Lesbian,
Bisexual and Trans Women’s Health
Inequalities
The aim of the LBT Women’s Health Week is to
raise awareness about lesbian, gay, bisexual,
trans and queer women’s health inequalities, to
make it easier for service providers to empower
service users and to make it easier for
communities to support LGBTQ women. Up front, I
will declare an interest as a lesbian, who also
suffers from anxiety and other mental health
issues. I know that my own experiences have
taught me a huge amount. In recent months and
years of reflection since I came out in 2015, I
have had a little bit of time, despite the
political storms we have lived through in recent
years, to reflect on some of the reasons why it
took me so long to come out. I am very grateful
to the Backbench Business Committee for granting
this debate, and to the many charities and
organisations that operate in the LGBTQ space
that have provided briefings for today, as well
as our healthcare professionals—I know we will
discuss them today, but we must pay tribute to
them—and to the Women and Equalities Committee
and the Parliamentary Office of Science and
Technology, which have done much work and
produced reports that many of us will draw on. I
know some controversial issues will be discussed
today, but I am certain that we will hold this
debate and have our discussions with respect and
integrity.
Read more: Hannah Bardell, https://is.gd/1Lzvre
Freedom
in the World 2020 - A Leaderless Struggle
for Democracy
Democracy and pluralism are under assault.
Dictators are toiling to stamp out the last
vestiges of domestic dissent and spread their
harmful influence to new corners of the world.
At the same time, many freely elected leaders
are dramatically narrowing their concerns to a
blinkered interpretation of the national
interest. In fact, such leaders—including the
chief executives of the United States and India,
the world’s two largest democracies—are
increasingly willing to break down institutional
safeguards and disregard the rights of critics
and minorities as they pursue their populist
agendas.
As a result of these and other trends, Freedom
House found that 2019 was the 14th consecutive
year of decline in global freedom. The gap
between setbacks and gains widened compared with
2018, as individuals in 64 countries experienced
deterioration in their political rights and
civil liberties while those in just 37
experienced improvements. The negative pattern
affected all regime types, but the impact was
most visible near the top and the bottom of the
scale. More than half of the countries that were
rated Free or Not Free in 2009 have suffered a
net decline in the past decade.
The unchecked brutality of autocratic regimes
and the ethical decay of democratic powers are
combining to make the world increasingly hostile
to fresh demands for better governance. A
striking number of new citizen protest movements
have emerged over the past year, reflecting the
inexhaustible and universal desire for
fundamental rights. However, these movements
have in many cases confronted deeply entrenched
interests that are able to endure considerable
pressure and are willing to use deadly force to
maintain power. The protests of 2019 have so far
failed to halt the overall slide in global
freedom, and without greater support and
solidarity from established democracies, they
are more likely to succumb to authoritarian
reprisals.
Read more: Freedom House, https://is.gd/NFvkNQ
Immigration
Bail Policy Updated
The Home Office has updated its policy guidance
on immigration bail, with a couple of changes to
note. First, asylum seekers who have exhausted
their appeal rights will no longer automatically
be subject to study restrictions. This is the
result of successful litigation from Hannah
Baynes at Duncan Lewis, and is not the first
time the Home Office has given ground on this
issue. The Secretary of State will now need to
properly consider whether a restriction on
studying is “necessary on the facts of the
individual’s case”. It is difficult to think of
a situation where barring people from education
could be considered “necessary”, so hopefully
this rather mean-spirited provision will fall
out of use.
Second, the Home Office will now have five
working days to decide whether someone who is
not detained should be granted bail
accommodation under Schedule 10 of the
Immigration Act 2016. For certain groups, such
as homeless people or pregnant women, officials
will make “reasonable efforts” to ensure a
decision within two working days. Accommodation
delays are still a big issue for those working
with detained clients. Lengthy delays responding
to accommodation requests, often after bail has
been granted “in principle” by an immigration
judge, has kept hundreds in detention for
prolonged periods.
Read more: Freemovement, https://is.gd/vEiN2L
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Forced
Marriage Protection Orders - the Approach to
Take
Applications for forced marriage protection
orders (“FMPO”s) made pursuant to s.63A of the
Family Law Act 1996 are on the rise: in 2018,
the government’s Forced Marriage Unit provided
advice or support in 1,764 possible forced
marriage cases; a significant increase from the
following 1200-1400 cases in 2017. Also in 2018,
Family Court statistics indicate that 322
applications were made and 324 orders granted.
