Home Secretary Ordered to Pay £10,500 Compensation to Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Child

For significant breach of his right to family life caused by unlawful refusals to allow him to come to the UK

MA is a vulnerable child from Somalia who was seeking family reunion with his second cousin, ASM, a British citizen resident in the UK. MA suffers from a serious medical condition, and from a young age experienced neglect, social exclusion, bullying and abuse, and did not attend school in Somalia. ASM was the only adult who showed love and care to MA, and supported him for many years including by taking him to India and Turkey for medical treatment. MA eventually entered Greece in September 2019 and claimed asylum there. In Greece, MA experienced loneliness, isolation and instability, and was also bullied due to his medical condition by the boys in the children’s centre he was housed in. This caused a worsening in his well-being and mental health.

In a judgment handed down on 10 December 2020, the Upper Tribunal (Judge Blum) found that the Home Office’s decisions to refuse 4 separate requests by Greece for the UK to take charge of MA’s asylum claim were unlawful as they breached MA’s rights to private and family life under Article 8 European Convention on Human Rights and Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. This was due to the Home Office’s failure to properly consider the very close relationship between MA and ASM, especially in light of MA’s particular vulnerabilities. These unlawful decisions resulted in many months delay in reunification which was highly distressing to MA who was alone in Greece.

After this judgment, in May 2021 MA was finally transferred to the UK so he could live with ASM. In a further decision handed down on 20 April 2023, the Upper Tribunal (Judge Blum) has made an award of £10,500 to compensate MA for breach of his Article 8 rights.

The Judge found that compensation was necessary to provide MA with just satisfaction, notwithstanding that the earlier decision had achieved his primary aim of being reunited with ASM. It was specifically considered that there was a “significant breach of the substantive Article 8 ECHR relationship between [MA] and ASM” which warranted a grant of compensation to provide MA with just satisfaction.

Source: Doughty Street Chambers, https://tinyurl.com/ytcjnfxr

Two Ways to Address the Asylum Backlog and Improve Access to Justice

The government is right that the asylum backlog needs to be urgently addressed, but the Illegal Migration Bill will not tackle the backlog in any meaningful sense and could cause devastating harm to the rights of some of the most persecuted people in the world and the international refugee system. There are two key ways to address the asylum backlog and promote access to justice: by increasing the productivity of Home Office asylum decision-makers; and by simplifying and prioritising some of the procedures involved in asylum processing.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/4jraxwxm

ECtHR Announces Challenge Against Rwanda Removal Policy as Interim Injunction Expires

The European Court of Human Rights has given formal notification to the UK government of an application by an Iraqi asylum-seeker (anonymised as NSK) challenging his removal to Rwanda. They also found that several of the Rule 39 interim measures to prevent individual applicants being removal to Rwanda have now expired. This post provides a short update on the implications of the European Court’s notification and determination.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/4pmn9eas

IRR: Calendar of Racism and Resistance 3rd – 11 April 2023

Asylum | Migration | Borders | Citizenship

10 April: The Italian coastguard launches rescue missions for 400 migrants on board a capsizing boat stranded in the central Mediterranean after Maltese authorities order a merchant ship not to conduct a rescue in the Maltese search and rescue area but to supply the boat with fuel so it can continue to Italy. (Reuters, 10 April 2023, CNN, 10 April 2023)

9 April: In Genoa, Italy, local councillor Ferruccio Sansa (Lista Sansa party) after visiting the hosting facility of Via del Campasso, in Sampierdarena district, says that he cannot believe what he saw, with migrants receiving only one meal a day and sleeping on mattresses on the floor in rooms infested with insects and parasites. (InfoMigrants, 9 April 2023)

6 April: Amnesty International criticises Austria for its ongoing unlawful pushbacks, for housing asylum seekers in tents and the disappearance of 5,140 unaccompanied children seeking asylum within a period of six months in 2022. (ECRE Newsletter, 6 April 2023)

6 April: The Black Equity Organisation launches legal action against the home secretary over her refusal to implement three crucial recommendations from the Windrush Lessons Learned Review, as a petition with 50,000 signatories is delivered to Downing Street urging a reversal of the decision. (Guardian, 6 April 2023)

5 April: After a public outcry, the Home Office ‘pauses’ the deportation of 4 of the 13 security guards, 11 Nepalese and 2 Indian, who protected the British embassy in Kabul and were airlifted to the UK in 2021, detained a week ago, including 2 who had been granted indefinite leave to remain. (Guardian, 5 April 2023, Guardian, 3 April 2023)

How People Picking Your Vegetables Have to Live

Mouldy, Cold and Damp: Every year, thousands of workers come from countries including Indonesia, Nepal and Ukraine to work in the UK on a six-month seasonal agricultural visa. Historically, the vast majority of the UK’s seasonal agricultural workers came from Europe, but after the Brexit vote, the visa scheme was launched in 2019 to cover anticipated labour shortages.

Crowded and Unsafe: At other farms, several workers reported overcrowding, leading to difficult and potentially unsafe living conditions. People had to sleep in living rooms or on beds too small to roll over in. There were even reports of people forced to share a double bed with a stranger. Some women said they felt unsafe sharing caravans with men, as they had no way of locking their bedroom doors.
Before the first worker set foot on UK soil, however, labour rights organisations were criticising the scheme for putting people at risk of exploitation. Despite this, the government has rapidly expanded the maximum number of visas available – from 2,500 in 2019 to 55,000 in 2023.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/78fxxpd2

Illegal Migration Bill: Helping Force Refugees Into Illegality and Danger

The Illegal Migration Bill paints a picture of irresponsible refugees who seem to delight in travelling illegally to the UK in dangerous small boats. Its claim to prevent refugees travelling to the UK by these illegal and dangerous routes is a laudable aim. But the story is not so straightforward. In fact, the Bill seeks likely to exacerbate the illegality and danger that it is designed to thwart.

Governments and voters may dislike it, but irregular migration is a fact of the modern world. No country is insulated from it. However, the role of government immigration policies in shaping the irregular migration patterns of refugees is less well-recognised. The evidence is quite clear that ‘tough’ policies making the lives of refugees harder in the UK have little effect on the number of refugee arrivals.

Read more: Freemovement, https://tinyurl.com/392j26es