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LONDON: Britain’s bill to implement what it calls the biggest overhaul of asylum rules in decades “undermines established international rules on refugee protection,” the Human Rights Agency said on Thursday. United Nations for Refugees (UNHCR).
Home Secretary Priti Patel – a prominent supporter of Brexit, where ‘taking back control’ of immigration was a key campaign issue – said the current system was ‘overwhelmed’.
Instead, she said the proposed new law would be based “on a genuine need for refuge, not the ability to pay the smugglers.”
But UNHCR said the bill “would penalize most asylum-seeking refugees in the country with damaging and unwarranted sanctions, creating an asylum model that undermines established international rules and practices for refugee protection. “.
Whether people enter Britain legally or illegally will affect the progress of their asylum claims under the proposals.
“If people arrive illegally, they will no longer have the same rights as those who arrive legally, and it will be more difficult for them to stay,” Patel said when the plan was unveiled in March.
“If, like over 60% of illegal arrivals, they have traveled through a safe country like France to get here, they will not have immediate entry into the asylum system – which is happening today “, she added.
“Unworthy and intrusive”
More than 15,000 people have now crossed the Channel from France to the UK on small boats this year, around 7,000 more than for all of 2020.
UNHCR said the bill would create a “lower class of status to be awarded to majority refugees – those who arrive spontaneously.” “Those who arrive irregularly will be stigmatized as unworthy and unwelcome, kept in precarious status for 10 years, denied access to public funds unless they are destitute,” said Rossella Pagliuchi-Lor, UNHCR representative. UK.
The UK Nationality and Borders Bill, which is currently under consideration in the UK House of Commons, is based on the idea that people should seek asylum in the ‘first safe country’ in which they arrive.
“But this principle is not found in the 1951 Refugee Convention and there is no such requirement in international law,†UNHCR said.
“The definition of a Convention refugee does not vary depending on the route of travel, the choice of country of asylum or the time of the request,†Pagliuchi-Lor said.
“Are we saying that an Afghan refugee deserves less in the UK than when he is in Iran or Pakistan? Britain’s plan to turn back boats carrying migrants across the Channel has already raised alarm and anger in France, with London saying Paris is not doing enough to tackle the problem.
France’s Home Secretary Gerald Darmanin said earlier this month the proposals would violate international maritime law and called British threats to withdraw funding as “financial blackmail.”
Posted in Dawn, le 24 September 2021
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