On Our Shared Humanity - Calais, Lesbos, and the Refugee Crisis

This article was originally published on The Radical Tea Towel Company's blog page: https://www.radicalteatowel.com/blog/calais-lesbos-refugee-crisis/

A couple of weeks ago, I was giving a speech at my old school about the refugee crisis and my time working in refugee camps. My speech was part of “Culture Week”, a school initiative designed to broaden the horizons of younger students, and the chosen theme for this year was migration.

I talked about how I’d decided to go to Calais when I saw that photo of Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless on the Turkish beach; how I’d worked alongside the charities Help Refugees and L’auberge des Migrants to deliver aid to the Calais Jungle; and how I’d later flown out to Lesbos and worked in Moria camp and on the shores of the Greek island as refugees crossed the threshold of Europe.

One of the things that I said when I started my speech was that I didn’t want to focus on the politics of the situation. It’s easy to get carried away with questions of border policy and the social or economic viability of solutions. These are all important points that need to be considered when addressing a crisis like the one we currently face, but I felt that the talk would be most effective if I were to focus wholly on the human aspect of the situation. After all, I went to Calais and Lesbos for humanitarian reasons, not political ones.

In retrospect, I think that was the right decision – to focus on the personal, rather than the political, the human rather than the logistical. I could speak for days about how there are currently 60 million refugees worldwide; how this is the largest refugee crisis since World War II; and how there are approximately 294 unaccompanied minors living in the Calais Jungle, desperately in need of safety. I could also tell you about the hundreds of refugees who have drowned in the Mediterranean, and the terrible brutality of French police in Calais.

These are all harrowing facts and statistics and they should be widely shared. They conjure up images of young children alone in an alien country, of weeping mothers grieving the death of their loved ones, and of refugees fleeing tear gas and rubber bullets. These are all things that I have witnessed first hand, and when I talked at my school about these experiences the room fell silent.

And yet, there still seems to be a sense of distance when we reflect on refugees in this way – when we present them as numbers on a graph or as helpless masses in need of charity. True, there is emotional power in talking about mothers and their children, but there is a certain rhetorical detachment. It was when I spoke about particular individuals I’d met that I felt people really took interest. It was when I got beyond the shocking facts and the images of pity that I felt I really made a connection with my audience.

So when I spoke about the Afghani man who I’d met in Lesbos, who had a successful life as an aviation engineer in Kabul before being forced to flee, I felt people really began to listen. When I told them about his fascination with Arsenal football club and about his Afghani girlfriend, shock and pity was replaced by understanding and sympathy.

The same happened when I told my audience about the 14 year-old Syrian boy who I’d met in the Calais Jungle and who, just like them, wanted to continue his education and go to university. My audience was fascinated by my young Syrian friend’s eagerness to learn French and to perfect his English, as if refugees are somehow different from children in the UK. It’s this, really, that we should all be focusing on – that we all have a shared humanity.

In fact, this was probably the most important thing that I learnt whilst volunteering – that behind every number, there is an individual, and that those individuals are exactly like you and me. Whatever we label people – refugees or economic migrants – we are all human beings. We all have dreams and ambitions, we all have passions and fears. And most importantly, we all deserve the right to a fulfilling and happy life. This, I hope, is what my audience took away with them.

If there ever is a solution to the refugee crisis, then this sense of a shared humanity must be at its core. Because we all live in the same world, and we all face difficulty and hardship, albeit in different measure. We only live the lives we do because of the chance and perhaps fortuitous circumstances of our birth. Any of us could one day be fleeing war, and that’s why we have a duty to our brothers and sisters in Syria, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, across Europe and across the world who are doing exactly what we would do if we were in their position.

The Government Must Protect the Unaccompanied Children in the Calais "Jungle"

Read the article as published in The Huffington Post here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/tom-bailey2/calais-jungle_b_9334460.html

Squalid hovels; flooded tents; expanses of mud, rubbish, and faeces: the conditions of the Calais ‘Jungle’ are truly awful. Indeed, in a recent Upper Tribunal decision, Mr Justice McCloskey stated that the camp’s conditions are “about as deplorable as any citizen of the developed nations could imagine.”

