Home Office Painted Over Child-Friendly Images at Asylum Centres
In early July, child greindly murals at Manston and at the Kent Intake Unit (KIU) were painted over by the Ministry of Justice’s estates team.
The Home Office spent more than £1,500 of public money painting over cartoon murals that were meant to welcome children to a controversial asylum reception centre, it can be revealed. A freedom of information request shows the redecoration of the walls at Manston detention camp cost £1,549.52. Colourful characters whose images adorned the walls before the redecoration included Anna from the Disney movie Frozen, and cartoon robins.
It is not known whether Robert Jenrick, the immigration minister, ordered the redecoration at Manston. He ordered the removal of cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse and Baloo the bear painted on the walls at the Kent Intake Unit (KIU) at Dover, it emerged last month. The FoI request was submitted to the Home Office by Jonathan Beck. Referring to the costs of the redecoration of reception areas at Manston, a Home Office official wrote: “I confirm that the Home Office holds the information you have requested. The cost of the redecoration came to £1,549.52.”
Read more: Rajeev Syal, Guardian, https://tinyurl.com/2d3w93k9
Asylum Seeker Evictions Must End – It’s A Matter Of Honour, Not Just Money
Guardian Editorial: It is not beyond the wit of the government to match labour supply and demand!
It is difficult to understand what the government hopes to achieve by evicting some 8,000 Afghan refugees who are currently staying in hotels. Obviously they cost the taxpayer money, and the implications of their presence are sometimes misrepresented by those with sinister motives, causing concern in local communities.
It is hardly ideal from the asylum seekers’ point of view, either. They want nothing more than to work and make a future for themselves and their families. Yet summary eviction, with little chance of their finding alternative accommodation, will prove counterproductive, and promises to actually increase tensions by putting them in competition with others looking for housing. It is as if ministers were trying deliberately to stir up trouble: to be clear, that cannot be their serious intent, but it may well prove to be the entirely predictable result of their policy.
What is to become of these people? They are already presenting themselves, legitimately, as unintentionally homeless to local authorities, who lack the resources to help. The most likely outcome is that the Afghans, having been thrown out of one hotel by the Home Office, are then billeted in another by the council. Alternatively, they may find space in a B&B. The net saving to the public purse will be minimal, and the less settled people are, the less chance they will have of acquiring skills for employment – an economic contribution that is desperately required given the present acute shortage of labour. Living in temporary digs – or worse still, sleeping rough – is bad for their health and for the wider community.
Read more: https://tinyurl.com/4bn6jh5e
A brief new report by the Refugee Council finds that the promise of the Government's 'Operation Warm Welcome' to help people fleeing Afghanistan has not yet been met and Afghan refugees are slowly being abandoned. Operation Warm Welcome was announced in August 2021 after the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan. The then Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged that the UK would ensure that Afghans who worked closely with the British military and UK Government in Afghanistan would be supported to rebuild their lives in the UK.
The Refugee Council highlights a series of failures of Operation Warm Welcome and finds the Government's actions have left thousands of men, women and children trapped in limbo, with nowhere permanent to live, while thousands more remain stuck in Afghanistan or Pakistan unable to reach the UK safely.
Many Afghans who were resettled in the UK were provided with temporary hotel accommodation. As we reported on EIN earlier this week, this form of accommodation is now ending. The Refugee Council stated: "At the end of March 2023 there were almost 9,000 Afghan men, women and children who had been evacuated from Afghanistan still being accommodated in temporary hotel accommodation. These people face being evicted from hotels by the end of August. With no policy in place for what will happen at this point, Afghan families are facing the risk of being street homeless after being evicted."
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Rights Experts Denounce Idea of ‘Reformed’ Taliban Two Years After Return to Power
More than 30 independent UN human rights experts have called for the international community to recommit to support the people of Afghanistan, in a statement issued on Monday marking two years since the Taliban took power.
The gap between promises and practices by Afghanistan’s de facto authorities has widened during this period, they said, denouncing the idea of a “reformed” Taliban. They said Taliban policies imposed on the population “have resulted in a continuous, systematic and shocking rescinding of a multitude of human rights, including the rights to education, work, and freedoms of expression, assembly and association.”
‘Segregation, marginalization and persecution’
The experts cited consistent credible reports of summary executions and other violations, including acts tantamount to enforced disappearances, widespread arbitrary detention, torture, and ill treatment, as well as arbitrary displacement.
Hardest hit are women and girls; ethnic, religious and other minorities; people with disabilities, displaced persons, and LGBTQ+ persons (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and others). Human rights defenders and other civil society representatives, journalists, artists, educators, and former government and security officials, are also affected.
