Foreign Relations of The Netherlands - International Issues

International Issues

The country is one of the major producers of illicit amphetamines and other synthetic drugs. It also functions as an important gateway for cocaine, heroin, and hashish entering Europe. A large portion of the world's XTC consumption is supplied by illegal laboratories from The Netherlands.

The Dutch also work with the U.S. and other countries on international programs against drug trafficking and organized crime. The Dutch-U.S. cooperation focuses on joint anti-drug operations in the Caribbean, including an agreement establishing Forward Operating Locations on the Dutch Kingdom islands of Curaçao and Aruba. The Netherlands is a signatory to international counter-narcotics agreements, a member of the UN International Drug Control Program, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, and is a contributor to international counter-narcotics.

From June 26 until December 22, 2006, two children, Ammar (12 - 13) and Sara (10 - 11), lived in the Dutch embassy in Damascus because of a child custody dispute between the Dutch mother, supported by Dutch law and the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, and the Syrian father, supported by Syrian law (Syria is no participant of this convention). The children had been living in Syria since 2004, after an alleged international child abduction by the father from the Netherlands to Syria, during a family contact in which he supposedly would visit Paris with them. The children fled to the embassy because they would like to live with their mother in the Netherlands. Minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot travelled to Damascus, negotiated and on December 22 the children finally could return to the Netherlands.

The father claims that the Dutch government has promised not to prosecute him for the abduction. However, a Dutch prosecutor claims that he is free to prosecute the father and may well do that, and that the Dutch have only retracted the international request to arrest him outside the Netherlands.