According to a recent census carried out by volunteers, there are currently 5497 refugees living in the makeshift camp, a number that has been gradually increasing over the last year. It is no wonder, then, that the French authorities have finally decided to address the problem: on the 12^th of January, refurbished shipping containers supposedly able to hold about 1800 refugees were introduced into the camp.

Soon after this, a huge swathe of the camp was bulldozed and many refugees were moved into the new accommodation. Of course, the fact that these refugees now have secure and sanitary housing is a good thing, but by no means does it solve the problem.

In fact, on Thursday evening a French judge gave the local authorities the green light to demolish the southern part of the Calais camp. They estimate that 800-1000 residents would need to be relocated to the containers or to alternative centres of accommodation located around France.

But these numbers wildly underestimate the true population of this area, in which about 3455 refugees currently reside. With only 1156 alternative places presently available across France (as claimed in court), this eviction could leave hundreds of refugees stranded. To make matters worse, the French have stated that once the southern section of the camp is cleared, they will begin on the northern section, which houses 2042 residents, including 137 Syrian households.

The greatest victims of these demolitions are, without a doubt, the children. Latest figures show that there are 651 children living in the Jungle, 423 of whom are unaccompanied. These children are vulnerable to dangers like trafficking, violence, exploitation, and abuse, not to mention the risk of carcinogenic disease caused by the toxic white asbestos found throughout the camp.

It is estimated that 91 of these unaccompanied children have close family in the UK, explaining their presence in the camp. Under the current Dublin Regulation (“Dublin III”), if an unaccompanied refugee child has a relative with protection status in another EU member state, they can request to be reunited. The EU member state might then make what is known as a “take charge” request to the other member state in respect of the child’s protection claim. The child would then, in theory, be admitted into the country and reunited with family.

All sounds great, doesn’t it? But there’s a catch. The legal advice offered in the Jungle is extremely limited, and unsurprisingly, unaccompanied foreign minors are not legally competent to make a claim for asylum. These claims must be made on their behalf by a legal representative (appointed by a state-funded agency), and the process of registering a child’s asylum application takes at least three months. Indeed, the whole process of addressing “take charge” requests can take up to a year, making it a long and difficult procedure for anyone, particularly a child traumatised by war and violence. The complexity and red tape involved in the process perhaps explains why, during the whole of 2015, France made only 4 “take charge” requests to the UK, and none related to unaccompanied minors.

But this is where Article 8 of the 1998 Human Rights Act comes in. Article 8 states that, “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life…” Making use of Article 8, the aforementioned Upper Tribunal ruled that three child refugees and one adult refugee with a disability should be admitted immediately to the UK from the Jungle in order to be reunited with family members. The Upper Tribunal also stated that, in cases of similarly vulnerable refugees, the same course should be followed.

This means that a large number of the children in the Jungle have a legal right to live across the Channel. That’s why we need the government to introduce a physical presence of immigration officers in Calais who are ready, willing and able to give assistance and advice, ensuring that those minors who can assert a credible claim can make an application for asylum in France, so that they can then be admitted into the United Kingdom.

These actions would be consistent with the Upper Tribunal ruling in January (“Zat”) and the UK government’s August 2015 promise to monitor the camps in France for vulnerable individuals, offering advice and support in their applications for asylum in France, a commitment that has thus far been overlooked.

Citizens UK have details of all the unaccompanied children who fall within the Zat principles: all they need is for the UK government to take control of the situation so that young boys and girls, lost in the alien world of Northern France, can be reunited with their loved ones. The government must act if it wants to avert the possibility of a true humanitarian tragedy, a tragedy which would involve young children dispersing from the camps to become the victims of abduction, abuse, and worse.

The demolition is expected to begin next week. There are real human lives at stake, and there is only a small window of opportunity to make them just a little better. That’s why the government can, and must, act.