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France prepares to demolish Calais refugee camp More refugee children to arrive in UK as Calais camp faces demolition
(about 4 hours later)
French authorities are expected to start demolishing the refugee camp at Calais early on Monday despite concerns about the safety of children and vulnerable adults living there. Another 24 refugee children from Calais will arrive in the UK on Sunday afternoon as officials race to process as many as possible before demolition of the sprawling camp begins on Monday.
Sixty buses are due to remove 3,000 people to accommodation centres across France, with the exercise to be repeated again on Tuesday and Wednesday. They follow the 54 unaccompanied minors – mostly girls from Eritrea – who were brought to Britain on Saturday night. The children were the first to arrive under the Dubs amendment, the government pledge to help unaccompanied minors, announced to parliament in the summer.
It was not clear whether the children arriving on Sunday had been brought to the UK under the Dubs amendment or the EU’s Dublin regulation, which reunites minors with family members already living in Britain.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We initially prioritised the transfer of children with family links to the UK, under the Dublin regulation, and have now started the process of taking in those children without close family links.
“These minors require a different assessment to the Dublin cases – which is why we have now accepted the offer of using local authority social workers. We are working closely with the Local Government Association, NGOs and across government to make sure we bring all eligible children to the UK as soon as possible.”
The first wave of Dubs arrivals could pave the way for hundreds more child refugees coming to Britain.
Alf Dubs, the 83-year-old Labour peer and former child refugee who forced the government to promise to grant sanctuary to vulnerable unaccompanied children, said he was delighted that the first minors who qualified under his amendment had been brought to safety.
The arrivals come as machinery is due to start arriving on Sunday to begin demolition of the camp, known as the “Jungle”. French authorities are expected to press ahead with plans to start demolishing the camp early on Monday despite concerns about the safety of thousands of children and vulnerable adults still living there.
Sixty buses are due to remove 3,000 people to accommodation centres across France on Monday, with the exercise to be repeated again on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Thousands of leaflets are being distributed in the camp this weekend, telling those living there that they must leave.Thousands of leaflets are being distributed in the camp this weekend, telling those living there that they must leave.
The planned demolition comes despite British charities and MPs telling the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, they have “very serious worries” about the security and wellbeing of many of the thousands of people – including an estimated 1,300 unaccompanied children – living in the camp.The planned demolition comes despite British charities and MPs telling the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, they have “very serious worries” about the security and wellbeing of many of the thousands of people – including an estimated 1,300 unaccompanied children – living in the camp.
“We fear that the resources currently being deployed and the proposed responses are insufficient to ensure the effective protection of the most vulnerable, notably unaccompanied children,” said a letter from signatories including Save the Children, the Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee UK, as well as 60 MPs and several peers. The letter said there was a lack of clear information from French authorities about the future of the camp’s inhabitants.“We fear that the resources currently being deployed and the proposed responses are insufficient to ensure the effective protection of the most vulnerable, notably unaccompanied children,” said a letter from signatories including Save the Children, the Refugee Council and the International Rescue Committee UK, as well as 60 MPs and several peers. The letter said there was a lack of clear information from French authorities about the future of the camp’s inhabitants.
The letter asks for all unaccompanied minors to be found shelter before the demolition starts, for a designated “safe zone” to be created in the camp during the dismantlement, and that anyone eligible to join family in Britain be identified.The letter asks for all unaccompanied minors to be found shelter before the demolition starts, for a designated “safe zone” to be created in the camp during the dismantlement, and that anyone eligible to join family in Britain be identified.
Unicef UK’s deputy executive director Lily Caprani said: “Once the demolition starts there are no second chances. If it results in a single child going missing, or forces them into the hands of smugglers and traffickers, then we will have failed them.” The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants urged the authorities to step up their efforts to bring over more vulnerable children and adults with the right to be in the UK.
Closing the camp is expected to take a week. Its chief executive, Saira Grant, said: “It is a welcome development that five months after passing a law to help unaccompanied minor children we are finally seeing some being brought over. The process unfortunately has been shambolic.
Cazeneuve has pledged that all remaining migrants at the site will be given “dignified” shelter after the camp is cleared. “Whilst it is vital to get children out of Calais first, focusing exclusively on them, and especially allowing the controversy over the ages of some to dominate national debate, creates an artificial distinction which suggests that all the others who fled war, atrocities and persecution are not worthy of our help because they are adults.”
The first child refugees from Calais arrived in the UK on Saturday night under a government promise to help unaccompanied minors announced in May, and more are expected to follow on Sunday. The Right Rev Jonathan Clark, bishop of Croydon and spokesman for the charity Citizens UK, welcomed the children’s arrival but added: “Of course this is just a very small proportion of the unaccompanied children out there and less than 1% of the total number of people in the Calais camp now, the vast majority of whom will be claiming asylum in France as they should.”
The Right Rev Jonathan Clark, bishop of Croydon and spokesman for the charity Citizens UK, welcomed the action but added: “Of course this is just a very small proportion of the unaccompanied children out there and less than 1% of the total number of people in the Calais camp now, the vast majority of whom will be claiming asylum in France as they should.”
The Care4Calais founder Clare Moseley said she feared that unofficial migrant camps would spring up once the demolition was completed, leaving people without basic sanitary conditions or access to interpreters and legal advice. Doctors of the World said children needed to be brought to the UK more quickly to ensure they did not end up going missing in France and becoming at risk of further exploitation and abuse.
However, the Conservative MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, said the camp must never be allowed to re-emerge: “The ‘Jungle’ must be fully dismantled – never to return. This time they need to see it through. We must end the Calais migrant magnet.” Leigh Daynes, its executive director, said the French government had not kept its promises to safely and gradually reduce the population of the Calais camp.
“Dismantling the Calais camp completely ignores needs on the ground and will just traumatise people already close to the edge. Calais is a humanitarian emergency of the first order, one that would not be tolerated in any other part of the world, and one which the French and British governments have both ignored.
“Refugees won’t disappear with the camp, and many will continue to come to Calais where they will have no choice but to live in even more squalid conditions, without essentials like running water. We are very concerned for their physical and mental health.”
Clare Moseley, founder of the Care4Calais refugee crisis charity, said those who refused to leave Calais risked being arrested and deported.
She said she was very concerned about the wellbeing of the inhabitants when they reached the new centres, which she said ranged from apartments for families to buildings such as converted barns or disused schools.
“For the last year the only people who have been providing the refugees with their clothing, with their food, with medical facilities, with legal advice, have been volunteers in the camp,” Moseley said.
“The idea that after a year of not providing all these things in one location, the French authorities are suddenly going to start providing them in over 100 locations seems questionable, so we are really worried about where they are going to get all these things from.”
Moseley said she was hopeful that the demolition would take place without violent altercations, despite spats involving teargas, smoke grenades and small rocks being thrown on Saturday night.
The Conservative MP for Dover, Charlie Elphicke, said the camp must never be allowed to re-emerge: “The ‘Jungle’ must be fully dismantled – never to return. This time they need to see it through. We must end the Calais migrant magnet.”