Ministers have reversed a decision to grant asylum to a group of 200 Afghan security guards who were working for the Dutch embassy in Kabul when the city fell to the Taliban.

The staff were not eligible for asylum immediately after the evacuation of Afghanistan in August 2021 because they were working for external agencies rather than directly for the Dutch government.

The previous cabinet agreed to grant asylum to them and their families,. But on Friday foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp, defence minister Ruben Brekelmans and asylum minister Marjolein Faber said in a letter to parliament that they had made a “different assessment” of the circumstances.

Opposition parties condemned the decision, with GroenLinks-PvdA foreign affairs spokeswoman Kari Piri calling it “heartless and enraging”, while D66 MP Jan Paternotte said it was “beyond shameful” and called for parliament to intervene.

Migratie is een splijtzwam in de Nederlandse politiek, maar er is altijd een brede consensus geweest dat we onze ereschuld aan Afghaanse oud-medewerkers moeten inlossen.

Het is harteloos en woestmakend dat het kabinet weigert om de laatste evacuees over te laten komen. pic.twitter.com/QwEmytIiUn

— Kati Piri (@KatiPiri) September 27, 2024

Veldkamp is a minister for Nieuw Sociaal Contact (NSC), whose leader, Pieter Omtzigt, was highly critical of the way the Dutch government selected people for evacuation in the aftermath of the fall of Kabul three years ago.

In a parliamentary committee hearing in October 2021, Omtzigt drew parallels with the interpreters at Srebrenica who were denied access to the compound and fell into the hands of the Bosnian Serbs in 1995.

Women’s rights

Last week the Netherlands was one of four countries that announced at the UN in New York that they were bringing a case against Afghanistan at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for violating women’s rights. Veldkamp described the situation of women and girls in the country as “heartbreaking”.

The situation of Afghan women and girls is heartbreaking. They are almost entirely excluded from public life. We cannot accept this. That’s why the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Australia are holding Afghanistan accountable for violations of the Women’s Convention #CEDAW. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/UCsBny8GL8

— Caspar Veldkamp (@ministerBZ) September 25, 2024

Refugee agency Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland said the decision was “heartless” and left the interpreters in limbo. “After spending years in hiding and uncertainty, this decision has been taken for them and left them with nowhere to go,” the charity said.

Altogether the Dutch government flew 1,860 people out of Afghanistan in the initial phase of the evacuation in August 2021, with another 2,810 following later. The government is still finalising arrangements for the last 64 evacuees, the ministers said on Friday.