MF welcomes child asylum review but warns against swifter removals
Plans to review the UK government policy which currently places immigration concerns ahead of the best interests of asylum seeking children have been welcomed by the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.
Immigration Minister Liam Byrne today pledged "more compassionate treatment for children" as the goal of the consultation process. The key question that will be addressed in the consultation is whether the UK will finally drop its reservation relating to children subject to immigration control.
It is widely accepted that the UK position runs contrary to the core purpose of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international treaty obligations.
Responding to the minister's announcement, MF Legal and Policy Officer for Children and Young People Syd Bolton said it showed the Government could finally be swimming in the same direction as Parliament, international human rights monitors, legal experts and UK non-governmental organisations.
However, the MF remains concerned that one of the objectives laid out in this next phase of the child asylum reforms programme, "Planning Better Outcomes and Support for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children", is the swifter determination of children's asylum applications and the potential for quicker removals of children from the UK.
Syd Bolton said: "Children's experiences of torture and serious harm take time and expertise to explore and explain. They need to come to terms with their traumatic pasts whilst at the same time struggling in their present lives with a complex and often inadequate legal and welfare situation.
"The only way in which tortured and seriously harmed children and young people have any chance to recover psychologically is through care systems and decision-making processes which emphasise their long term welfare and best interests, not an approach which fits with a hard line immigration control message."
Alongside the reforms programme, the draft Code of Practice for Border and Immigration Agency staff is now being reviewed. It recognises the need to safeguard all children within the BIA's responsibilities, including better procedures for identifying and supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children, and the introduction of specialist local authorities to provide appropriate services.
Mr Bolton added that internal cultural change was a vital prerequisite: "We are confident that this is possible but only if there is transparency and accountability, trust and professional respect for the roles of all agencies responsible for these most vulnerable children. Horror stories like the child taken from his foster carers at four in the morning and removed to wander the streets of a foreign country because the immigration enforcement services did not trust social services must become a thing of the past."
Click here to read the BIA's announcement.
Click here to read the MF's statement about the removal of the UK's general reservation against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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