives.

Finally, the fear of JRS-Belgium and other Belgian NGOs is that this is a badly prepared and incomplete project, and will be used in a political way to prove that detention is the only way to host undocumented migrants on Belgian territory.