Tuesday, September 09, 2008
New Statesman campaign to end child detention
Earlier this month, the current affairs journal New Statesman launched its new campaign, ‘No Place for Children’. The campaign calls for an end to the detention of children in immigration centres.
Government policy states that children should only be held in detention centres as a last resort, however around 2000 children pass through these centres each year in the UK. Detention is usually a punishment for a crime but innocent children are being criminalised only because their parents are seeking asylum in the UK.
The effects on children in detention are both physical and emotional and include weight loss, depression and self-harm.
“We have roll call every day four times. Some officers don’t even knock on the door, they just come in…my brother wets the bed every day and he is almost 12, he can never sleep a lot of the time he wakes up crying. We ask him what is wrong he says he saw a bad dream. I have bad dreams too.”
Anna, teenager detained at Yarl’s Wood detention centre.
There is no limit on the amount of time for which children can be detained and there is the constant threat of deportation. Often these children are born in the UK or have grown up here and feel British.
“As the weeks went by I was asking myself, are we going to stay in there for the rest of our lives? I was sitting in those rooms all day with no proper air to breathe.”
Jasmine, teenager detained at Yarl’s Wood detention centre.
‘No Place for Children’ calls for alternatives to the use of detention. It also recommends improvements to detention centres whilst the process of detention comes to an end: *Better independent oversight of the system. *Accurate records of all children in the immigration detention system *Welfare assessments of all children on entry into detention *Reasons for detention and reviews given to parents in their own language.
The launch issue (4th September) for the campaign featured a comment piece from the Children’s Commissioner Sir Al Aynsley Green, testimonies from children in detention and Women for Refugee Women campaigner Natasha Walter. Other campaign strategies include a report from Yarl’s Wood by the novelist and playwright Gillian Slovo and three short films on the New Statesman website.
There are high expectations for the impact of this campaign as previous New Statesman campaigns have been very influential. Already ‘No Place for Children’ has featured in national news bulletins. For more information visit the New Statesman website
Posted by STAR team on 09/09/2008 at 01:57 PM
