Continuing Conflicts That Create Refugees - October 2022

Deteriorated Situations: Haiti, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Iran, Eritrea, Myanmar, Russia (Internal), Ethiopia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Burkina Faso, Tunisia

Conflict Risk Alerts: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia (Internal) Ukraine, Yemen, Cameroon

Resolution Opportunities: None

Conflict risk alerts for October

Yemen faces the spectre of a return to full-scale fighting as efforts to extend the six-month-long UN-brokered truce faltered ahead of the 2 October deadline.

Deadly clashes along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border spread deep into Armenian territory and could intensify in the coming weeks as negotiating positions harden.

The 1 October anniversary of the self-proclaimed Ambazonia Republic could pave the way for escalatory fighting between Anglophone separatists and security forces in Cameroon.

Improved Situations: India and China agreed to disengage their forces at one friction point along the undemarcated border.

Source: Internatinal Crisis Group, https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch

Widespread Problems With Incorrect Age Assessments for Young Asylum Seekers

Given that 94% of initial Home Office decisions were overturned in the concluded cases, the Refugee Council says this challenges the view put forward by the Government that many asylum seekers who claim to be children are not.

Two brief but consequential new reports were released last week by the Refugee Council and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU) that outline increasing problems with incorrect age assessments for young asylum seekers.The report's headline finding is that hundreds of asylum-seeking children are wrongly being judged to be adults as a result of hasty decisions taken by the Home Office.

In the report, the Refugee Council sets out the figures: "Over the period of 12 months (January to December 2021) our specialist project worked with 233 young people whose age had initially been determined by the Home Office as 'certainly' adult and whose subsequent professional local authority social work assessment had been completed. Only 14 of them were found to be adult."

Read more: EIN, https://rb.gy/dlzii3

An Asylum Seeker’s Right to Work but Not Their Dependents

OH v Secretary of State for the Home Department concerns the rights of a dependant of an asylum seeker to work in the United Kingdom. They do not have any!

Anyone who does not have the right of abode in the United Kingdom can only work with permission under the Immigration Act 1971. Paragraph 360 of the Immigration Rules allows an asylum seeker to be granted the right to work if a decision has not been taken on their claim within one year of the date the application was recorded. If permission is granted, an asylum seeker can only take up a post which is included on the Shortage Occupation List.

The decision to allow asylum seekers to take up work came about because of various policy factors. It is also considered in the case of Rostami v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 1494 (Admin). The main rationale is that allowing asylum seekers access to the UK labour market does not adversely impact British nationals, since they can only work in jobs which the resident labour market is unable to fill.

What About Their Dependants?
The guidance confirms that the Immigration Rules do not provide dependants of asylum seekers permission to work, even if their claim takes longer than 12 months to be decided.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/6jffgn

Major European Judgment on Age Assessment Process

The European Court of Human Rights has handed down a significant judgment concerning the age-assessment process and rights of child asylum seekers. In Darboe and Camara v Italy (Application no. 5797/17), the court found that the Italian government had breached Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in relation to its treatment of a 17 year old asylum seeker from Guinea. There had also been a breach of the applicants access to effective remedies under Article 13. The judgment describes a litany of failures, all stemming from an initial X-ray assessment from which a doctor concluded with apparent certainty that the applicant was 18 years old.

The applicant arrived in Italy in 2016. He was initially treated as a 17 year old child, but the local authority requested that a medical examination be carried out to determine his age. A doctor X-rayed his hand and determined that the applicant was 18 years old. He made no reference to the margin of error, which is usually between 6 months and 2 years. As a result, the applicant was housed in the Cona reception centre, which is a former military facility described in the judgment as a collection of several enormous tents. The centre was designed to house 542 people, but in fact accommodated around 1,400 people. The reception centre only had 25 staff on site and very limited medical care was provided by overwhelmed local GPs.

The applicant found lawyers and they applied to the Strasbourg court for interim measures under a Rule 39 indication. When they were granted the applicant was transferred to a reception centre for children.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/o3i2oq

Number of Potential Trafficking Victims Locked up in UK Triples in Four Years

In 2017 501 referrals for potential victims of trafficking were made among people the Home Office placed in immigration detention centres. By last year the number of referrals of potential victims who had been detained had jumped to 1,611.

