You don’t put a child on the street. Period!!!
As I write this, that sentence is clearly visible on the placard held by the “Giant of the Dignity of People Without Legal Stay” at House of Compassion (also known as the Beguinage Church). And this right next to three tents where families live with a total of eight* children… put out on the street by the new law of 01/08/2025, which stipulates that those who have already obtained asylum elsewhere can no longer be received here, not even during an asylum application procedure… not even if they come from Greece, not even when it is known that the Belgian State has already been condemned dozens of times for sending people back to Greece and its degrading reception conditions. We claim to be proud of having signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but we refuse to apply the rulings of judges who forbid sending these children/families back to Greece… A bit like that politician who declared on the program De Afspraak that we, Western countries, should not be too modest, but even proud of having voted in 1948 for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… without remembering that all those Western countries that still had colonies at the time continued, after 1948, to spend billions to keep them as long as possible (in the name of… Human Rights?), and that some colonial powers still killed thousands of people (cf. the Netherlands: 300,000 deaths; and in Paris, on 17 October 1961, 100 Algerian protesters thrown into the Seine).
Photo Geneviève Frère: Beginning of the action “No children on the street. Period!” at House of Compassion
A few years ago, we protested for many months with the placard: “You don’t lock up a child. Period.”, until that stopped. Today, the slogan must be: “You don’t put a child on the street.”… A matter of “progress” (sic)?… down the slippery slope of migration policy?!? Once, there were passionate Belgium–Netherlands football matches, to score the most goals. Today, it is Belgium–Netherlands competition in migration policy… to achieve the worst score… and thus tell the world/asylum seekers: no, you are not welcome here.
But in reality, we did not have to wait for this new law of 1 August to see children on the street. In De Standaard of 13/11/2025, one could read: during the ten and a half months of 2025, 150 babies had already been received by Samusocial, and between 1/9 and 12/11/2025, Samusocial had to put 2,164 people (that is, 613 families) on the street for lack of space; at the beginning of September, even a family with a baby of 18 months, and another week in September, 100 people without shelter (including 30 children!). “In a welfare state, we cannot possibly accept that mothers with young children and even babies end up on the street,” said director Sarah de Limanchine… but IT DOES happen! And that same month, the federal government announced that with its austerity policy, it would no longer participate in funding winter reception in major cities, leaving Brussels to manage without this support… including for many “internal refugees/poor” coming from within the country and ending up in the streets of Brussels.
We celebrate Christmas… a child/a family on the street. And we swear, in a way: this cannot happen, at Christmas a child/a family on the street. No, this cannot, this must never happen: a family on the street, even outside of Christmas. THANK YOU for what you do so that this does not have to happen.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2026
Daniel Alliet
*3 children under 10 are still today at House of Compassion, we still hope for them to find a place in a center.
Photo: Geneviève Frère: “Sleeping bag operation” in front of the Palace of Justice with Amnesty, Vluchtelingenwerk Vlaanderen, Bel Refugee Platform and House of Compassion (with the participation of members of the Paulus community).
