Asylum minister must reassess the security situation in Syria, Council of State says

The Dutch minister for Asylum and Migration must reassess the general security situation in Syria, the Council of State said on Wednesday. Its administrative jurisdiction division, the highest administrative court in the Netherlands, found that the minister’s country policy on Syria was not justified well enough.

The policy

After the fall of the former regime, the minister drew up a new country policy on Syria in June 2025. It says there is a “lower level of indiscriminate violence” across the whole of Syria. As a result, people from Syria have to show that their personal circumstances, together with the general situation in the country, would lead to serious harm in their individual case.

What was missing

According to the Council of State, the minister did not take all circumstances in Syria properly into account. He did not consider the humanitarian circumstances the asylum seeker had pointed to. Based on the country information, he could also not assume that a completely new situation had arisen after the fall of the former regime. The security situation cannot simply be seen apart from the years of war before it, so the effects of the former regime’s actions during the civil war must also be part of the assessment.

The case

The decision came in the case of a Syrian man who applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2023. In 2014, the former regime imprisoned and tortured him because he was said to have taken part in a demonstration. The minister rejected his asylum application.

The minister must now decide again on his application and take all relevant circumstances into account. He cannot simply refer to the earlier country policy, because that assessment was incomplete. The Council of State gave no view of its own on the general security situation in Syria.