Cash to aid plight of immigrant children

By Joe Lepper and Alison Bennett Wednesday, 14 May 2008

The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund has stumped up £1.25m to bankroll efforts to end the detention of immigrant children within three years.

Posed by models for The Children's Society

The money is being handed over to charities The Children's Society and Bail for Immigration Detainees to help them build their case against the government's use of child detention in immigration cases.

The cash will also fund research into the plight of these children, and help the charities to offer legal and emotional support. A priority is to secure early release for children.

Research will look at how many children are actually being detained. The charities estimate about 2,000 children are held each year for immigration reasons but no official figures are available.

Dr Astrid Bonfield, chief executive of the memorial fund, said: "The fund believes all children should be treated as children first and foremost. We have awarded this grant to The Children's Society and Bail for Immigration Detainees to ensure the rights of the child are upheld and protected within immigration."

Kamena Dorling, researcher for the Children's Legal Centre's Refugee and Asylum Seeking Children's Project, said she was pleased the issue of children being kept in immigration detention centres would be addressed.

"We have long expressed our concern at such detention," she said. "The policy of detaining families with children under Immigration Act powers should be stopped immediately. It is inconsistent with keeping a child safe from harm and likely to be contrary to their best interests."

She added that guidelines from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees state that minors who are asylum seekers should not be detained.

Christine Beddoe, director of anti-child trafficking charity Ecpat UK, said the cash would make a tremendous difference. She said she hoped the work would also examine the trafficking of children for crime.

"Our main concern is children who are trafficked for organised crime who are being wrongly prosecuted and convicted," she said. "We're keen for a spotlight to be thrown on those children involved in criminal activity who aren't being treated as victims of trafficking."