Proud to Halt HIV Child Deportations

posted: 30/04/2010

It was New Year's Day 2008 when Martin Narey, head of the children’s charity Barnardo’s, opened the letter he had been waiting for. Inside were the names of 63 HIV-positive children and their families who had at last received a reprieve from the British Government. They no longer faced deportation back to Malawi and Rwanda, to an almost certain death.
 

In a candid interview before he steps down as chief executive of the children's charity Barnardo's, Mr Narey told The Independent that the letter was the proudest moment of his professional life.
The 54-year-old former head of the prison service had fought long and hard to keep the children in this country, lobbying Tony Blair to argue that it would be "cruel and inhumane" to return them to die when anti-retroviral treatment in the UK could give them a near normal life expectancy.
 

Behind the scenes
George House Trust and the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit work closely with Barnardo’s Gregory’s Place to support HIV positive children and their families in NW England remain in the UK. He came to Barnardo's met families and staff from both organisations. We all fed him the facts and harsh realities facing HIV positive migrant children and their families.

Martin Narey instantly grasped the inhumanity of deporting HIV positive children to an early death. He used his unrivalled access to people in power and his passionate commitment to justice and care for children to win protection from removal for 63 children with HIV.
 

Manchester visit sparked action
"On a visit to one of our services in Manchester I met Josephine, a mum whose appeal against a decision not to grant her asylum had just been rejected. Josephine and her son Michael, then 14, were about to be deported to Malawi," he said. George House Trust and the Immigration Aid Unit had given expert evidence and pleaded the family’s case at the immigration tribunal.
 

"Both Josephine and her son were HIV positive. The clinical evidence I was subsequently able to read indicated that without anti-retroviral treatment in Malawi, both would die within months, whereas Josephine's life expectancy here was considerable and Michael's was essentially that of any other 14-year-old. What most shocked, upset and moved me about Josephine was not her quiet acceptance about her own death, but her abject fear over the reality that because she had a radically lower blood count she would die first and leave Michael to die on his own a few weeks or months after her.”
 

Take it to the top
"I went straight from there to the Labour conference in Manchester where I was speaking in a Fabian Debate and I spoke very frankly about what I'd seen. That got me in front of the All Party Parliamentary Group on HIV. That got questions asked at PM's Questions. That got me a meeting with Tony Blair and eventually – and to his enormous credit – a list of more than 60 children, all HIV positive, and their families were given indefinite leave to remain.
 

"The reprieve list, which was sent to me on New Year's Eve and I opened on New Year's Day 2008, was, and I suspect always will be, the best moment of my professional life."
 

Source
 

Children, Immigration and HIV Training

posted: 12/01/2010

There are three training and study days for people working to support children and families affected by immigration and HIV.
 

Immigration and HIV study day
The Children and Young People HIV Network is holding an Immigration and HIV study day, on Thursday 18th February 2010, in London.

The aim of the day is 
 

• to explain the official language and systems, and
• to provide workers with the information needed to effectively support children and families living with HIV who are inside and outside the asylum system.

There will be speakers from National AIDS Trust, Children's Society and the No Recourse to Public Funds Network.

It’s in central London, at Body and Soul, which is just 5-10 minutes walk from Euston station.
10.30am – 2.30pm on Thursday 18 February
£25 with lunch included

Please book using the attached form, which has more information.

Immigration and Asylum training
The Impact of Immigration and Asylum on children and Young People Living with HIV
 

York (venue to be confirmed), Tuesday 9 March 2010
9.30 am – 4.30pm
£95 with lunch included
 

Or in London (venue to be confirmed), Tuesday 23 March 2010, at the same times and cost.
 

Please book using the attached form which has more information.

This one day training course will explore issues surrounding working with children and families who have unsure immigration status and are living with HIV. The programme will include 

• current challenges in practice, 
• providing practical ways in which professionals can strive to meet the needs of this group across the sectors and will also 
• combine current policy, legislation and practice issues.

The workshop format will encourage and facilitate sharing experience and best practice.
 

Positive Children Locked Up

posted: 01/09/2009

Ministers were blamed as it was revealed that hundreds of children are being held unnecessarily in immigration detention centres. Some of the parents and children have HIV. Official figures dragged out of the government revealed that on one day at the end of June this year, 470 children were being detained with their families.

The figures, made public following pressure from children's rights groups and MPs, showed most were under five. The detention of any child longer than 28 days has to be signed for by a minister. 1 in 3 of the children were there already for longer than 28 days. Out of 225 children released from detention in the second quarter this year, only 100 were actually removed from the UK.

Many were from troubled countries such as Zimbabwe, Sudan, Sri Lanka and Democratic Republic of Congo where returning people has been difficult and the safety of doing so hotly contested.

The UK has one of the worst records in Europe for detaining children, but accurate figures on how many are held, or for how long, have remained elusive.

MPs and children's rights groups have now called for an end to the "national scandal" that has allowed children to be locked up unnecessarily.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the children's commissioner for England, welcomed the publication of the figures, but said they raised important questions.

He said: "If they were allowed to stay at the end of their release, why did they have to go through the detention process in the first place?"

