English summary
Which asylum accounts hold up in court
Every published ruling with a substantive asylum account is classified into the story type the claim rests on. The table below shows how far each type deviates from the overall rate at which Dutch courts uphold the immigration service's decision.
- Overall upheld rate
- 67.0%
- Story types
- 10
- Classified rulings
- 5,153
- Language of sources
- Dutch
01Deviation
Sorted by absolute deviation from the average
| Story type | Rulings | Judged | Upheld | Deviation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Religious conversion | 670 | 654 | 48.6% | -18.4 pt |
| Blood feud or honour killing | 696 | 687 | 78.5% | +11.5 pt |
| Document fraud | 82 | 80 | 72.5% | +5.5 pt |
| LGBTI orientation | 1,097 | 1,071 | 72.5% | +5.5 pt |
| Draft evasion | 139 | 132 | 72.0% | +5.0 pt |
| Concealed origin | 367 | 357 | 71.1% | +4.1 pt |
| Political activity | 1,254 | 1,219 | 63.2% | -3.8 pt |
| Medical grounds | 125 | 121 | 63.6% | -3.4 pt |
| Military service | 212 | 200 | 70.0% | +3.0 pt |
| Family ties | 511 | 495 | 67.5% | +0.5 pt |
BronDutch judiciary open data (rechtspraak.nl). "Upheld" is the share of judged cases in which the court left the immigration service's decision intact; partial and unclear outcomes are excluded from the denominator.
02Caveats
How to read a deviation
A low upheld rate does not mean an account is untrue. It means the court more often found the decision insufficiently reasoned or otherwise unlawful for that type of case. Small denominators move sharply; the Dutch pages show a Wilson confidence interval per archetype.
Selection matters twice: only contested decisions are litigated, and only a part of the rulings is published.
Source language
Court rulings, quoted passages and case summaries are in Dutch, as published by the Dutch judiciary. These English pages summarise the figures and the method. The full detail lives on the Dutch patterns page (in Dutch).