Belgium is running out of housing for migrants and is prioritizing women and families with children. This means young male refugees are left to their own devices, with many becoming homeless.
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00:00 Daybreaking in the Belgian capital.
00:03 47-year-old Sri Lankan Robin Rodrigo has been sleeping rough for a few weeks now,
00:08 directly outside of Belgium's asylum office.
00:12 He's waiting for them to process his application.
00:15 I asked for a room, then he told me, "Right now we don't have a room because
00:21 too many people in this country."
00:23 Then he wanted to sleep on the floor.
00:26 I slept on the floor.
00:28 With nowhere to go, he waits here, like dozens of others.
00:32 Robin watches as, every morning at 8.30am,
00:35 the Brussels Asylum Application Centre opens for half an hour.
00:40 Women, children and families line up on the left.
00:43 Single men on the right.
00:46 Belgium provides shelter for refugee women and children.
00:49 They're taken away from here immediately.
00:52 But since October 2021, men arriving alone are not given housing.
00:57 Sent back out with forms, telling them to get on an already full waiting list.
01:03 It's volunteers who provide help every morning.
01:06 The guys have nothing to do, nothing to eat, nowhere to go.
01:13 But normally, according to the Belgium law,
01:17 the Belgian authorities are compelled to give a shelter
01:23 and to give food to these people.
01:25 And they decide not to comply with the law.
01:28 They don't care.
01:29 All the refugees can do is wait.
01:32 Like Nazratullah, he was a soldier in the Afghan army
01:35 before the West pulled out.
01:37 He arrived in Belgium three months ago,
01:39 fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan.
01:42 My situation is really bad, look at this.
01:44 I live in three months, four months, five months,
01:48 live in this tent.
01:51 The weather is really, our situation is really bad.
01:55 After the asylum office closes at 9am, people disperse for the day.
02:00 For Robin, his strong Catholic faith brings him to Brussels Cathedral.
02:05 He prays to find a way through this.
02:08 I pray to God that I will find a way through this.
02:10 I pray to God that I will find a way through this.
02:16 I pray to God that I will find a way through this.
02:19 He's not seen his wife and two young children in three years.
02:22 That's the best time they really are my...
02:25 Robin says he had his possessions stolen
02:28 and that he no longer owns a passport.
02:30 I want to move to family, then when I got visa,
02:33 then I can take my two kids and my wife.
02:36 Then I like to stay here.
02:38 I want, I like to help people, but I don't have money.
02:43 But he still owns certificates he's received from jobs
02:46 as a qualified heavy-duty construction welder.
02:50 He worked in Iraq in 2005 and 2010,
02:54 in Qatar and one year and a half in Romania.
02:58 According to the refugee charity Flücklingewerk,
03:00 the average time it takes for an asylum request
03:03 to be processed in Belgium is 440 days.
03:07 Under EU law, people have the right to shelter during that wait,
03:11 and Flücklingewerk sees this as a European problem.
03:14 You see an overall race to the bottom
03:17 in the whole of the European Union
03:19 when it comes to the common asylum system,
03:23 where every country is thus a bit worse
03:27 than the neighbouring country
03:28 because they want to be less attractive.
03:30 So in a way, it is part of overall European policy
03:34 to be the least attractive country out there.
03:37 Belgium has a housing waiting list for single men,
03:40 which they cut off at 2,700 names.
03:43 So there are at least that many sleeping rough.
03:47 Many hundreds more are unable to even get their name on the list.
03:52 Domestic Belgian courts have ruled 8,000 times
03:55 against the government for not upholding the right to reception,
03:59 as did the European Court of Human Rights against Belgium,
04:02 over 1,700 times.
04:05 We received a written response from the office
04:07 of the Belgian state secretary in charge of asylum.
04:10 According to it, Belgium faced a 40% increase
04:13 in asylum requests in 2022 from 2021,
04:17 and that with 34,500 places,
04:20 the asylum reception network in Belgium has never been so large.
04:25 Quote, "Nobody can say that there is a lack of will."
04:28 To support the homeless men,
04:30 aid charities have started occupying premises
04:32 like this former office building in Brussels.
04:35 350 men, mainly from Burundi, Sudan, Eritrea
04:39 and Yemen, live here.
04:41 Fabrice Dupuy leads a 15-strong team
04:44 and is having to reject around 20 new arrivals
04:47 like this man every day.
04:50 Today we have no free place,
04:54 so I cannot put the people like this.
04:59 Relatively new into this cycle of homelessness and waiting,
05:03 Robin is still convinced that his family's future
05:06 is here in Europe.
05:07 This is my son Kevin.
05:09 This is my daughter Duxy.
05:11 It's me.
05:13 And so he keeps waiting,
05:15 with more and more men sleeping in the passages
05:17 outside Belgium's asylum office every day.
05:20 Life's very tough here now, and it's not even winter yet.