In an announcement to the House of Commons on Wednesday 21 July, Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister confirmed that Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre was to be closed for the purposes of detaining families. However, the Home Office corrected Mr Clegg’s initial statement that Yarl’s Wood as a facility was to close by confirming [...]
The largest specialist provider of advice and representation to asylum seekers and migrants in need of protection in the UK faces closure due to a government imposed cash-flow crisis. End Child Detention Now is shocked and saddened to learn that Refugee and Migrant Justice, despite an impressive public campaign, is to go into administration because [...]
Florence Potkins, aged 11, this month won her age category in the first ever Amnesty International / Guardian Learnnewsdesk Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year award for her powerful story about child detention. With kind permission of the Guardian, we’ve reproduced Florence’s story below, to mark national Refugee Week: Primary winner: Florence Potkins, 11, [...]
An 11 year old primary pupil’s powerful story highlighting the plight of child detainees in immigration centres has won the inaugural Young Human Rights Reporter of the Year award in her age group. The End Child Detention Now campaign congratulates Florence Potkins on winning this fantastic prize, and using the opportunity to tell such an [...]
New immigration plans will end child detention but we should be wary of substituting one form of state abuse with another. Simon Parker, Comment is Free, The Guardian, Friday 28 May 2010. The announcement in Tuesday’s Queen’s speech that along with a cap on non-EU immigration, the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat government no longer intends to [...]
Here we publish the entire letter that 13-year-old Malawian refugee, Wells Botomani wrote to the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green about his incarceration in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. Wells’ story is also published in today’s Society Guardian. Wells started the letter while in detention. It was left behind when the family was suddenly moved. So [...]
The first Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, writing in The Guardian, calls on the government to release the families from Britain’s asylum prisons now. Aynsley-Green who has done more than any single person to expose the arrest and detention of innocent children, the injustices and sheer horror of their lived experiences, urges: ‘a [...]
This is the text of Positive Action’s Statement to Supporters of the Sehar must stay in Scotland campaign. We made a last minute plea this morning at 8.30 am to all the key players including Deputy Prime minister Nick Clegg, Immigration Minister Damian Green, Theresa May Home Secretary, but to no avail. Sehar Shebaz was [...]
As the government announces that Dungavel will no longer be used for the detention of children, but will be re-purposed as ‘a health check’ facility for families who are facing removal, young mother Sehar Shebaz and her baby are being transported in a prison van to Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in Bedfordshire from where [...]
If they mean the immediate closure of Yarl’s Wood, that should be a cause for great rejoicing. This is why we must hold them to it By Clare Sambrook (from OpenDemocracy, 12 May 2010). ‘We will end the detention of children for immigration purposes,’ says today’s coalition agreement. A stunning victory for children, decency and the [...]
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