Category Archives: Refugees

Britain spends three times more aid on housing refugees than it sends to Africa

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Foreign Office figures show aid to Africa fell to £1.1bn in 2022, compared with £3.7bn of budget spent on refugees in UK

The UK spent more than three times its overseas aid budget on housing refugees in Britain than on helping to alleviate poverty in Africa in 2022, figures from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office show.

The official provisional figures for 2022 show that spending on refugees increased from £597m in 2020 to £1bn in 2021 and reached £3.7bn in 2022. No other major country in the world is cutting its mainstream aid budget to cover the cost of housing refugees in this way, said the aid campaign group Bond.

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Young migrants take over Paris building in protest at treatment

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Young people had been sleeping rough across city after being rejected as minors by French authorities

More than 180 homeless young migrants have taken over a disused nursery school building in the west of Paris to protest against the inhumane treatment of unaccompanied minors arriving in France from Africa.

Backed by three French charities, the young people who had been sleeping rough across Paris for months arrived overnight at the old school building, which has no running water or electricity, and slept under blankets.

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Home Office to announce barge as accommodation for asylum seekers

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The Bibby Stockholm is said to have more than 220 bedrooms and facilities including a gym and bar

The Home Office is poised to reveal a barge as its first offshore accommodation for asylum seekers, the Guardian understands.

The Bibby Stockholm has been used “all over Europe” to accommodate asylum seekers, according to sources close to the Barbados Maritime ship registry, which oversees the use of this vessel. It currently has a gym, a well-furnished bar and more than 220 en-suite bedrooms over three decks.

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Syrian refugee celebrates ‘sensational’ win in German mayoral race

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Ryyan Alshebl, 29, won an absolute majority in Sunday’s mayoral election in Ostelsheim

A Syrian who arrived in Germany as a refugee in 2015 has been elected as the mayor of a village in the south-west of the country.

Ryyan Alshebl, 29, who is a member of the German Greens but stood as a non-party candidate, won an absolute majority in Sunday’s mayoral election in Ostelsheim, a small municipality of about 2,500 inhabitants in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

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Suella Braverman won’t say Rwanda deportation flights will start by summer

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Home secretary refuses to give a deadline for when her controversial policy for asylum seekers will begin

Suella Braverman has been unable to confirm that the first promised deportation flights to Rwanda will take off this summer, as the controversial policy continues to face scrutiny in the courts.

The home secretary, whose officials briefed that plans were on track during her trip to the African country last month, played down the prospect of the flights going ahead shortly.

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Typhoid outbreak on refugee ship in Netherlands traced to raw sewage

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Report finds that 72 cases of the disease on the vessel, which was housing asylum seekers, were caused by a wastewater leak

A major outbreak of typhoid among asylum seekers living on a ship in the Netherlands has been traced to raw sewage which was allowed to mix with tanks of freshwater for drinking and cooking.

A total of 72 cases of the highly contagious disease were confirmed during the spring 2022 outbreak on the Liberty Ann, an old cruise ship which was being used as emergency accommodation in Haarlem.

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Home Office accused of building delays into plan to speed asylum claims

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Questionnaire system at heart of effort to reduce backlog is ‘fundamentally flawed’, say immigration lawyers

Immigration lawyers have accused the Home Office of building delays into a scheme meant to speed up decisions on 12,000 asylum claims.

The plans announced last month to cut the asylum backlog – which now stands at a record 160,000 cases – by sending questionnaires to refugees requires claimants to reply in English within 20 working days or risk refusal.

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Afghan applying to resettle in UK asked to provide Taliban approval

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Despite MoD assurances, applicant and former British Council worker still being asked for Taliban-stamped papers

An Afghan who worked with the British Council and is applying to come to the UK has been told to retrieve documents from the Taliban or risk rejection, despite assurances earlier this month that such demands would end.

The Ministry of Defence apologised on 18 March after an investigation found that applicants to the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap) scheme were required to provide birth and marriage certificates in English and bearing stamps from Afghan government departments.

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Military sites to house asylum seekers to meet ‘essential living needs and nothing more’, says minister – as it happened

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This live blog has now closed, you can read more on this story here

Eagle how the pay settlement for health workers will be funded.

Hunt says, as with all pay settlements, departments fund them from the money they get in the spending review. But in exceptional circumstances they can speak to the Treasury about extra help.

But we make a commitment that there will not be a degredation of frontline services for the public.

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Tory row brewing over Sunak pledge to end small boat crossings

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Tory MPs at odds with No 10 over commitment to end crossings, with PM’s office saying he set no deadline

A row is brewing within the Conservative party over Rishi Sunak’s promise to end small boat crossings in the Channel, as backbench MPs warn the prime minister not to wriggle out of a pledge he made earlier this year.

Sunak announced in January he would bring an end to the small boat crossings, which have escalated rapidly over the past four years, with more than 45,000 people having made the crossing last year.

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NZ mulls harsher law against refugee boat arrivals – despite no refugee boats ever having arrived

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Opponents claim that bill put forward by Labour government amounts to fear-mongering in an election year

Large groups of asylum seekers arriving to New Zealand by sea could be detained in prison for up to 28 days without a warrant, under a law change that was proposed even though a refugee boat has never reached the country.

