Hundreds of Syrian children could be resettled in the UK in a matter of days as France prepares to demolish the refugee camp in Calais.

Aid agencies have been working with British and French officials to register all unaccompanied children who have links to the UK. The operation to register the children, and bring them safely to Britain, has become more urgent as the French government prepares to demolish the camp next week.

France to close Calais refugee camp and tells UK it must play its part Read more

The UK government has agreed to take in lone children with existing links to Britain and about 300 minors are expected to be brought into the country in the coming days. A Home Office spokesman said: “Work is continuing on both sides of the Channel to ensure this happens as a matter of urgency.”

He said the home secretary, Amber Rudd, had made it “crystal clear” to the French interior minister that she intended to “transfer as many minors as possible” who are eligible under the rules.

Although asylum seekers usually have to make a claim for protection in the first safe country they reach, the rules for children mean their claim can be transferred if they have family members living somewhere else.

Officials are working against the clock to complete the process as fears grow of a mass disappearance of children ahead of the planned eviction and demolition. There are also fears those children who are not eligible to seek asylum in Britain will be particularly vulnerable once the authorities move in and raze the camp.

With local councils set to absorb the pressures of the influx of unaccompanied children, the chairman of the Local Government Association’s asylum, refugee and migration task group, David Simmonds, said councils will “require long-term funding arrangements from government so that the commitment to support those children starting a new life in the UK is properly funded”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People gather inside the camp in Calais. Photograph: Denis Charlet/AFP/Getty Images

Simmonds said taking on children who had been living in the squalor of the camp could put increased pressure on stretched local authority resources. “Those arriving from the Calais camp will require care and support packages directly from councils and their partners,” he said.

“For those children relocated with existing family living in the UK, councils will still want to be assured that arrangements put in place can meet the child’s needs and that they are safe and well. Many will have also experienced horrendous conditions within and since fleeing their country of origin, so councils will want to ensure they are able to settle into communities as quickly and easily as possible with ongoing support made available when they need it.”

The news of the arrival of child refugees comes as reports emerged of French police stripping people of their shoes and phones in an apparent move to keep them in the camp before their official eviction. According to a recording secured by the Independent, refugees who had ventured just outside the confines of camp, which has become known as “the Jungle”, were stopped by police. The French officers demanded their shoes and forced them to walk back into the camp.

A report published in the summer by the Bar Human Rights Committee revealed French authorities regularly took personal items, including phones, from the refugees in the camp.

Gráinne Mellon, co-author of the BHRC report, told the Independent: “We found evidence of what appeared to be fairly routine acts of violence in the camp, including shoes being removed and phones being confiscated, corroborated by a number of different sources. The confiscation of these items is a breach of criminal law and against all policing codes and ethics, but in addition to that and more worryingly it feeds into this sense in the camps that the residents don’t have any rights.”</s>Former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has warned that the safety of up to 400 unaccompanied children stranded in the Calais refugee camp is being affected by “foot-dragging” by the government.

Speaking as 14 children from the camp were due to arrive in Britain, he said the “clock is ticking” for the remainder because of the impending dismantling of the site.

The children arriving on Monday are among about 100 to be resettled in the UK. They come from countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait’s stateless Bidoon community.

Lord Williams, who was speaking in Croydon where the children were due to be processed by the Home Office, said the youngsters were “extraordinarily vulnerable” in the “chaos of the camp and the chaos of the demolition”.

He called on the government to expedite the cases of those remaining at Calais, which he said could number 400. “I’m not sure why there is such foot-dragging,” Williams said at Croydon Minster. “The clock is ticking, the likelihood is the Calais camp will be demolished in the next 10 days.”

Commenting on the impending arrival of the children, actor Juliet Stevenson said: “Today is a proud moment for Britain. We did the right thing.”

Last week the home secretary, Amber Rudd, indicated that the UK would accept unaccompanied children with or without relatives in the UK.

After a two-hour meeting last Monday with her French counterpart, Bernard Cazeneuve, she said the official effort would prioritise safeguarding children under 12.

But Williams said no process had yet been put in place to accept those children without relatives in the UK.

He said there was “a moral imperative” for the UK to accept those that did not have relatives already settled in the country.

“We’ve omitted to think what’s in their best interests and to consider whether we take more children,” he said.

Under EU laws, a child seeking asylum who has a parent or a sibling in another European country can be fast-tracked to join them in that country.

Earlier this year Alf Dubs forced the government to agree to give sanctuary to some unaccompanied child refugees who have no relatives in the UK.

Lord Dubs called for a “shared enterprise” between government and charitable organisations working to secure a future home for the children, many of whom have fled wars.

