Refugees: Unaccompanied Children

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I must admit that I wish there had been more. My noble friend is right to raise this matter. Kent is bearing an unfair share of the burden of caring for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children: more than 1,000 are being cared for there. The Home Secretary, the Secretary of State for Education, and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government wrote in November asking local authorities to come forward. So far we have had interest from 24—but that is out of 440. Only eight children out of 1,000 have so far been offered places. I would like to think that all Members of this House who have links to their local authorities would be encouraging them to look again and see what can be done to help Kent in its hour of need.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, as the Minister may know, Eritrean children are fleeing from their country because of their experience of the most brutal human rights violations, often described as crimes against humanity. Will the Minister comment on the fact that, on the most recent evidence, the UK continues to reject Eritreans, including children, on the basis of a discredited Danish report, rather than using a balanced UN report?

[Lord Bates]

The noble Baroness asked a Question on this subject a couple of weeks ago. We still accept a large number of Eritreans who come here, because of the open-ended nature of the military service that they have to undertake. So far, we have accepted a large number of them. The UN report to which the noble Baroness refers did not have access in-country; our policy is based on in-country information from our embassy, and we will continue to keep the situation under review.

Refugees: Eritrea

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the recent UN Special Rapporteur’s report on the plight of unaccompanied minors who are refugees from Eritrea.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise the plight of unaccompanied children and have carefully studied the special rapporteur’s report. Country information and guidance is based on an objective assessment of the situation in Eritrea using evidence from a range of sources, including that of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in Eritrea.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his response. As he has said, the UN special rapporteur’s report highlights the appalling situation of unaccompanied children from Eritrea who travel into and across Europe seeking sanctuary. The UK has a long history of supporting young victims of persecution, such as during the Second World War, so will the Government now respond to last week’s recommendation from the International Development Select Committee and agree to take at least 3,000 of the most vulnerable refugee children already in Europe, many of whom are from Eritrea?

[Lord Bates]

As my noble friend Lady Anelay has made clear, we took very seriously the UN special rapporteur’s report on the situation in Eritrea. In fact, it was the basis of the ongoing Article 8 dialogue with the EU as part of the Khartoum process. It seems that the Eritrean Government have given an undertaking to limit national service, which was the principal driver of a lot of the migration flows. On the noble Baroness’s second point, we have had an opportunity to look at the Select Committee’s report, which was published on 5 January and is very thorough. We will be responding to it in due course but it raises a number of very important issues.

Mediterranean: Migrant Trafficking

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend Lord Courtown told me about that debate, and I have had an opportunity to read it. I gave a commitment that we would have a cross-departmental ministerial meeting, and that is in process. Certainly, all those issues, particularly looking for radical solutions to this crisis through the UN and the EU, will be very much on the agenda, and I will be happy to report back to the House.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister share the questionable view expressed by the Home Office Minister James Brokenshire, who last week said that the majority of those who seek to make the journey to Europe are economic migrants. Is it not crystal clear, for instance, that desperate Afghans, Eritreans and Syrians who are fleeing violence, conflict, oppression and persecution should definitely not be categorised as economic migrants?

[Lord Bates]

I think that the quotation from my right honourable friend James Brokenshire was particularly about the central Mediterranean, where there were examples of a large number of people coming from sub-Saharan Africa who would not normally be granted asylum. That is not the case—and I am sure we would agree on this—in the eastern Mediterranean, where the vast majority are coming from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. There are different causes, and it is a fast-changing problem.

Democratic Republic of Congo

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, the Home Office works very closely with FCO staff here in London and with embassy officials in Kinshasa. The embassy staff participated in the DRC fact-finding mission and stated that they were not aware of substantial evidence of any returnee being ill treated. However, I assure the right reverend Prelate that the Home Offices investigates specific allegations of mistreatment on return.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain how it can be safe to return at-risk people to a country which has the biggest UN peacekeeping force in the world, when that force has to spend most of its time protecting the local population and its own security forces, and when eastern Congo is known as the world’s capital of rape, which is routinely used as a weapon against vulnerable women? Surely this is a case of the Government having no understanding of the real threats and dangers faced by people in the DRC.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I know of the noble Baroness’s interests in this issue and the diligence with which she pursues them, but perhaps I can refute her suggestion that these matters are taken without proper due care and diligence by the Government. Perhaps I can illustrate that best by saying that in 2009 there were 98 enforced removals to that country; in 2012, the number was down to 14; in the first quarter of this year, it was one; and in the second quarter it was also one.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead]

My Lords, I follow on from my noble friend Lady Gale’s greetings from Wales and say to noble Lords: Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus i chi gyd. I thank the Minister for introducing the debate, which is proving to be wide-ranging and excellent.

