BPP HRU Event: Reframing the Rights of Refugees

On 4 February 2021, the BPP Human Rights Unit hosted refugee rights experts for a virtual panel on asylum, detention and the ‘hostile environment’, Ellen Alde reports. Guests heard from Toufique Hossain (Duncan Lewis), Pierre Makhlouf (Bail for Immigration Detainees), Marina Brizar (Talent Beyond Boundaries) and Ruvi Mutyambizi (For Her Child).

Setting the tone for the evening, host Hannah Anson brought attention to the stories emerging from the Home Office’s new emergency asylum accommodation sites in former military barracks. In the week prior, the High Court had ordered that an asylum seeker and potential victim of human trafficking be urgently rehoused from the Napier barracks, finding the accommodation inadequate and the ‘prison-like’ conditions and COVID-19 risks wholly unsuitable. The first portion of the event addressed these developments within the asylum and immigration landscape, simultaneously highlighting the work undertaken by our speakers’ organisations. In the second portion, students had the opportunity to hear from two former refugees working to improve the experience for asylum seekers in the UK.