The Guardian view on the UK and child refugees: unfair, unlawful, inhumane | Editorial

The court of appeal says the Home Office acted unfairly towards unaccompanied children in Calais

Few are more vulnerable than unaccompanied child refugees and the dire conditions of those in camps in Calais were well known by the time of clearances in 2016. Yet the Home Office treated hundreds of them unfairly and unlawfully in how it rejected their applications for entry to Britain for family reunion, the court of appeal has found. Safe Passage, the charity which brought the case, says many have since gone missing.

Expediting the Calais cases suggested the UK was at least trying to do the right thing and the high court had judged the process fair: although children were given sparse grounds for their refusal, this was due to French demands and time pressures. Now it has emerged that France requested further information – fearing precisely that rejected children might simply vanish if given no incentive to continue engaging with the system. The information was so minimal that children had no realistic prospect of challenging the decision, for example by correcting inaccuracies. But the Home Office refused to provide fuller grounds, because it feared it might face legal challenge.

Continue reading...

from Children | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2mYr9Fm