An important role Abigail Housing is to help raise awareness in the wider community of the issues asylum seekers and refugees face and to help build for them to receive better and more humane treatment from our Government. In 2021 we were a founder member of the Together With Refugees a new campaign, which is a coalition of now over 400 organisations big and small who believe in showing compassion for people fleeing war, persecution or violence. Members include grassroots, community and refugee-led groups, international development charities, trade unions and faith groups. The coalition was founded by Asylum Matters, British Red Cross, Freedom from Torture, Rainbow Migration, Refugee Action, Refugee Council and Scottish Refugee Council.
We are calling for a kinder, fairer and more effective approach to supporting refugees. This means standing up for people’s ability to seek safety in the UK no matter how they came here. It means ensuring people can live in dignity while they wait to hear if they will be granted protection. It means empowering refugees to rebuild their lives and make valuable contributions to their communities.
In late April the Nationality & Borders Bill was passed through the House of Lords and will become law – this will criminalise many refugees who arrive in Britain, for most refugees there are no safe, official ways of making an asylum claim. This law will make things so much harder for people who have fled war and persecution. The plan to send people to detention centres in Rwanda is cruel and inhumane, as well as being costly and inefficient. This Bill flies in the face of the United Nations Refugees Convention and is at odds with Britain’s international obligations.
There may well be legal challenges to these policies, the government is not after all above the law. The Together With Refugees Campaign will continue, it has already shown that many British people want to see refugees treated with respect and dignity. We will continue to push for a kinder, fairer, more humane asylum system.
