Status Now Refugee Week event: The Hostile Environment – How do we hold the Government to account? Report of a roundtable discussion
Status Now Network organised a roundtable discussion for 20 June 2022 during the course of Refugee Week. The theme of the discussion was holding the Government to account for its hostile environment policies.
The SNN event assembled a roundtable of activists to discuss where we have got to with the campaign against the hostile environment and the steps that need to be taken for this to go forward. The key idea is the project underway to organise a People’s Tribunal on Migration Justice over the course of the next 12 months which will draw on the evidence of violation of the rights of migrant people to indict Government policies and help forge the sort of alliances we will need to bring about change.
Contributors to the discussion included Zoe Bantleman of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, Julius-Cezar MacQuarie, organiser of the Night Workers Charter, Francesca Humi of Kanlungan, and Loraine Mponela, chair of Status Now.
Participants considered how the Government’s hostile environment policies continued to operate today, five years after the revelations of the Windrush generation scandal, and what campaigning work needed to be undertaken to continue to challenge their corrosive effects on the rights of migrant and refugee people.
An invitation is extended to those who are interested in joining the Status Now’s team in organising a People’s Tribunal over the course of the next 12 months. If you would like to join he People’s Tribunal Working Group please email Don Flynn at pt_wg@statusnow4all.org.
Download a copy of the report of our event here: 2022-June-20-FINAL-report-of-Status-Now-Refugee-Week-event
Contact details for the People’s Tribunal Team at StatusNow
You can email pt_wg@statusnow4all.org
How to organise a People’s Tribunal and indict UK immigration policy
A new study of the use that can be made of ‘People’s Tribunals’ to advance the campaigning work of migrant and refugee rights organisations has been published by the steering group which organised the London hearing of a Europe-wide in 2018.
The organisation of People’s Tribunals to indict the policies and practices of governments have been around since the 1960s when they were used to great effect to mobilise public opinion against the role of the United States during the years of the war in Vietnam. Since that time has been developed as a method for uniting diverse campaigns in a common project to denounce human rights violations. Continue reading