NOS News•
Almost a year after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, there are such 90.000 Ukrainian refugees registered in Dutch municipalities. Relatively speaking, most of them live in Renswoude (33 per 1000 inhabitants) and Gennep (22 per 1000 inhabitants), Statistics Netherlands reports.
The figures from Statistics Netherlands reflect the situation as of 1 November 2022, the last measurement moment. Rozendaal in Gelderland was then the only municipality where not a single Ukrainian refugee lived. The national average was about 5 Ukrainian newcomers per 1000 inhabitants.
Community spirit
Mariska Wagenaar is location manager at the municipal shelter in Oldebroek. There are currently about 100 Ukrainian refugees, 75 adults and 25 children, living there. Another 150 Ukrainians are staying with host families.
For a small municipality, the Gelderland village receives a remarkable number of displaced persons. Oldebroek is eleventh of the municipalities where the most Ukrainians are registered per 1000 inhabitants. “Community spirit and the church play a role in this”, thinks Wagenaar. She also says that there is simply “more physical space” in the countryside.
Below you can see how many Ukrainian refugee municipalities receive per 1000 inhabitants:
16 percent of all Ukrainian refugees who were registered in the Netherlands after the Russian invasion had left on 1 January 2023. This concerns almost 16.7 thousand people. More than two-thirds of this group consisted of men. Of all returnees, 55.4 percent returned to Ukraine.
Ukrainians who have fled to the Netherlands are covered by the European Temporary Protection Directive, which was recently extended until March 4, 2024. Europe can extend the scheme for another year. It is not yet clear what will happen to the group of Ukrainians in the Netherlands – whether their asylum application will still have to be answered, whether they will have to return to Ukraine or be allowed to stay in the Netherlands.
