100,000 Children in London 'Without Secure Immigration Status'
New research estimates that more than 100,000 children are living in London without secure immigration status, despite more than half of them having been born in the UK. Children who are undocumented may face problems accessing higher education, health care, opening bank accounts, and applying for driving licences, housing and jobs. The findings were condemned by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as a “national disgrace”.
The study, commissioned by the mayor and undertaken by the University of Wolverhampton, estimated that there were around 107,000 undocumented children and 26,000 18- to 24-year-olds in London. Once an undocumented child turns 18, they face the threat of deportation to a country they may never have visited. Undocumented people can include those who arrived in the UK with proper documentation but who stayed beyond their permitted time, those who entered without proper documentation, trafficked children, unaccompanied minors whose temporary leave to remain was withdrawn once they reached adulthood and young people born to parents who are themselves undocumented.
The research found that more than half of the UK’s estimated 674,000 undocumented adults and children live in London. It warns that the number of undocumented young people could rise dramatically if the estimated 350,000 young European nationals in the UK are not helped to apply for the EU Settlement Scheme that will enable them to remain after Brexit.
Read more: Amelia Gentleman, Guardian, https://is.gd/zyCsgs
Continuing
Conflicts That Create Refugees - January
2020
Deteriorated Situations; Burkina Faso, Niger,
Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad,
Mozambique, Korean PeninsulaIndia
(non-Kashmir), Honduras, Syria, Iran, Iraq.
Conflict Risk Alerts January 2020:
Central African Republic, Mozambique,
Iran, Iraq, Libya.
Global Overview: In December, retaliatory
attacks in Iraq raised U.S.-Iran tensions to
new heights, compounding Iraq’s political and
security woes and presaging further escalation
in January. In Syria, regime and Russian
forces stepped up their offensive in the north
west, and Turkey’s potential deployment of
troops in Libya could add fuel to the fire.
In
Burkina Faso, suspected jihadist attacks and
intercommunal violence surged, and in Niger
jihadists carried out a major assault against
security forces. Boko Haram intensified its
attacks in Cameroon’s far north and Chad’s
west. Fighting erupted in the capital of the
Central African Republic and picked up
momentum in the north east, where a battle for
the provincial capital looms.
In Mozambique,
suspected Islamist militants intensified their
insurgency in the far north, and an armed
opposition faction may follow through on its
threat to mark the president’s inauguration on
15 January with attacks on civilians.
North
Korea threatened to resume nuclear and
long-range missile tests;
India’s
controversial citizenship law sparked
widespread protests; and a tide of killings
shook the prison system in Honduras.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch
Home
Office Faces Legal Cases Over Zimbabwean
Asylum Seekers
The Home Office faces a series of legal
challenges over its decision to allow
Zimbabwean government officials to interview
people from the country who are seeking asylum
in the UK. The government was criticised
earlier this year for working with the
Zimbabwean state to accelerate the removal of
asylum seekers after Robert Mugabe was forced
from power, despite continuing human rights
abuses in the country. Zimbabweans seeking
asylum in the UK, who fear persecution by the
new government, were asked to attend Home
Office centres across the UK, only to find
officials from the government in Harare
waiting to question them. Lawyers acting on
behalf of one of the applicants, Chishamiso
Mkundi, 51, applied for a judicial review
after his asylum claim was rejected.
Granting permission for the review last
month, judges said: “It is at least arguable
that the respondent [the home secretary, Priti
Patel] failed to consider whether her own
actions, in inviting an official from the
Zimbabwean embassy to an interview with the
Home Office in December 2018, might have
brought the applicant to the direct attention
to the Zimbabwean authorities.” Many asylum
seekers from Zimbabwe sought refuge in the UK
because of their anti-government protests or
support for the country’s opposition. Their
claims were often rejected on the basis that
they were not of sufficiently high profile to
come to the attention of the Zimbabwe
authorities and thus risk being mistreated on
their return.
Read more: Frances Perraudin, Guardian, https://is.gd/V1WOJA
|
Deportation Charter Flights (Escorts and
Removals) Q3 July/August/September 2019
1. Number of males
removed? 44
2. Number of females
removed? 2
3. Number of
escorts?
203
4. Number of flights in total? 4.
Please note that some flights went to more
than one destination.
France 3 flights 15 removed
Germany 1 flight 21 removed
Nigeria 1 flight 5 removed
Ghana 1 flight 5 removed
6. Number of children, if any? A: None.
Note: this data should have been revealed
early November 2019 but Home Office delayed
the release until 0701/2020, no reason given.
Asylum
Research Consultancy Country of Information
Update Vol. 208
This document provides an update of UK
Country Guidance case law, UK Home Office
publications and developments in refugee
producing countries (focusing on those which
generate the most asylum seekers in the UK)
between 20 December 2019 and 6 January 2020.
Download the full document: https://is.gd/JUylcJ
10
Conflicts to Watch in 2020
1 Afghanistan, 2 Yemen, 3 Ethiopia, 4 Burkina
Faso, 5 Libya, 6. The U.S., Iran, Israel, and
the Persian Gulf, 7 U.S.-North Korea, 8
Kashmir, 9. Venezuela, 10. Ukraine
Local conflicts serve as mirrors for global
trends. The ways they ignite, unfold, persist,
and are resolved reflect shifts in great
powers’ relations, the intensity of their
competition, and the breadth of regional
actors’ ambitions. They highlight issues with
which the international system is obsessed and
those toward which it is indifferent. Today
these wars tell the story of a global system
caught in the early swell of sweeping change,
of regional leaders both emboldened and
frightened by the opportunities such a
transition presents.
Only time will tell how much of the U.S.’s
transactional unilateralism, contempt for
traditional allies, and dalliance with
traditional rivals will endure – and how much
will vanish with Donald Trump’s presidency.
Still, it would be hard to deny that something
is afoot. The understandings and balance of
power on which the global order had once been
predicated – imperfect, unfair, and
problematic as they were – are no longer
operative. Washington is both eager to retain
the benefits of its leadership and unwilling
to shoulder the burdens of carrying it. As a
consequence, it is guilty of the cardinal sin
of any great power: allowing the gap between
ends and means to grow. These days, neither
friend nor foe knows quite where America
stands.
The roles of other major powers are changing,
too. China exhibits the patience of a nation
confident in its gathering influence, but in
no hurry to fully exercise it. It chooses its
battles, focusing on self-identified
priorities: domestic control and suppression
of potential dissent (as in Hong Kong, or the
mass detention of Muslims in Xinjiang); the
South and East China Seas; the brewing
technological tug of war with the U.S., of my
own colleague Michael Kovrig – unjustly
detained in China for over a year – has become
collateral damage. Elsewhere, its game is a
long one.
Read more: International Crisis Group, https://is.gd/PdItIe
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