Today, Theresa May met with French President Emmanuel Macron signed the Sandhurst Treaty – the first joint treaty on the Calais border in 15 years. This includes agreements to speed up the processing of asylum claims and accept more unaccompanied minors. [1]

Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, said:

“I welcome the long overdue decision to reduce the time taken to process asylum claims for those hoping to reach the UK from Calais. This is a move that Theresa May should have made years ago during her years as Home Secretary, rather than having her hand forced by the French President.

Responding to applications within a month will greatly reduce the suffering experienced by these vulnerable people, including unaccompanied minors – many of whom have a legal right to be reunited with family on our shores. I, and many others, will be closely scrutinising this process to ensure that faster does not mean more superficial.

As the Government pours yet another £44.5m into security measures in Calais, I urge the Home Office to ensure this is used to provide for basic needs and legal support – not to fund yet more barbed wire and tear gas. Given reports of systematic rights violations in Calais, it’s crucial that human rights are at the heart of any new developments. [2] This includes cracking down on police violence, and keeping every child safe from harm and exploitation. It could make a start by hastily relocating more unaccompanied minors to the UK.

Despite their poor track record, this is an opportunity for France and the UK to fix the broken system that has contributed to the humanitarian crisis at their borders.”

Notes:

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42723401

[2] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/macron-may-talks-uk-france-visit-calais-refugees-help-stop-jungle-treatment-immigration-customs-a8166446.html

The post Green MEP urges Government to provide basic needs and legal support in Calais appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

Last month some hundreds of unaccompanied children were brought to the UK at the eleventh hour before the makeshift Calais migrant camp was destroyed, but since then no other children have been identified for transfer to Britain.

Now the British Government has announced new criteria which will exclude unaccompanied children from countries that are not Syria and Sudan from coming to the UK, except in exceptional circumstances.

Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London and Greens migration spokesperson said:

“Out of sight must never mean out of mind for vulnerable young refugees and asylum seekers. The Home Office is still not doing its job. Many children still in France are known to have family in the UK and to be eligible to come here – these young people must not be left in limbo.

“Now new Home Office guidelines will discriminate against many of the children because of where they come from – this is cruel in the extreme. These unaccompanied minors have already been through unimaginable horrors and had to endure months in horrendous conditions – the least they deserve is for their cases to be looked at properly.

“People up and down the UK and many local councils want to stand with refugees and migrants. Greens will keep up pressure on the Government to stop callously dragging its heels and to keep its promises to young refugees.”

The post Out of sight must never mean out of mind for vulnerable young refugees appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

As the French authorities prepare to empty and permanently close refugee camps around Calais in northern France this week, Jean Lambert MEP, the Green Party’s migration spokesperson, said:

“Whilst it is a relief that we are now seeing vulnerable young people arriving in the UK from Calais, there is nothing fast about this so-called ‘fast tracking’. People, including hundreds of unaccompanied minors, who have already been through unimaginable horrors, have had to endure months and months in horrendous conditions because the Government here did not do its job and nor did the French.

“Now I urge the British and French authorities to make sure that all camp residents, and especially vulnerable young people, are taken to safety before the demolition of the camp gets underway. I hope that this time the closure of the makeshift Calais camp marks a turning point towards an ongoing humane and dignified approach to asylum.

“The volunteers and non-government organisations, like Citizens UK, working on the ground in Calais and to welcome refugees here in the UK deserve special mention for their amazing work. They have stepped in and done what Governments failed to.”

ENDS

The post Green Party calls on British and French authorities to ensure safety of all Calais refugee camp residents appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

* Warm intentions between officials do nothing to improve the safety and security of children

The Green Party has branded the British and French failure to deal with the situation in Calais as ‘shameful’ as the Home Secretary made a long-overdue commitment to bring unaccompanied children to Britain.

Responding to Amber Rudd’s announcement, Jean Lambert, MEP and Green Party migration spokesperson, said:

“I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement today that those unaccompanied minors who are legally allowed come to Britain should be brought here as soon as possible and before the clearance of the Calais camp. It is also right that she commit to bringing over those children who qualify under the Dubs amendment as quickly as possible and to ensure they are looked after in safe facilities until that time.

“However given the length of time it has taken to get to this point I continue to call on the French and British authorities to quite simply do their jobs. This long-standing failure on the part of the French government, aided and abetted by the British government, to humanely deal with the situation in Calais, is shameful.

“Warm intentions between officials do nothing to improve the safety and security of children. We know that every time the camps are cleared vulnerable children go missing.  Last week my colleagues and I wrote to the relevant authorities in Britain and France calling on them not to waste money on building a wall that will further exacerbate the situation, but rather on providing safety, information and choices for people in need. The British and French governments need to act and now.”

The post British and French authorities must do their job and care for unaccompanied children appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

Refugees in Calais and Northern France must be treated with dignity and in accordance with international law, and the British and French governments must urgently find long-term humane solutions to their plight, Green MEPs have urged today.

