There were numerous public protests and hunger strikes by irregular migrants protesting at the continued lack of possibilities to regularize their migration status.
On 24 January the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the conditions of detention of two rejected Palestinian asylum-seekers who were held in the transit zone of Brussels Airport in February 2003 for 11 days amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment. The Court also ruled that the repeated detention of the two men, in spite of judicial decisions ordering their release, constituted a violation of their right to liberty. The CERD expressed concern at the detention of asylum-seekers and the conditions of their detention.
In October the Minister for Asylum and Migration launched a pilot project in which families with children would no longer be held in closed detention centres while awaiting expulsion from Belgium; this measure applies to irregular migrants and rejected asylum-seekers. However, families who have applied for asylum upon arrival at an airport will continue to be detained.
