The Dutch government must cooperate with efforts to bring 42 Afghan nationals who helped guard the embassy in Kabul when the Taliban regained control of Afghanistan in 2021, a lower court ruled on Tuesday.

The government must also provide transport for bringing over their partners and young children, the court in The Hague said.

• Afghan guards risked their lives for us. We left them behind

The men were employed by a private security company and the government had argued this meant the Netherlands was not responsible for their safety.

The court rejected that argument, saying the arrangement was comparable to employing workers via a staffing agency. In such cases, employers can also be held responsible for risks to worker safety, the court pointed out.

The also said that the Netherlands had evacuated Hungarian guards who worked at the embassy.

The Afghan guards say their lives are at risk because the Taliban regard them as collaborators. Interpreters who worked with the Dutch government were evacuated from Kabul when the Taliban seized the city in August 2021 following the withdrawal of US-led troops.

Security guards were initially excluded from the evacuation. But the former government extended the scheme under pressure from opposition parties.

Last September, the ministers for defence, asylum and foreign affairs reversed that decision, arguing that as many as 4,500 Afghans could be eligible for protection under the scheme, including the guards’ family members.

Afghanistan veterans and representatives of the guards disputed those numbers, pointing out that fewer than 200 applications have been received and the total is not expected to rise significantly.

The national ombudsman, Reinier van Zutphen, described the letter in which the ministers said they had made a “different assessment” of the Afghan guards’ situation as a “violation of human rights”.

He told NRC that the guards could have a legal case against the government because the previous cabinet had already promised to evacuate them.