Lord Alton writes: Refugee children treated like flotsam and jetsam

Children sleeping rough at Calais

In a disturbing report, issued over the summer, Human Rights Watch reported that nearly a year after the closure of Calais' Jungle between 400 and 500 asylum seekers and other migrants were living on the streets and woods in and around that northern French city.
With no place to eat or to sleep, and treated like detritus, flotsam and jetsam, Lord Roberts of Llanddudno, is right to have raised the situation again in Parliament, shining a light into this shameful situation.

I was particularly disturbed to read some of the interviews with more than 60 asylum seekers and migrants; to read repeated accounts of documented police abuse and harassment of aid workers - which HRW attributed to a desire to send a signal that this is the fate that awaits you if you risk fleeing from terror in countries like Eritrea and Sudan.

Scandalously, the reports included the routine use of pepper spray on child migrants while they are sleeping and the disruption of humanitarian assistance.

It is absurd for the Home Office to say this is merely a matter for the French - we have a duty to hammer out international solutions and to tackle root causes - not to shrug off our responsibility.

To read on click here: https://davidalton.net/2017/11/02/refugee-children-treated-like-flotsam-and-jetsam/