Stevenson, who is supporting Citizens UK’s Safe Passage programme, said: “The arrival of hundreds of vulnerable children from Calais to the UK in the coming days is in no small part due to the tireless campaigning of community leaders, the hard work of Citizens UK’s lawyers, and the Safe Passage team in Calais who have been working to safeguard children for over a year.”</s>CALAIS, France (AP) — Inside the Kids Cafe, a ramshackle refuge in a sprawling migrant slum in Calais, a mobile phone rings.

Afghan teenager Wasaal takes the call. A friend of his has managed to hide inside a truck and hopes he will soon be on the other side of the English Channel.

“The problem is that he does not have GPS on his mobile. He does not know if the truck is moving in the right direction,” the 14-year-old said.

In fact, few in this muddy, violent camp in the northern French city know where they are going, but dreams abound of a life in Britain, just 21 miles (33 kilometers) across the sea.

The French government has announced plans to shut down the camp that has become a demoralizing symbol of Europe’s migrant crisis by the end of the year. That means 6,000 to 10,000 migrants will need to be relocated, including up to 1,300 minors, according to different estimates from charities operating in the camp.

Many refugee children in Calais claim to have family ties in the U.K. and don’t even consider building their future in France. Jonny Willis, a volunteer from the French refugee and youth service, says the camp’s appalling living conditions and poor hygiene have been a strong deterrent.

“They went through a terrible experience here,” said Willis. “They have been treated so badly by police. This camp lacks basic services, in addition there is no security.”

Wasaal himself has stopped trying to sneak onto trucks to Britain. Instead he’s had his fingerprints taken as part of his request for asylum.

“I tried it more than 10 times over the past seven months,” he said. “But I’m not doing it anymore. I’m in the process of being reunited with my uncle and cousins. I don’t how long it will take, it’s for the Home Office to decide.”

Britain’s Home Office says small groups of refugee children have been coming in a weekly basis for the last few months and hundreds are now expected to cross the Channel legally before the Calais camp is destroyed.

Inside the Kids Cafe, a place where teenagers can relax and enjoy a free meal, Wasaal and a dozen of other boys are listening to music while playing pool. The sofas are worn out, but a poster of a red British double-decker bus reminds everyone that London is just a few miles away.

After a perilous three-month journey across countries including Syria, Turkey, and Serbia, Wasaal can’t wait for his British dream to come true.

“Here I’m just wasting my time,” the teenager said in fluent English. “We are too busy dealing with daily life problems. We can’t think properly.”

“I left because my family was in danger,” said the boy, who fled Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan where Taliban are conducting repeated raids. Wasaal has lost touch with his parents, who also fled the violence. His hopes are simple: receiving a proper education in a safe environment.

“I just dream to be in a place where there will be no one to harm me. Back in Afghanistan, I had very good results in two different subjects, physics and mathematics. I want to be an engineer,” he said.

Aid groups agree the Calais slum must be shut down, but are urging authorities to take their time. The refugee youth service has handed mobile phones to hundreds of children and collected information to make sure they won’t go missing when the camp is dismantled. When the southern part of the camp was destroyed in April, 129 children vanished.

“We should do everything to ensure that minors don’t disappear,” Genevieve Avenard, the French government’s children rights watchdog, said during a recent visit. “They are in danger of being exploited. We also need time to give these children their confidence back, so they can set up a project for their future life.”

Mahmud, 16, already knows what he wants to be — a business accountant.

The Afghan teenager, whose parents were killed when he was a boy, hopes he will be transferred to Birmingham, where his uncle has already been in touch with British authorities. In the meantime, he’s bored of wandering around the camp without a plan. At night, he sleeps in Container No. 51, one of the heated white containers holding up to 1,500 people.

Mahmud is also wary of the frequent violence in the camp.

“There are too many fighting here. I really don’t like that,” said the diminutive boy, wearing only a pair of flip flops on a cold afternoon.

Tensions have been growing amid the looming uncertainty. It’s only a matter of weeks before all the Calais migrants will be deported, transferred to England or relocated to more than 160 centers around France. One British charity has warned of possible suicide attempts from desperate migrants.

But new migrants are still arriving.

On Thursday at the Calais-Frethun train station, a young boy in jeans and sneakers stepped out of the express train from Paris. He was immediately arrested by two French police officers.

“We checked his ID, he’s a 17-year-old from Somalia,” one police officer said, speaking on customary condition of anonymity. “He wants to go to England. Every day, it’s the same story. They keep on coming.”</s>The Home Office is still refusing to make adequate provision to protect unaccompanied child refugees stranded in Calais ahead of the camp’s imminent demolition, according to court documents detailing fresh legal action against the UK government.

Although six children arrived in the UK on Saturday from the migrant camp, with 24 more due over the coming week, it has emerged that the Home Office has not provided detailed plans about how it and the French authorities intend to protect minors before, during and after demolition.

The camp – home to around 1,300 unaccompanied minors – is expected to be closed later this month, with charities warning that hundreds could go missing, many taken by traffickers. Aid groups believe the planned closure will lead to children disappearing before they are processed; as many as 600 minors inside the camp are eligible to come to Britain.

