August 2023 - Status Now 4 All

August 27, 2023August 27, 2023

Children reaching UK in small boats sent to jail for adult sex offenders

27 August 2023: Thanks to Maddie Harris and Humans for Rights Network – StatusNow signatories – for exposing this terrible situation:

Guardian: Children reaching UK in small boats sent to jail for adult sex offenders

Human rights group finds growing number of cases of minors held among prisoners

Vulnerable children who arrive in Britain by small boat are being placed in an adult prison that holds significant numbers of sex offenders.

A growing number of cases have been identified where unaccompanied children, many of whom appear to be trafficked, have been sent to HMP Elmley, Kent, and placed among foreign adult prisoners.

According to the most recent inspection of Elmley, the block where foreign nationals are held also houses sex offenders.

Of 14 unaccompanied children so far identified by staff at Humans For Rights Network as being sent to an adult prison, one is believed to have been 14 when they spent seven months in Elmley.

August 22, 2023September 16, 2023

IPPR: The asylum in-tray in 2025

22 August 2023: Institute for Public Policy Research – IPPR report: The asylum in-tray in 2025

With a general election expected in the next 12-18 months, the UK’s asylum system is in crisis.

The backlog is at over 130,000 cases, the system is costing around £3.6 billion a year in asylum support costs, and the Home Office is gripped by institutional challenges. At the same time, the number of people arriving in small boats has escalated rapidly from the hundreds to the tens of thousands in the past five years.

The prime minister has pledged to ‘stop the boats’ as one of his five priorities for government. Central to the government’s plan is its flagship Illegal Migration Act – which will place a duty on the home secretary to remove irregular arrivals and not consider their asylum claims – as well as the agreement to relocate asylum seekers to Rwanda.

This briefing sets out the in-tray for the UK government in 2025 – after the next general election – across the main parts of the asylum system.

August 7, 2023August 7, 2023

Response from some Status Now Network members to the British Refugee Council’s Vision

7 August 2023: Intro: This opinion piece by some SNN members has been written quickly, soon after the British Refugee Council published its vision at the end of July 2023. We wanted to respond as immediately and impactfully as we could, to encourage further discussion within the sector as a whole. Hopefully, alongside the British Refugee Council itself, more Network members and other groups and organisations in the sector will become engaged in the discussion going forward.

A contemporary and preliminary response from some Status Now Network members to the British Refugee Council’s Vision, published in July 2023, published here with an invitation to the Refugee Council to respond. Thank you.

Summary

To some of us in the Status Now Network this British Refugee Council vision appears to abandon the principle of everyone’s basic right to claim asylum, preferring to pick and choose particular people that suits recent Government agendas. It was in the devastating wake of ‘picking and choosing’ that the 1951 convention came into existence. Now is not the time to turn away from its principles – on any level.