Last week, the UK and French governments ratified a new agreement to trade and exchange people seeking sanctuary. The so-called ‘one-in-one-out’ deal specifically applies to people reaching the UK via France. The basic idea is that, for every person returned, someone currently in France will be admitted to the UK – though not necessarily granted protection here.
The government describes this deal as ‘groundbreaking’, but it has a lot in common with the cruel gimmicks we have seen before from previous governments. As we’ve previously pointed out already, far from saving lives, this deal is very likely push people to take even more dangerous journeys and empower traffickers, by making victims afraid to go to the authorities for help.
By targeting and summarily removing people arriving on small boats, the government is once again undermining the right to asylum and punishing refugees for travelling in the only way available. Procedural justice is likely to be thin on the ground, as people are detained and rapidly removed, especially when good legal advice in detention is vanishingly hard to come by. This is also occurring against the backdrop of the new EU pact on migration which erodes refugee rights and increases arbitrary detention.
We are told that the first people targeted for removal have already been detained. They will only just have arrived in the UK, after a long and dangerous journey, disoriented and having lost everything.
As these events unfold, we must strive to ensure justice and safety for the women, men and children and the heart of this storm. And we must never forget that they are human beings, because policy-making seems to have done so. That trading human beings this way should be seen as a possible solution to anything is very troubling indeed.
Dr Sophie Cartwright
