Help Refugees, a humanitarian organisation providing emergency relief to refugee camps across Europe, has launched a legal challenge against the UK Home Secretary for failing to meet its commitment to provide sanctuary for unaccompanied child refugees.
The refugee camp in Calais is due to be demolished on 17 October given the uninhabitable conditions. However, as yet, there are no alternative accommodation plans in place for those who are going to be displaced. Help Refugees has expressed considerable concern for the unaccompanied minors living in that camp, which amounted to 1,022 according to their most recent census. It has been reported that last time the camp was demolished, 129 unaccompanied minors disappeared.
Help Refugees is arguing that the UK Government has failed in its duties to protect unaccompanied children seeking asylum. Of the unaccompanied minors living in the camp, Help Refugees has identified at least 387 children who have a legal right to be in the UK. This legal right stems from two different sources: the Dublin III Regulation and the Alf Dubs amendment to the UK’s Immigration Act 2016.
Under Dublin III, just under 100 young people have been reunited with their families through the Safe Passage scheme. However, this process can take up to nine months, and therefore some young people are taking severe risks by using other methods to get to the UK, given the abhorrent conditions they are faced with. It has been made clear to volunteer groups on the ground that there is no faith in the system and, even if there was, the conditions are too bad to bear for the length of time the system takes.
The Alf Dubs amendment – named after the Labour Peer who introduced it, having arrived to the UK as a child refugee – saw the government pledge “as soon as possible” to “make arrangements to relocate to the UK” a number of unaccompanied refugee children. Since it was passed in May 2016, no minor has been brought to the UK under this provision.
Help Refugees is therefore accusing Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, of breaching her relocation duties to those unaccompanied minors who have a right to be in the UK, by way of misapplying the Immigration Act. The action focusses on the fact that as a result of this failure to act, the very children the Act is supposed to protect are now exposed to “serious risks of abuse and exploitation”. Such claims are supported by certain tragic circumstances, for example, a 14 year old Afghan boy who had a legal right to asylum in the UK was killed on a French motorway while trying to get there.
Pressure to act fast is also coming from within the UK. Labour MP Stella Creasy stressed that time is running out, and Yvette Cooper, chair of Labour’s refugee taskforce called for Britain and France to take half the unaccompanied children in Calais each. Furthermore, over the last week, Ms Rudd has been contacted by many Conservative MPs encouraging her to speed up her response to this crisis.
Click here to read the report from The Guardian