The call comes after the Calais ‘Jungle’ camp was again in the headlines on both sides of the Channel. Protests against the camp by local residents took place this week, the French Government announced it will completely close the camp, and there was fresh disruption to cross-Channel traffic, and now there are Donald Trump-esque plans to build a monstrous wall.

Jean Lambert, MEP for London and Green Party migration spokesperson said:

“The decision to build a wall in Calais is the latest wrong move in what is the ongoing scandal of the handling of the plight of refugees in northern France. Successive French and British governments have utterly failed to fulfil their responsibilities towards the vulnerable people who find themselves in the camps, especially unaccompanied children. A wall will do nothing to improve the security of vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers or local residents, lorry drivers and cross-channel travellers.

“Adding to the already chaotic situation will only cause more children to go missing and give more control to criminal gangs. The authorities need to gain the trust of people in the camps, provide them with the information they are entitled to, give them a sense of security, and handle their asylum claims properly.

“The UK government must get its act together. Many of the people in Calais have a legal right to be reunited with family in the UK. The slow speed at which governments are dealing with asylum claims is inexcusable. People who find themselves in these camps do not want to enter the UK illegally but they need support to access the asylum system and no matter what they need to be treated with dignity.”

Keith Taylor, MEP for the South East of England, said:

“The situation in Calais is a symptom of a problem; dismantling the camps and removing the last scraps of dignity and security from their residents will not solve the problem. Building a wall is certainly not the answer either. Only through cross-border political cooperation can we hope to alleviate what is a global crisis.

“I empathise with the frustrations of local residents, hauliers, and travellers on both sides of the channel, but we cannot allow this Humanitarian crisis to be exploited by resurgent French or British far right groups. The dehumanising campaigns against camp residents cannot become justification for abandoning our legal and moral duties to approach this crisis with humanity.

“History will not judge our nations kindly if French and British governments refuse to work together constructively on this issue. Attacking the symptoms will never solve the problem.”

Molly Scott Cato MEP, who visited the ‘jungle’ camp in Calais earlier this year and is Green Party spokesperson on EU relations, said:

“The new wall will turn out to be another hugely expensive sticking plaster that will simply result in people going further to get round it and will push up tariffs for people smugglers. Instead, the British Government should be registering applications for asylum in the camps in France to quickly identify those people with a right to enter Britain. Perhaps a wall fits better with the fortress Britain mentality which seems to be at the heart of those pushing for a hard Brexit.”

The post Governments failing to cope with Calais refugee camp appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

The court of appeal has today ruled in favour of the Home Office in the case of four Syrian refugees who were brought from the ‘Jungle’ camp in Calais to be reunited with family in the UK.

The ruling overturns a decision in January which granted permission for the four – three of whom are teenagers – to travel to the UK legally to be with their UK-based families while their asylum claims were processed.

The Home Office appealed against the January decision and today won that appeal.

Commenting on the ruling Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP and Greens’ migration spokesperson said:

“Today’s ruling is a devastating decision for children trapped in the Calais ‘Jungle’ and other camps in northern France.

“This decision to uphold the Home Office’s appeal will only prolong these young people’s misery and their desperate search for safety.

“Charities working on the ground estimate there are at least 40 children who have rights to be reunited with family members in the UK. The UK and French governments must actively uphold the rights of unaccompanied children by providing the information they are entitled to, hearing their cases, and bringing them to safety as fast as possible. Instead the UK government is going to long lengths through the courts, all the time leaving children in appalling conditions where they are.

“It is totally short-sighted and callous of the government to insist on minimising so-called ‘pull-factors’ that it thinks will encourage more people to try to come to the UK. The camps around Calais are here to stay and Theresa May’s government needs to accept this and urgently find a humane approach to the refugee situation.”

The charity Citizens UK is supporting the legal cases of refugees in camps in northern France.

The post Home Office wins appeal on Syrian refugee case – comment appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

* Jean Lambert MEP welcomes House of Lords report she gave evidence to

Unaccompanied migrant children face squalor, destitution and desperation across the EU, finds a report published today by a House of Lords committee.

The committee of peers has spent months investigating the conditions thousands of lone children are living in across Europe, including children in camps in Northern France who are trying to be reunited with family in Britain.

It has concluded that governments, including the UK, are fundamentally failing to comply with their obligations under EU and international law.

Jean gave evidence to the committee.

Welcoming the report today Jean, who is Green MEP for London and Greens’ migration spokesperson, said: “This unreserved criticism from the House of Lords is appropriate – governments are failing to help many vulnerable children living in desperate situations. It’s shocking.

“Support must be provided to unaccompanied children from the moment they arrive, throughout the whole asylum process to ensure all their rights are upheld, and afterwards once their cases are concluded.

“The UK is not yet acting fully on its responsibilities for children, such as those at Calais. It knows what needs to be done, it just needs to do it. There are lone children in France who have a legal right to come to Britain, the Home Office knows this yet these vulnerable youngsters are still in the camps facing horrific living conditions and the danger of exploitation, violence and forced labour. The UK government cannot allow this to continue, and it must make sure local councils have resources to welcome these children and other refugees who need our help.