The bill – put forward by the Labour government – passed its first reading on Wednesday. It also determines that asylum seekers who arrive in groups of 30 or more by sea would have no possibility of attaining the entry permissions or temporary visas conferred on other travellers to New Zealand – including asylum seekers who enter the country by air.

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Home Office planning to house asylum seekers on disused cruise ships

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Exclusive: Ministers facing growing anger from Tory backbenchers over use of hotels in their constituencies

The Home Office is planning to use disused cruise ships to house asylum seekers amid growing anger from Conservative backbenchers over the use of hotels in their constituencies.

Ministers are looking at possible vessels including a former cruise ship from Indonesia, which would be moored in south-west England, the Guardian understands.

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Afghan refugees face homelessness under UK plans, say rights groups

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Ministers announce refugees in hotels will be offered move to a home on condition they accept first offer

People who fled the Taliban in Afghanistan are at risk of homelessness in the UK, humanitarian groups have warned, after ministers announced plans to move the refugees out of hotels and into homes on the condition they accept the first offer made to them.

Afghans living in “temporary bridging accommodation” in the UK under the UK’s two resettlement schemes would be given additional support to find settled accommodation after 18 months in hotels, the Home Office said.

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Tory former policing minister warns Braverman that laughing gas ban could boost trade for drug dealers – UK politics live

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Kit Malthouse tells home secretary of risks of moving substance from legitimate market into the illegitimate market

As Alex Wickham from Politico points out, the questions Rishi Sunak is getting this morning suggest this audience is not happy with the government’s record on crime.

Q: The Conservatives have “dropped the ball a little bit, to be honest”. The questioner says laughing gas is the least of their problems. People are using much harder drugs. He has skimmed through the action plan document. Some of it is good. But punishments need to be firmer. People probably won’t turn up for community sentences. And the government needs to tackle drugs at source.

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Italian authorities detain Banksy-funded migrant rescue boat

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Yacht impounded over alleged breach of far-right government’s new rules for rescue vessels

Italian authorities have detained a migrant rescue boat financed by the British street artist Banksy after it responded to a distress call in the central Mediterranean.

The vessel, painted in bright pink and named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, was impounded in the port of Lampedusa on Sunday in relation to an alleged breach of new Italian rules for rescue boats operated by non-governmental organisations.

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Rwanda scheme would ‘completely erode’ UK’s standing on world stage

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New Human Rights Watch head Tirana Hassan says UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers is ‘cheap politics’

The UK’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda would “completely erode” Britain’s standing on the world stage, the new head of Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

Tirana Hassan, who takes over as HRW’s executive director on Monday, also said other conservative governments in Europe were considering following Britain’s lead and looking at African states as an offshore dumping ground for asylum seekers, potentially dealing further blows to established refugee protections.

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Refugees trying to reach Italy die after boats sink off coast of Tunisia

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Latest tragedy comes as authorities in north African country crack down on undocumented people

At least 29 people from sub-Saharan Africa have died while trying to reach Italy after two boats carrying them across the Mediterranean sank off the coast of Tunisia.

The deaths, which occurred early on Sunday, are the latest tragedies involving people departing from the north African country, where the authorities have launched a crackdown on undocumented people from sub-Saharan Africa.

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‘We are refugees now, even our cat’: a Kherson mother’s UK diary

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Olha fled the Ukrainian city a year ago this week and has faced many challenges, including enrolling her children in school

I’m just an ordinary mother. My children went to school and enjoyed after-school clubs. Last February, I was preparing to shoot a short film about Kherson’s streets. A rehearsal was scheduled – but it never took place.

That was the day they bombed airports simultaneously across the country. Public transport stopped running from our city. The frontline ran straight to our city and a week later we found ourselves under occupation. One morning changed our lives, and that of every Ukrainian family, for ever.

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‘Draconian’ migration bill could leave tens of thousands destitute or locked up

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Refugee Council figures reveal potential human and economic cost of government’s illegal migration bill

Nearly 200,000 people, including more than 40,000 children, could be locked up or forced into destitution if the government’s controversial illegal migration bill becomes law, according to new analysis by the Refugee Council.

The charity has used government data and the numbers of asylum seekers the Home Office said it hopes to deport from the UK, to project how many people are likely to either be forcibly removed or left in limbo in the first three years of the new legislation if it becomes law, at a cost to the taxpayer of around £9bn. Home Office officials say they do not recognise these figures.

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‘Vanity project’: Braverman under fire for taking only rightwing press to Rwanda

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Home secretary’s trip to publicise refugee policy has been compared with Donald Trump’s news management

Outrage at the unusual level of control imposed on media coverage of the home secretary’s trip to Rwanda has grown this weekend during Suella Braverman’s first hours in the country.

Prominent names, including news presenters, academics and opposition MPs expressed shock at what they considered the partisan reporting of the trip from the right-wing news organisations invited to join the trip. The Guardian, BBC, Mirror, Independent and i Newspaper were barred.

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