Despite applications being made by police, who
must seek leave to make such an application
under s.63C(3) of the Family Law Act 1996, and
local authorities, the legislation itself does
not provide clear guidance as to how the court
should deal with such applications. The
President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew
McFarlane, has now done so in Re K (Forced
Marriage: Passport Order) [2020] EWCA Civ 190.
Issues considered: The key questions for the
court were as follows, paraphrased from [14]:
1. Does the court have jurisdiction where the
subject of the order is an adult who has mental
capacity and, if so, should that jurisdiction be
exercised?
2. Does the Family Court have jurisdiction to
require the protected person’s passport to be
removed and retained by the authorities and, if
so, does that include jurisdiction to make an
open-ended or indefinite Passport Order?
3. What approach should be taken where there is
an apparent conflict between a protected
person’s article 3 and article 8 rights?
The majority of the judgment focussed upon the
final question.
Read more: Elizabeth Fox, Seargent’s Inns
Chambers, https://is.gd/TmEJrD
Morton Hall IRC
- Still to Violent - High Levels of
Self-Harm
Inspectors have discovered high levels of
self-harm, violence and use of force at an
immigration detention centre in Lincolnshire
where one detainee had been held for more than
two years. Uncertainty about detainees’
immigration status and the potential for
long-term detention continue to cause
frustration at Morton Hall immigration removal
centre (IRC), a report by Her Majesty’s
Inspectorate of Prisons (HMIP) says. Inspectors
found cases in which the Home Office had decided
to continue to detain individuals despite
accepting they had been tortured, the report
says. The UK has one of the largest immigration
detention systems in Europe and is the only
country in the region without a statutory time
limit on length of detention.
Inspectors found that Morton Hall IRC, which is
operated by the prison service on behalf of the
Home Office and holds adult men subject to
immigration control, had improved since the last
inspection in 2016 but most of the safety
concerns remained. Detainees held for lengthy
periods were often detained because of
documentation problems, a lack of suitable
accommodation or casework inefficiencies, the
report says.
Read more: Jamie Grierson, Guardian, https://is.gd/zgwagr
Briefing:
A Manufactured Refugee Crisis at the
Greek-Turkish Border
Dramatic scenes have been playing out
in recent days at the land and sea borders
between Greece and Turkey: Greek police
tear-gassing and pushing back crowds of asylum
seekers at a northern border crossing; the
Hellenic Coast Guard firing warning shots at a
dinghy full of asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea;
angry protesters preventing another group in a
dinghy from disembarking in the port on the
island of Lesvos.
The images have been exploited by a savvy
Turkish media campaign aimed at maximising
pressure on the EU to support Turkish action in
northwest Syria and to share more of the burden
for hosting refugees. According to refugee
advocates and human rights groups, Turkey’s
politicisation of the refugee issue and the
suffering at the EU’s borders are a predictable
outcome of the EU-Turkey deal – a cornerstone of
EU efforts to curb irregular migration across
its borders.
“This is a broader consequence of the EU-Turkey
statement,” Sophie McCann, an advocacy manager
for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières
(MSF), told The New Humanitarian. “We’ve been
saying it for four years: it’s never going to
work. It’s clearly failed.”
The EU and Turkey signed the agreement in March
2016 after more than one million people – mostly
refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war – crossed
from the Turkish coast to Greece in the course
of a year. At its centre, the agreement called
on Turkey to prevent asylum seekers and migrants
from reaching the EU in exchange for six billion
euros ($6.7 billion) in financial assistance for
refugees in Turkey and the eventual creation of
a legal resettlement pathway to Europe, among
other incentives.
Since it was signed, the agreement has created a
years-long humanitarian crisis on the Greek
islands and turned refugees into a bargaining
chip wielded by Turkish President Recip Tayyip
Erdoğan to extract support and policy
concessions from the EU, according to refugee
advocates and human rights groups.
On 28 February, the Turkish government announced
that it would no longer prevent asylum seekers
and migrants from leaving Turkey, unleashing
scenes of chaos and sending the Greek government
scrambling to prevent people from crossing its
borders. "What did we do yesterday? We opened
the doors," Erdoğan told the Turkish parliament
on 29 February.
Read more: New Humantarin, https://is.gd/Y1yUIv
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