Asylum is a human right

In this year’s General Election, we want candidates to remember the importance of providing safety to people fleeing war, torture and persecution in debates about asylum and immigration.

Please join the Refugee Council, Liberty and Scottish Refugee Council in asking candidates to sign our Asylum Election pledge. The pledge calls on candidates from all parties to ensure a fair and balanced debate on asylum and immigration, and avoid racism and xenophobia.

We’ve written to candidates to tell them about the pledge but pressure from voters is vital. Please make sure that your candidates know that local people reject xenophobia and racism, and believe that the right to seek asylum must be protected.

Act now: contact your candidates about the pledge

Remember to let us know how your MP or parliamentary candidate responds to your pledge request by emailing us at campaigns@refugeecouncil.org

Thank you for your support.

Refugee Council Campaigns Team

campaigns@refugeecouncil.org

Ending the Detention of Children in Immigration Centres – carried

Ten conference representatives – Mover: Chris Huhne MP (Liberal Democrat Shadow Home Secretary) Summation: Dr Evan Harris MP

Conference notes with concern that:

i)    Around 2,000 children are detained at Yarl’s Wood detention centre and elsewhere in the UK each year, for an average of two weeks.

ii)    In June 470 children, most of them under five, were being held in detention centres, and a third were held for longer than 28 days.

iii)    Children are not just detained immediately before they are removed from the UK Ð 889 children have been held in detention centres for longer than a month during the last five years and a large proportion of detained children are eventually released.

iv)    Conditions in detention centres cannot be monitored by campaigners and have been described as ‘prison-like’.

v)    Medical Royal Colleges, children’s groups and refugee groups are united in their condemnation of this practice and of the detrimental effect it has on young minds and bodies.

vi)    In 2009, the Children’s Commissioner raised serious concerns about the nutrition and healthcare children and nursing mothers receive in detention centres and called for the immediate end to the detention of children. Read more

Minister on detaining failed asylum seekers’ children

Meg Hillier, the Home Office Minister responsible for children in detention, was asked if locking up children of failed asylum seekers could ever be justified.

The presenter is JO COBURN

HILLIER: Let’s be clear, nobody wants to see children detained. Certainly I don’t. But we do have an immigration system and we have rules. And when somebody doesn’t have legal right to stay in the country, we ask them to leave voluntarily, and if they don’t we have to have a way of getting them out of the country.

Now with children being detained I’m faced with a number of options. Read more

Apology for abuse of children – leaflet

Apology for abuse of children THEN,

while NOW…

THEN In February Gordon Brown apologised for the UK’s past role in sending more than 130,000 children to former colonies where many suffered abuse.

He said: “To all those former child migrants and their families… we are truly sorry. They were let down.”

NOW In February Children’s Commissioner Sir Al Aynesley Green called for families with children not to be detained: Read more

Twins aged five taken to Dungavel

There has been long-running controversy over the detention of children at Dungavel

A Church of Scotland minister has spoken out after two five-year-old boys were taken to the Dungavel detention centre in their school uniforms.

Reverend Ian Galloway spoke out following the detention of Nigerian twins Joshua and Joel Ovranah, and their mother, Stephanie. He said it was the “latest example of young children being put in distressing circumstances”. Read more

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