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UN Refugee Agency says immigration bill announcement ‘a sad day for refugee rights’
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, says “today is a sad day for refugee rights” after the government unveiled its plans to tackle small boats crossing the Channel.
Speaking to Sky News this evening, Matthew Saltmarsh, a spokesperson for the agency, said the government is “introducing a ban on asylum” in breach of the Refugee Convention.
Mr Saltmarsh said the UNHCR does not believe the approach is “fair” and it has “serious concerns” around the rights of people fleeing war persecution.
He says that are “very few other means of people arriving safely”.
“There are so few safe passages for refugees and asylum seekers that unfortunately…so many people are forced to take these perilous journeys.”
He added that fighting people smuggling gangs crossing the Channel is “fundamental”.
The UK should look to other countries to negotiate deals and arrangements for transfers of asylum seekers or for the return of people who don’t need international protection, Mr Saltmarsh says.
“There is no quick fix.”
The UNHCR released a statement today saying that it is “profoundly concerned” by the new immigration bill.
It said the proposed laws would extinguish “the right to seek refugee protection in the UK for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be, and with no consideration of their individual circumstances”.
The bill would deny protection to many people seeking safety and remove their chance to make a case for asylum, it adds.
“This would be a clear breach of the Refugee Convention and would undermine a longstanding humanitarian tradition of which the British people are rightly proud,” the statement reads.
Denying people who arrive in small boats access to asylum on the basis that they haven’t come through a safe and legal route “undermines the very purpose” for which the convention was established, the agency says.
“The convention explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly.”
