One of the founders of the Citizen Support Platform for Refugees, Mehdi Kassou, called on the federal agency Fedasil on Tuesday to pay particular attention to the orientation and placement of single women and Ukrainian minors in private homes. It also advises deploying, with the support of the municipalities, centralized monitoring of their accommodation.
“In recent days, I have tried to appeal a little to the right and to the left, noticing that I find it a little surprising to multiply the entry points, in particular via the municipalities because they only do census“, explains Mehdi Kassou. “So they reference people who offer accommodation, they send addresses to the crisis center and Ukrainian refugees will be referred to individuals. I’m not sure that the exercise of checking who we send these people to is done…“, he slips.
“For us, this has always been the heart of our system and the reason why we spent 6 hours a day on the pitch: meeting people, getting to know them, creating ‘matches’ that work… ensure, when putting people in contact, that at no time can a relationship of domination or violence exist. This is the heart of the work. We don’t do Airbnb. It’s connecting people. The hardest thing is getting in touch at the start, then the accompaniment“, he testifies.
Non-mixed rules
At the distribution level, the Platform applies non-mixed rules. Single women, with or without children, cannot be accommodated by single men and, conversely, a single woman will not accommodate a single man. The citizen platform has drafted a hosting charter and has developed a protocol for the continuous evaluation of the relationship between hosts and hosted.
“Vigilance procedures are in place to prevent people from becoming birds to the cat“, continue Mehdi Kassou.”We never really encountered a problem, but we always took drastic precautions for women and minors. Today there are some 20,000 places (in collective accommodation and in private homes, editor’s note) that have been offered. My advice is to create a coordination space that centralizes everything. There are protocols that exist in Belgium for host families from which it is possible to draw inspiration. We are still in the infancy of the system and very few refugees have been directed to private hosts. We now have to see what measures the municipalities will take to ensure that everything goes well.“, he continues.
In response to an appeal launched last week, the Citizen Support Platform for Refugees was able to find 1,100 places for Ukrainians. About 70% are offered by new hosts. Between 9,000 and 10,000 households hosted Syrian and Sudanese refugees during the reception crises in 2015 and 2017.
Given that men have remained in Ukraine to fight, Dominique Ernould, the spokeswoman for the Foreigners Office responsible for registrations at the former Bordet hospital, also observes that the proportion of women and children is particularly significant, compared to previous reception crises. The office of Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration Sammy Mahdi (CD&V) has been contacted with a view to obtaining answers by the end of the day.