He described the fact that one in three had been held for longer than 28 days as "extremely worrying".

Earlier this year, Aynsley-Green published a critical report into Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire which found the average stay for children had increased, and the decision to detain for longer than 28 days failed to take into account any welfare concerns raised.

Damian Green, shadow immigration minister, described the government's attempts to find alternatives to detention for families as "feeble", adding: "It would be better and cheaper if we don't have to lock up young children for weeks and sometimes months. Other countries seem to do better than we do at finding alternatives."

The average cost of holding someone in an immigration detention centre is £130 per day.

Post-traumatic stress disorder because of child detention

The Guardian has spoken to three families held at Yarl's Wood for between 19 and 71 days. One of the children has been diagnosed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, while another, Ibrahim Ssentongo, four, remains traumatised seven months after his detention.

Ibrahim's father, Stephen Ssentongo, 35, from Uganda, said: "When he sees people in uniforms of white shirts and black trousers, like bus drivers or security guards in shopping centres, he stops. He wants to hold your hand or to stand in front of you, so that you will hold him. He is scared."

Sheila Melzak, a consultant child psychotherapist who has worked with families in detention, said Ibrahim's trauma was far from unusual.

"All the young people I have been talking to have lingering effects, after months and even after years" she said.

"It is frightening for children to see their parents in tears. They see adults in a high state of stress, they hear a lot of shouting and crying. It is a highly institutionalised environment and that leads to problems with eating and sleeping and learning."

Bethlehem Abate, 12, from Ethiopia, described the day she and her mother were seized in an early morning raid as "one of the worst days I ever had to experience".

The schoolgirl, who has been living in Leeds for four years after fleeing her home country to seek asylum, said she was disillusioned by the British government, because she felt sure "they would understand our situation and help us", but instead they have "turned everything around."

Last resort child detention or are families just easy targets?

Family and children's support groups said the statistics showed the UK Borders Agency was failing in its duty to detain children only "as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time".

Amanda Shah, of Bail for Immigration Detainees, said: "Fifty-six per cent of detained children were released back to their communities in the UK, their detention having served no purpose other than wasting taxpayers' money and traumatising the children involved. Children we have supported have suffered depression, weight loss, bedwetting and even self-harm as a result of their detention – that is the human reality behind the statistics."

Lisa Nandy, policy adviser at the Children's Society, said children were being detained unnecessarily because the asylum system was "chaotic" and because the UK Border Agency and private contractors who work for them often targeted families to increase their removal rates.

The Home Office said today : "UK Border Agency fully recognises its responsibilities towards children but these responsibilities have to be exercised alongside our duty to enforce the laws on immigration and asylum. If a family decide to appeal against the courts decision while being detained the removal process is halted. If a judge agrees that there are fresh grounds for an appeal the family are usually returned back to the community until the case has been reviewed."

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Cambodia's 'AIDS' Colony Shame

posted: 29/07/2009

HIV campaigners and human rights groups today accused the Cambodian government of herding HIV-affected families into an "AIDS colony" outside the capital, Phnom Penh.

In an open letter to the country's prime minister, Hun Sen, and the health minister, Mam Bunheng, more than 100 international and domestic pressure groups said they were deeply disturbed by the "life-threatening" conditions in the settlement.

Forty families are forced to live in sheet-metal sheds without running water or proper sanitation.

The government has spent the past two months moving people with HIV from an apartment complex and market in the Borei Keila district of Phnom Penh to Tuol Sambo, a flood-prone area 15 miles (25km) away.

"By bundling people living with HIV together in second-rate housing, far from medical facilities, support services and jobs, the government has created a de facto AIDS colony," Shiba Phurailatpam, of the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS, said.

Rebecca Schleifer, a Human Rights Watch spokeswoman, said conditions at Tuol Sambo posed "serious risks" to people who were already vulnerable to illness.

"People living with HIV have compromised immune systems and are especially vulnerable," she added. "For them, these substandard conditions can mean a death sentence or a ticket to a hospital."

According to Médecins sans Frontières, conditions at Tuol Sambo do not meet the minimum international standards for temporary housing.

Evicted for development but housing promises broken

The families were evicted from Borei Keila to make way for a commercial development, which was reportedly granted government approval on the understanding that the developer would place the residents, including those with HIV, into new housing.

The evictions continued despite protests from UN agencies, and the campaigners' letter said: "We have reason to fear that relocations of HIV-affected families are continuing even as we sign this letter."

They urged the government to stop moving families to Tuol Sambo, urgently improve living conditions there and ensure that people with HIV have access to antiretroviral drugs.

Local officials said they were aware of the concerns over the settlement and were trying to improve conditions.

"We are trying to find clean water for them," Phnom Penh's deputy governor, Mann Chhoeun, told the Phnom Penh Post, adding that plans had been made to distribute free medicine via the Centre of Hope mission.

In 2008, according to UNAids, an estimated 67,200 adults and 3,800 children in Cambodia were living with HIV/AIDS.
 

photo Heng Chivoan, Phnom Penh Post

Source

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