The women who took part in the first International Women’s Day demanded better conditions at work, the rights to vote and to hold office and to be equal partners with men. Those wonderful women would view today with a mixture of disappointment and satisfaction. There has, of course, been significant advancement of women’s legal rights and entitlements, as noble Lords have pointed out. A hundred years ago, only two countries allowed women to vote, but now women lead Governments on every continent and have roles and positions in professions from which they were previously excluded. Not so long ago, violence was seen as a private matter—a “domestic”, in the language of common usage. Now two-thirds of countries recognise and punish domestic violence, and the UN system now recognises sexual violence as a weapon of war, although clearly violence remains one of the most pervasive violations of women’s rights and one of the least prosecuted crimes.

Despite the advances, however, real equality is far from a reality for most of the 3.5 billion women who make up 50 per cent of the world’s population. Some 70 per cent of illiterate adults are women, a figure that has barely changed in 20 years. Fewer than 10 per cent of countries have female heads of state. Only 19 per cent of the world’s parliamentarians are women. Girls are far less likely to be in school, and more likely to drop out of school, than boys. Every 90 minutes a women dies in pregnancy or due to childbirth-related complications, nearly all preventable. Fewer than 3 per cent of signatories to peace agreements are women. Women are the primary carers and farmers, but much of their work is not valued by economists, pundits, popular culture or government leaders. Women’s rights are fundamental human rights, and the challenge is to understand that those human rights are global. That is the reality that must dominate our thinking, whether the issue is climate change, the transition to democracy in the Arab world or advancing peace, security and justice.

As many noble Lords have said, education is fundamental to all progress. When women are educated they improve their rights in all areas, including property rights, and are more free to work outside the home, to find decent work and to earn an independent income. As a result, the life chances of whole families, communities and countries can be improved. We should recognise, too, that meeting a woman’s need for health and reproductive health services increases her chances of finishing her education, breaking out of poverty and contributing directly to growth and sustained prosperity.

Helen Clark, the head of the UNDP, speaks regularly of the multiplier effect that investing in girls and women can have. That includes reductions in population growth and mortality, increases in school participation and achievement, raised levels of women’s activity and confidence in exercising their rights. Figures consistently show that mothers who have been educated are more likely to give birth in health facilities. The reality is that every child from a mother who can read is 50 per cent more likely to survive past the age of five if the mother is educated. On that basis, in sub-Saharan Africa 1.8 million children’s lives would be saved every year if their mothers had some secondary education. In addition, educated girls are more likely to resist early marriage, have fewer and healthier children and are less likely to resign themselves to unpaid work. Girls with post-primary education are five times more likely to be knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS than illiterate women.

How much further proof is needed that education is the key to advancing women’s rights? How much more evidence is needed to demonstrate that cultural, economic and social factors must never be accepted as any justification for denying women their basic rights? When we know the realities, there can be no excuse for not being active in all the campaigns calling for change. More than 30 million more girls than boys are out of school. One of the main reasons for that, especially in rural areas, is that school fees are being charged and it is often the case that priority is given to keeping boys in school. Removing school fees and providing financial incentives for girls to attend school have proved to be very effective.

Those ruinous realities are not going to change unless there is strong and sustained support for public education, not by using aid to expand choice and competition in education through vouchers and low-fee providers, solutions that are favoured by the UK Government. As the Gender and Development Network has pointed out in relation to such policies, empowering women and achieving gender equality is a difficult and slow process that entails shifting attitudes, beliefs, traditions, norms and practices, as well as bringing changes to long-standing institutions and systems such as the market, the state and the family.