Women Asylum Seekers Charter

posted: 06/11/2009

George House Trust, like many organisations, has enthusiastically endorsed the Charter of rights of women asylum seekers.

By endorsing the Charter George House Trust has committed itself to doing what it can to promote the rights and actions in the Charter.

We will be able to do this through regional/national forums, the Detention Users Group, meetings with accommodation providers, and the staff will also be able to support this through trade union meetings.

Google group sign up
We and other supporters can also join the new Women’s Asylum Charter Google group. Joining the Google group will enable people interested in the campaign in touch with people working on similar issues and help share good practice and monitor progress. This coordination and feedback makes all our efforts more effective.

To join the Google group, please go to http://groups.google.co.uk/group/womens_asylum_charter?hl=en-GB. You will need to create a Google account if you don’t already have one. If you have any difficulties with joining the Google group, please contact charter@asylumaid.org.uk

Own website?
To help promote the Charter it would be great if you could put this link on your website www.asylumaid.org.uk

Direct link to Charter page

Zimbabwe - Forced Returns Protests

posted: 30/10/2009

Refugee and HIV organisations were among those angered and concerned by Home Office ministers saying that Zimbabwe is now safe enough to resume the forcible return of thousands of refused asylum seekers.
 

Bad timing?

The announcement by the immigration minister, Phil Woolas (MP for the NW constituency of Oldham East and Saddleworth), came just as the UN's monitor on torture was forcibly expelled from Harare, and when Amnesty International warned that the country was "on the brink of sliding back into violence".
 

Woolas told MPs that he was encouraging Zimbabweans whose asylum application in Britain had been rejected to return home voluntarily by including a £2,000 cash payment in a total repatriation package worth up to £6,000. But he also said the UK Border Agency was resuming work on a programme of enforced returns to Zimbabwe.
 

"We have always expected those not to be in need of protection to return home. We prefer these individuals to return voluntarily, and the enhancements to the assisted voluntary return scheme will support this," he said. "But where they choose not to do so, we are bound to take steps over time to enforce the law."
 

George House Trust comment

That’s perhaps more bluff and bluster, for the benefit of the press and some sections of the public, to make him seem to be tougher on returns. His formal statement says something less scary – the key sentence is:

“The UK Border Agency will therefore be starting work over the autumn on a process aimed at normalising our returns policy to Zimbabwe, moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.”

The key words we take comfort from are here (our italics) “moving towards resuming enforced returns progressively as and when the political situation develops.” So he means the political situation is not yet right to restart forced returns. Any government that rushes to resume forced returns to Zimbabwe faces the prospect of a second defeat in the courts.

Zimbaweans are the largest nationality group among expatriate Africans with HIV in the UK, which is why this policy change is significant. Well over 650 Zimbabweans diagnosed with HIV are living in NW England.

High Court ended returns in 2006

Forcible returns to Zimbabwe were suspended in September 2006, when high court judges ruled that those who could not demonstrate their loyalty to Robert Mugabe's regime would face persecution on their return. It is thought there are more than 10,000 refused asylum seekers from Zimbabwe in Britain. Only recently more than 2,000 fled to the UK during Zimbabwe's elections in 2008.
 

The Home Office statement says there have been "positive changes" in Zimbabwe in the past six months, including less indiscriminate violence, more basic commodities are available and the economy and schools have improved since the formation of the unity government. Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), is prime minister under President Mugabe.
Refugee groups say only 89 people went back to Zimbabwe under the British government's voluntary returns programme between January and August.
 

Safety claims ridiculed
The Refugee Council said the Home Office's judgment on life in Zimbabwe was ludicrous. "In the past few days allegations of arrest, intimidation and harassment of supporters of the MDC and of human rights defenders have been widely reported," said the council's chief executive, Donna Covey. "Our government is showing a cavalier attitude to the safety of refugees who have stood up for democracy and human rights. After the farcical attempts to return Iraqis and Afghans in recent weeks against UN advice, it is of great concern that the government are now considering returns to Zimbabwe."
 