The report, Abuse by the System: survivors of trafficking in immigration detention, comes from four NGOs – Helen Bamber Foundation, Medical Justice, Anti-Trafficking and Labour Exploitation Unit and Focus on Labour Exploitation – who accuse the government of deliberately putting in place a system that leads to more trafficking victims being locked up. It questions the point of officials doing this as most of those people are later released into the community.

Data shows that more than 90% of victims who claim to be trafficked have later been confirmed to be genuine through detailed investigations of their cases, via the National Referral Mechanism. In the first half of 2022 the Immigration Enforcement Competent Authority, set up by the government, made final decisions that people were indeed victims of trafficking, known as positive conclusive grounds decisions, in 97% of cases.

Read more: Diane Taylor, Guardian, https://rb.gy/7govnh

UK Hostile Environment Immigration Policy Remains In Place

"Section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 extends a person's leave to remain in the UK pending the outcome of an application to vary/extend it as long as the person's further leave to remain ('FLR') application is made before their original leave expires.

3C leave covers the period during which an administrative review or an appeal can be sought or brought respectively and the waiting period until an in-time application, administrative review or appeal is decided or determined. With 3C leave, a person can remain lawfully in the UK rather than becoming an overstayer and, in theory, it should operate as protection against the hostile environment."P
people with 3C leave who lack formal documentation to prove their status are being caught up in the hostile environment in a similar manner to the Windrush scandal, which saw British citizens wrongly classified as undocumented migrants.

Read more: EIN, https://rb.gy/exp8lh

Windrush Compensation Scheme Welcomed, but Real Reform Still Necessary

Unfortunately, the scheme has faced criticism from the start. The payments offered were woefully low given the injustice experienced. Many claimants were trying to navigate the scheme without legal assistance, but the application process is complex, with forms 50 pages long and the need for extensive supporting evidence.

We first heard of the Windrush scandal in early 2018, as a result of powerful investigative journalism. It stands for decades of injustice experienced by thousands, whose lawful existence in this country was denied by the state. Individuals faced constant questioning about their rights and entitlements and were told that unless they had documents they were never provided with, they could be detained and deported from the place they call home. It caused many to lose their jobs, their homes and even their loved ones.

There followed a public apology and a resignation from Amber Rudd, the then Home Secretary, and a consultation with legal input from Martin Forde KC. In April 2019, the government launched the Windrush Compensation Scheme, aiming to financially recompense those who were impacted. Over the years, amendments have been made to improve the scheme, including the latest changes published this summer.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/cj2jdg

What of the Government’s Plans for Channel Crossings?

It seems as though the government has no realistic plan for addressing Channel crossings. A replacement for the Dublin scheme has not been pursued. There is a now vast backlog of unresolved asylum cases and the numbers of people removed having been refused asylum has been decreasing. The government refuses to countenance offering safe and legal routes for people to be able to claim asylum, including for asylum seekers arriving in Europe with close family connections in the United Kingdom.

The approach apparently favoured by the former Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has been to seek to publicise outlandish plans, presumably primarily for political purposes but also in the vague hope of deterring people from making the crossings. One such plan was the “pushbacks” policy, which was abandoned days before a full judicial review hearing, with the Home Office agreeing to pay the costs of the claimants’ lawyers as well as bearing its own. The much vaunted Rwanda plan, which foreign office officials strenuously argued against because of human rights concerns, is effectively on hold pending a number of judicial reviews. The High Court is expected to hand down its decision next month but with the likelihood of onward appeals, including to the European Court of Human Rights, and further legal challenges, it is unclear whether and if so when the scheme will receive the clean bill of health it requires to proceed. In any event, the government has produced no credible evidence that it will have the deterrent effect that it desires.

Read more: Freemovement, https://rb.gy/vu6ok1

UK Ministers Accused of Giving Mixed Signals Over Migrant Workers

Ministers have been accused of sending mixed signals to a business community seeking to employ foreign staff after the home secretary said the UK had too many low-skilled migrant workers and high numbers of international students who often bring dependants.

Suella Braverman’s comments came days after the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, said the government was launching a review of immigration policy as part of an attempt to boost growth after complaints from business groups that post-Brexit rules were too restrictive, especially for low-paid jobs.

In an interview with the Sun on Sunday, Braverman also promised to enforce Boris Johnson’s plans to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda and reform modern slavery laws to make it easier to remove claimants from the UK.

Read more: Rajeev Syal, Guardian, https://rb.gy/lbmwgj