“I hope this will be the year the government takes its responsibilities, and I hope this Lords’ report will push them to do that.”

Jean recently spoke at a UNICEF event in the European Parliament on the terrible dangers faced by unaccompanied children in camps in northern France. You can read her speech here.

The post Governments failing lone child refugees, say Lords appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

The terrible dangers faced by unaccompanied children in camps in northern France were the subject of an event in the European Parliament in Strasbourg hosted by UNICEF.

UNICEF spent four months speaking to children living in the camps and slums along the coast of the English Channel. They interviewed with 60 children between the ages of 11-17.

At this event they presented their findings, revealing the traumas unaccompanied children have suffered on their journeys, the horrific and dire living conditions they are exposed to in the camps, and the continuous risks they are taking to be reunited with family members. Children experience sexual exploitation, violence and forced labour on a daily basis in the camps.

Jean Lambert MEP is vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s intergroup on children’s rights. Speaking at the event she called on both the UK and French authorities governments to realise and act on their responsibilities – so that volunteers and charities don’t have to step in.

“I would really love this year to be the year that governments take their responsibilities,” she said.

A full transcript of Jean’s speech at the UNICEF ‘Neither safe nor sound’ event can be found below.

—

“What we’ve seen in the Calais areas – coming from both the French and the British governments – is an emphasis on deterrent. There has been a situation there now for years and yet we still seem to believe that it will go away if we don’t provide any support for these people; that facilities are pull-factors – if you have decent facilities more people will come. Every so often you go in, you tear the camps apart, people disperse, then they come back and we start this saga again.

Everyone here would agree about the lack of a consistent leadership. Because at times in Calais we have seen a local authority that wants to do something, and a regional authority that won’t let them. Or the central government in Paris steps in. Or UNHCR steps in.

So it has always shocked me – the lack of services there, the lack of money to provide services, and the way that the British have been very happy to see bigger and bigger fences with little resources to actually work with the French government to really try and provide a solution for the people on the ground whether that’s unaccompanied children or adults.

Access to information is crucial. All the legislation we now have in place sets out the responsibilities for governments in all our countries to produce information in a language which an asylum-seeker can reasonably be expected to understand. The information part of it is crucial so asylum-seekers are aware of their rights.

You were asking questions about why nobody registers and takes responsibility for registration. In the Parliament recently we’ve been looking at the question of missing children, the missing minors that register somewhere then disappear and nobody seems to know where they are. The figures are the biggest they’ve ever been – up to about 10,000. And one of the things is that when we put the EU’s ‘Dublin’ asylum system together, children under 14 were not to be registered. We were very clear we didn’t want them treated like criminals so this is why under 14s are not in the system. And then of course Dublin has become its own prison where people do not wish to be registered because if they are registered they are stuck. So if you register in Greece, back you go to Greece. If you register in Poland, back you go to Poland. And so you play this game with people in Dublin of ‘it’s not our responsibility, it’s yours’. People learn not to register. If your fingerprints are taken your chances of getting where you want to go disappear. So this is why we need a revision of the Dublin system to give asylum-seekers a choice about where they can be.

The work that Citizens UK has been doing to make governments realise and act on their responsibilities has, I think, been really inspiring. Because this is the responsibility governments have had for a very long time…I’m trying to think of a polite word…and they have not carried out their responsibilities.
It’s for all of us in the European Parliament, to make sure the system that we have works. We need to work at both the French and the British sides to create joint pressure. We do do it from time to time. I’ve got my colleagues in the British parliament to table the same question as being put in the French parliament by senators here, to try and squeeze.

I would really love this year to be the year that governments take their responsibilities, and NGOs can act as volunteers and not the agencies.”

—

You can read the UNICER report ‘Neither safe nor sound’ here.

The post Neither safe nor sound – Jean calls for government action on child refugees in France appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

To receive monthly updates about Jean’s work as London’s Green MEP please sign up here.

The post Jean Lambert MEP June E-News appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.

In response to the proposed demolition of the southern section of the ‘jungle’ camp in Calais, Green MEPs Jean Lambert , Molly Scott Cato and Keith Taylor said:

“We are appalled by the latest reports of the gratuitous destruction of some of the most established parts of the ‘jungle’ camp in Calais, planned for next week, including places of worship, schools, the youth centre and legal centre.

The part of the camp earmarked for bulldozing also includes the women and children’s centre, an area of sanctuary, particularly for unaccompanied minors who are alone in the camp, many of whom have endured traumatic journeys to get there. We express our solidarity with the refugees themselves and the volunteers who have worked tirelessly to provide basic but essential services to improve the living conditions of some of the most vulnerable. We are concerned at reports of the lack of official provision planned for unaccompanied child refugees who stand to suffer most from the loss of the centre – Europol estimates that at least 10,000 unaccompanied minors have already gone missing in 2015 – so why destroy essential mechanisms which have been set up by volunteers to try to protect them, where governments have defaulted on their responsibility to ensure they are protected.”

The post Green MEPs condemn the proposed demolition of part of the Calais ‘jungle’ camp appeared first on Jean Lambert MEP.