15/05/2015 Migration, Refugees and Displaced Persons
A delegation of four members of the Committee on Migration of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), together with two Dutch senators, is to make a visit on Monday 18 May 2015 to the Schipol Detention Centre (Netherlands), where irregular migrants are held. The visit is organised in the framework of the Assembly’s on-going programme to support and promote parliamentarians’ visits to immigration detention centres across Europe.
The delegation will hold a preparatory meeting in the morning with experts of the Dutch Inspectorate of Security and Justice, and the NGO Association for the Prevention of Torture.
In the afternoon, PACE members will meet with representatives of the Dutch authorities (Direction, Repatriation and Departure Service; Immigration and Naturalisation Service; Migration Department Asylum, Reception & Return) before visiting the centre’s facilities and talking to detainees.
Many parliamentarians in Europe are entitled to visit places of detention under their national mandate. The PACE Committee on Migration has produced a guide to publicise this right more widely and to encourage parliamentarians to visit such detention centres and assist them to do so.
Similar visits already took place in Strasbourg and Calais, France, and Zürich, Switzerland. The Assembly will also be co-ordinating visits by its members to immigration detention centres in all 47 Council of Europe member States, to take place on 18 December, International Migrants’ Day.
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Members of the delegation:
Tineke Strik (Netherlands, SOC)
Alfred Heer (Switzerland, ALDE)
Alev Korun (Austria, SOC)
Athina Kyriakidou (Cyprus, SOC)
Ben Swagerman (Dutch Senator)
Pia Lokin-Sassen (Dutch Senator)