Twice as many migrants chose to leave the Netherlands in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Its ‘assisted voluntary return and reintegration programme’ has helped 2,500 migrants leave the Netherlands in 2016 – quite possibly for sunnier climes – compared with 1,288 in the same period last year.

Most of these people came from Afghanistan, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Mongolia, Serbia and Ukraine.

Last year the IOM’s international organisation helped 70,000 migrants leave the countries where they had taken refuge, and re-integrate on their return.

‘This was the largest number of voluntary returns registered in the past decades,’ says the organisation on its website. ‘The current migration trends seem to indicate that returns could increase in the years to come – not only in the number of migrants in need of assistance, but also in the complexity of the process.’