“Despite reassurances by the Taliban de facto authorities that any restrictions, particularly in terms of access to education would be temporary, the facts on the ground have demonstrated an accelerated, systematic, and all engulfing system of segregation, marginalization and persecution,” they said.
Read more: UN News, https://tinyurl.com/mrxddtm2
Afghanistan: Repression Worsens 2 Years into Taliban Rule
Taliban authorities have tightened their extreme restrictions on the rights of women and girls and on the media since taking took control of Afghanistan on August 15, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. Over the past two years, Taliban authorities have denied women and girls their rights to education, work, movement, and assembly. The Taliban have imposed extensive censorship on the media and access to information, and increased detentions of journalists and other critics.
Afghanistan has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 28 million people – two-thirds of the population – in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations has reported that four million people are acutely malnourished, including 3.2 million children under 5. “People in Afghanistan are living a humanitarian and human rights nightmare under Taliban rule,” said Fereshta Abbasi, Afghanistan researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Taliban leadership needs to urgently reject their abusive rules and policies, and the international community needs to hold them accountable for the current crises.”
Together with decades of war, extreme weather events, and widespread unemployment, the main causes of food insecurity since the Taliban takeover have been the harsh restrictions on women and girls’ rights. The result has been the loss of many jobs, particularly the dismissal of many women from their jobs and bans on women working for humanitarian organizations, except in limited areas. Women and girls are denied access to secondary and higher education.
Read more: Human Rights Watch, https://tinyurl.com/mw75fkp7
High Court Demands Radical Change to Home Office Asylum Support
In the recent judgment R (HA and Ors) v SSHD [2023] EWHC 1876 (Admin) the High Court (Swift J) found that the Home Secretary failed to meet even her minimalist legal obligations to provide support to destitute asylum seekers. The details of the case make shocking reading, even for those familiar with the modern Home Office.
Background: Under section 95 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999, the Home Secretary is under a legal duty to provide destitute asylum seekers with accommodation and/or financial support to meet their essential living needs. The statute does not specify how quickly the Home Secretary must, firstly, assess whether an applicant is destitute, or secondly, provide support to eligible applicants.
Because many applicants will need emergency support whilst waiting for an assessment decision, the Home Secretary is also under a “section 98” duty to provide temporary support (accommodation and/or financial) to asylum seekers who appear to be destitute.
At the time the claim was lodged, many applicants were waiting several months to receive an eligibility decision. At the same time, the Home Secretary would only exercise her emergency section 98 powers in a limited form, namely via the offer of hotel accommodation. She would not provide cash payments to meet the essential living needs of those who did not require accommodation.
Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/bdd9rc9w
Rishi Sunak’s Attempt to Reduce Asylum Backlog Cutting Corners
The prime minister’s pledge to clear the backlog of asylum applications is having perverse effects, as Lizzie Dearden, our home affairs editor, exclusively reports. The government is now withdrawing more claims than it is considering.
More than 6,000 people have been wiped off the list without being fully assessed, for failing to attend interviews or for failing to fill in questionnaires, in the first three months of this year. In 2,000 cases claims were “withdrawn” by Home Office officials without the applicants’ consent. At the same time, only 5,800 applications were decided, with 4,000 people granted protection and 1,800 claims refused.
This is no way to run an asylum system. Labour has accused the government of “cooking the books”, because applications withdrawn reduce the size of the backlog, while Craig Mackinlay, the Conservative MP, accuses the government of creating a loophole allowing thousands of potential asylum claimants to “disappear into the underground economy”. It is quite an achievement for the government to be criticised by both sides.Read more: Independent, https://tinyurl.com/2a98h3w4
‘Systematic’ Use of Hotels for Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children Unlawful
The Home Secretary’s systematic and routine accommodation of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels is unlawful, the High Court has held. The case, R (on the application of ECPAT UK) v Kent County Council and another [2023] EWHC 1953 (Admin), looks at what happens when local authorities don’t comply with their duty to look after unaccompanied children.
Most of the UK’s unaccompanied asylum-seeking children arrive in Kent after crossing the English Channel. This means that Kent County Council is legally responsible for accommodating and looking after them under section 20 of the Children Act 1989. In 2021, it decided that it simply didn’t have the resources to do so for new arrivals in addition to the other children already in its care. It announced that it wouldn’t take any more.
The Home Secretary responded by agreeing a scheme, called the Kent Protocol, under which Kent County Council would continue to take a limited number of unaccompanied children. For the ones the council didn’t take, she commissioned hotel accommodation while they waited for a different local authority to take them under the National Transfer Scheme.
Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/5n9yw4zf
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