Sandy Buchan, of Refugee Action, also said the move was premature: "We still see more Zimbabweans asking for help and advice than any other single nationality, and many are terrified of returning to their country." And Patson Muzuwa, of the Zimbabwe Association said "It is very premature of them to think of forced removals," adding that Woolas's statement was intended to pave the way for a programme of forcible removals last attempted in 2004 and 2005.
 

Source 
 

UN torture investigator refused entry to Zimbabwe
 

Minister's Statement on changing the policy on returning people to Zimbabwe 
 

Changes to the voluntary returns package
 
 

Benefit Reform Backlash

posted: 01/12/2008

Gordon Brown is facing a growing backlash against Labour's welfare reforms, which will give private companies a greater role in moving the unemployed back to work, as some of Britain's biggest unions join anti-poverty campaigners in a new national campaign against the plans.
 

As the prime minister pledged over the weekend to respond to the economic downturn by speeding up the reform of public services, the new campaign warned that a "draconian" welfare policy was not the right one in a recession.

HIV impacts
The reforms will be one of the key elements of the government's legislative programme to be outlined in Wednesday's Queen's speech to parliament. The main reform to affect people living with HIV is the review and transfer of all existing claimants on Incapacity Benefit (paid for long term illhealth or disability) to the new benefit Employment Support Allowance. The tests for receiving this for long term sickness are significantly tougher. The government's intention is to reduce the number claiming for long term sickness or disability by about 1 million. These one million will either have to find work (very difficult as unemployment rises in a recession) or claim Job Seekers Allowance - about £20 a week less. People on this have under £9 a day income. Another element of the reforms is to part-privatise job seeker support services. The fear is that the "harder cases" such as people with long term unpredictable health conditions and those with stigmatised conditions will be left behind. The contracts for job seeker support services pay by results and there are tough penalties for failure. In the recesssion the companies will be driven by the contract penalties to cherrypick the easiest cases.

Campaigners against the welfare reforms, led by the centre-left pressure Compass and unions including Unison and the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said: "Many of the plans were unacceptable when they were first published and the worsening economic situation should lead to a fundamental rethink."

Brown said yesterday that the details in the Queen's speech were the "biggest New Labour project of all" and rejected claims that the government's plans to raise the higher rate of tax to 45p marked the end of New Labour. "Doing nothing is not an option," Brown told the Progress conference in London. "This is the biggest New Labour project of all: to give people confidence and hope that we can build through this downturn into a better economy and society. It will mean not a slowing down of reform but only a stepping up in the pace of reform."

The welfare reform plans, based on a report by the city financier David Freud, have been in the pipeline for some time. Government sources said the changes in approach to the long-term unemployed were more necessary than ever.

But the new campaign group is alarmed about a drift to the right in attitudes to the jobless and has seized on warnings by the government's own advisers, the social security advisory committee, to suspend plans to force single mothers with children under 12 to seek work or face benefit cuts.

source
 

HIV Jobless Maybe Sidetracked

posted: 23/09/2008

Tens of thousands of jobseekers living with HIV face being written off and "parked" on low-paid unemployment benefits as an unintended consequence of the government's £2bn plans to use private contractors to provide support for people to go back to work and tackle long-term unemployment, a thinktank warns today.

People needing greater levels of support to find work, such as those with longterm conditions like HIV, will be sidelined under changes taking effect next year, according to the Social Market Foundation (SMF).

The ThinkTank claims that because the private contractors will get paid once for each person they place into work, whatever their circumstances and suupport needs, there will be no incentive for contractors to work with those who may require more help to overcome disadvantages caused by their backgrounds, poor literacy and numeracy, disability or health problems.

"Those furthest from the labour market will inevitably not be offered services appropriate to their needs - they will be 'parked'," the thinktank says. "This will occur because the design of the payment system sets the profit motive of contractors in tension with the aim to help all clients."

The new system is due to start in October next year. After 12 months on jobseeker's allowance, working with Jobcentre Plus advisers, unemployed people will be passed to contractors paid to find them work in whatever way they think most effective. Bob Warner, chief executive of Remploy, which specialises in finding work for people with complex needs, said: "We are concerned that those long-term unemployed, hard-to-place groups do get the support they need under the new contracting arrangements."

The employment and welfare reform minister, Stephen Timms, said: "We will look closely at the results of the first phase of the contracts and carefully consider if any changes need to be made."





source