Belgium's reception centres reported 1,281 incidents last year: a third more than in 2020 and twice as many as in 2017, Het Nieuwsblad reports.
Half the incidents involved physical or verbal aggression against staff or other asylum seekers. On the matter, State Secretary for Asylum and Migration Sammy Mahdi (CD&V) has said that it isn't simply that violence is on the rise, but also that incidents are being officially reported more frequently than had previously been the case.
Yet it is impossible to overlook the influxes of migrants and refugees that Belgium has seen in recent years. The past year, in particular, has seen several waves of new arrivals. When the Taliban took back control of Afghanistan last year, thousands of people – young men in particular – went to other countries. Single men are more often the cause of violence than families.
Belgium's asylum statistics in numbers. Credit: Fedasil
The Federal Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (Fedasil) calls attention to the growing pressure in the centres and asks for additional reception sites to be created. The current occupancy rate is 94%, up 9% from a year ago.
The July floods in Wallonia led to the temporary loss of 1,000 reception places, which also put pressure on the reception network.
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Fedasil can impose mild sanctions, such as taking pocket money, compulsory community service or a transfer to another centre. For more extreme cases, the General Secretariat for Refugees can exclude asylum seekers from the asylum procedure. This happened 10 times in the past year.
