A damning report on healthcare and safeguarding in detention has concluded that the existing protocols for vulnerable detainees are “totally and utterly flawed”. The Medical Justice report Harmed not Heard focuses on the inadequacy of the Rule 35 safeguarding process, designed to identify vulnerable detainees for release. The research comes...
Understandings of and responses to disability vary widely. In the field of international protection, the approach to disability tends to reflect policy and decision-making practices within host states, as well as the understandings and “unconscious biases” of decision-makers, legal representatives, and country of origin researchers. Asylos and ARC Foundation have...
The hostile environment should be reformed by selective repeal of key provisions, addressing Home Office culture and improved routes to regularisation, an influential think tank has found. Beyond the hostile environment, a report released yesterday by the Institute for Public Policy Research, follows up on a previous look at the...
There has been an interesting and mainly polite (if tense) discussion on and off Twitter in recent weeks about advocacy on migrants’ rights. This is in part linked to a short piece I wrote about deportations and a follow-up by Emma Harrison, director of IMIX. I’ve linked to some of...
For many campaigners there is a lot of uncertainty about how to get traction for their cause as Brexit and Covid continue to dominate the policy space. Migration advocates have a different challenge: the government has been clear that it wants to create an immigration system which is “firm but...
Reports by the US Department of State on the human rights situation in different countries are heavily relied upon throughout the world in the assessment of asylum claims. Asylum Research Centre’s (ARC) new research identifies serious omissions and inadequately substantiated reports of improvements in country reports produced under the Trump administration....
All asylum seekers, including children and young people, find that the starting point for any official making a decision in their case is to doubt their narratives and subject them to disbelief and incredulity. Even in this climate of disbelief, Albanian asylum claims have been singled out for particular hostility. ...
Earlier this year JCWI, with the help of Foxglove, launched a legal challenge against the Home Office over its use of an algorithmic “streaming tool” that assigned risk categories to visa applications. The tool, previously covered on Free Movement, scored visa applicants for risk based in part on their nationality....
With one year left before the close of the EU Settlement Scheme, the headline numbers look positive for the Home Office. By the end of May 2020 more than 3.6 million applications had been made, although some people have applied more than once. This headline number may be masking a...
The Windrush scandal first made headlines in 2018, but the Home Office is now facing intensified public scrutiny over its role in mistakes that caused profound suffering for so many members of the Windrush generation. Calls for accountability have gained renewed urgency in the context of the Black Lives Matter...
Asylos and ARC Foundation recently released a new report, Vietnam: Returned victims of trafficking, about the risks of re-trafficking, state protection and internal relocation for Vietnamese victims of trafficking returned from the UK. The report provides key new evidence which needs to be considered by Home Office decision-makers and tribunal...
While the UK government boasts of its trailblazing work to tackle the scourge of modern slavery, it is also rightly criticised for its systemic failures to prevent exploitation and protect victims once identified. A number of hostile immigration policies are directly at odds with the UK’s commitment to protect victims...
States have domestic and international legal obligations to provide suitable housing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. But a vulnerable young client at the Refugee Legal Support (RLS) clinic in Athens was last month kicked out of his accommodation for breaking the shelter’s rules. Jay*, a 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was condemned...
Around 1.3 million British citizens are currently settled in other EU member states, but do not have citizenship of those countries. Just like EU citizens living in the UK, they can do this by relying on free movement rights granted by the EU. Speaking precisely, Article 20 of the Treaty...
In the past eighteen months Migrant Legal Project (MLP) has represented a number of Vietnamese minors on remand or serving Detention and Training Orders at Young Offender Institutes. All had been picked up for criminal offences relating to cannabis cultivation. Forced labour for cannabis cultivation is the most common form...
