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OPINION: Braverman’s attempt to deflect blame is insulting [1]
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Date: 2023-09
“Are we delivering safe and legal routes in an efficient and effective manner?”
This has been Suella Braverman’s recent question to other European interior ministers, she said today during a speech that accused the international refugee system of being too generous.
Addressing an exclusive audience at the American Enterprise Institute, a shadowy libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, the UK home secretary said there had been “an interpretative shift” lowering the bar for the award of refugee status. It was time, she said, for an international debate on reform of asylum laws.
The irony is that Braverman’s own department would not be able to answer ‘yes’ to the question she claims to have asked everyone else.
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For the last year, my colleagues and I at openDemocracy have been trying to hold the government to account over its treatment of refugees. To do this, we have focused on the people rarely afforded a voice in the debate over immigration policy – the refugees themselves.
When the Home Office claims to offer a “safe and legal route” to refugees around the world, it is in reference to a resettlement scheme run by the United Nations refugee agency.
Braverman has repeatedly pointed to the existence of the scheme as justification for barring those who arrive to the UK by irregular means, such as on a small boat, from having their asylum claim heard.
Earlier this year, I spent weeks speaking to a group of 20 Iraqi families who were registered on the scheme by the UN in Turkey – individuals cannot apply on their own behalf – after fleeing death threats at home.
When British troops withdrew from Iraq in 2011, they left a country brought to its knees by the invasion to quash an insurgency by the so-called Islamic State. Tens of thousands of civilians would be killed in the conflict that followed.
One woman told me her family left after their home was bombed by the Islamic State. Her niece burned to death in the attack, something which she said haunts her every day. Others spoke of being targeted because they were from religious minorities or employees of the local government.
All the families I spoke to shared documents that showed they had been waiting for almost a decade for anyone to resettle them.
Once refugees are registered by the UN, the agency assesses cases and eventually, if they are successful, one of 18 countries (including the UK) accepts a request to resettle them. Some of the Iraqi families I spoke to had British relatives and wished to join them in the UK, though none are afforded a say over where they are resetted by the UN.
They had endured years in limbo as they waited for news from the UN. One family told me their youngest child had died during that time because they had not been able to get him the medical support he needed in Turkey. They believed he might have survived if they had been resettled. A widow told me her husband had died of a stroke in the nine years they had spent waiting. She blamed the stress of years of uncertainty.
Many regretted their decision to place their trust in the UN and wished they had tried to seek asylum in the UK by other means, even small boats. A spokesperson for the UN refugee agency did not deny that refugees could be waiting for as long as a decade to be resettled. They pointed out that the scheme was meant to complement, not replace, countries’ own programmes for refugee resettlement.
When commentators have questioned the adequacy of the UN scheme, the Home Office has pointed out that it has also resettled tens of thousands of Afghans – the vast majority of whom were brought to the UK during the chaotic withdrawal from Kabul in August 2021.
“We owe a great deal to the brave Afghans who worked alongside us and we want to make sure they have certainty and stability to be able to thrive in the UK,” said the then home secretary Priti Patel in September 2021, at the launch of what was dubbed Operation Warm Welcome. Ministers pledged to find homes for every Afghan accepted on its resettlement scheme.
Yet tens of thousands were told earlier this year the government would not be able to find them a home after all. Instead, they have had to look for a place to rent themselves. The decision put Afghans in an impossible situation as few could meet the stringent requirements of property agents and landlords.
That did not stop many from trying. I heard how some had enquired about dozens of properties only to be repeatedly rejected. Agents would stop replying or even just hang up as soon as Afghans revealed they were refugees.
One told me that a British friend had told a property agent that he would provide two months’ rent upfront to help them secure a place to rent – and was still rejected.
By September, hundreds hadn’t found a home and were living in homeless accommodation. An additional 1,800 have been allowed to stay in hotels past the deadline – but Braverman’s government has decided to stop feeding them. Afghans promised a warm welcome have been reduced to eating cold takeaways – if they can afford to eat at all.
Braverman’s criticism of the refugee system itself is nothing more than an attempt to shift the blame from her own government’s failure to do the basics.
And that’s why my colleagues and I will continue our work revealing those failures – because we all deserve to know what is being done to the world’s most vulnerable people in our names.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/suella-braverman-home-secretary-american-enterprise-institute-refugees/
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