Although the home secretary Amber Rudd promised last week that as many children as possible with direct family links in Britain would be brought to the UK, it has also emerged that the Home Office has yet to produce any detailed operational plans setting out precisely how the children will be transferred.

Documents lodged in the high court on Friday criticise the government for failing to deliver an actual process to facilitate the transfer of child refugees under the Dublin regulation, effectively forcing charities and volunteers to do the government’s job by carrying out the necessary legal and logistical work. “There is no functioning state system and what system there is, is currently almost entirely dependent on private actors,” the documents state.

Legal papers also reveal that the cases of 111 children eligible to come to Britain have simply not been processed because of the lack of an effective system.

The legal action, brought by Citizens UK, a grassroots network of more than 350 groups, argues that the Home Office has repeatedly failed in its duty to help unaccompanied child refugees trapped in the Calais camp, pointing out a “longstanding failure by the defendant [Home Office] and the French authorities to identify and protect children”.

It says that failure to provide adequate support, information and safe accommodation means that children are at risk from traffickers and smugglers and that this will increase further once the camp is destroyed.

The high court judge, noting the urgency of the case because of the camp’s imminent demolition, has given the Home Office until Tuesday to respond to the claims it has neglected its “legal duties toward children” in the camp.

In a statement on Calais last week, Rudd said that the safety of child refugees was her “utmost priority”.

News of the court action drew support from campaigners exasperated at the UK government’s response to vulnerable unaccompanied minors.

Actor Vanessa Redgrave said: “I entirely support this legal action; to date the UK government has failed to provide protection for the children in Calais. We have to be certain that the children will not be treated with violence, before, during or after the demolition. Without this action through the courts I believe the children will suffer horribly.”

The bishop of Barking, Peter Hill, a spokesman for Citizens UK, said: “We should not, at this late stage, have to be taking legal action simply to ensure that an adequate plan has been put in place to safeguard the remaining children from going missing amid the impending chaos of the eviction.”

The Home Office said the home secretary had made it “crystal clear that we intend to transfer as many minors as possible, who are eligible under the Dublin Regulation, before the start of the clearance”. It added: “Work is continuing on both sides of the Channel to ensure this happens as a matter of urgency.” The Home Office has sent a team of officials to work alongside French counterparts in Calais to help with speeding up the transfer of children eligible to come to Britain.

A spokesman for the Calais prefecture said five children from Syria and one from Afghanistan had come to the UK. “From Monday, a dozen more minors will follow, then on Tuesday, a dozen more,” he added.</s>The fate of children staying in the Jungle, a squalid camp where up to 10,000 people fleeing war or poverty in the Middle East and Africa have converged seeking ways to cross to Britain, has been a political problem for the British government.

Religious leaders, refugee rights campaign groups and opposition parties have accused the government of dragging its heels on helping to move unaccompanied children out of the camp, which France has said it will soon demolish.

The French and British interior ministers, Bernard Cazeneuve and Amber Rudd, agreed in talks on Oct. 10 to speed up the process of moving children eligible to go to Britain out of the Jungle.

Fourteen children, the first whose cases have been processed, arrived by bus in Croydon, south London, to be reunited with relatives already living in Britain. Faith leaders and aid workers were on hand to welcome and assist them.

"The camp at Calais is a desperate, dangerous, horrible place, nowhere any adult should be, let alone any child," said Bishop of Croydon Jonathan Clark.

"So this is a really good day to celebrate as some of those children begin to make their journeys to be reunited with their families," he told reporters outside a Croydon church.

It is not known exactly how many children will be brought to Britain. The British interior ministry has said 80 children had been accepted for transfer from France so far this year under EU family reunification rules known as the Dublin regulation.

The Red Cross estimates that 1,000 unaccompanied children are living in the Jungle, of whom 178 have been identified as having family ties to Britain. It has said some of these children have been held back by bureaucracy.

Separately from the Dublin process, Britain has sent out a team to work with the French authorities to identify children who can be brought to Britain under the terms of a change to British immigration law known as the Dubs amendment.

It states that Britain will take in "vulnerable unaccompanied child refugees" who arrived in the EU before March 20, even if they do not have relatives in Britain.

March 20 was date of an EU-Turkey deal aimed at limiting the flow of migrants into the bloc, which reached crisis levels in 2015. The Dubs amendment is named after the politician who proposed it, Alf Dubs, who came to Britain as a Jewish child refugee fleeing Nazi persecution.</s>A group of around 10 unaccompanied refugee children are expected to leave France for the the UK on Monday as part of the Home Office’s attempt to relocate children from the refugee camp in Calais before it is demolished.

The 10 children follow an advance party of five – four Syrians and one Afghan – who arrived over the weekend. According to French authorities they will be followed by a further group of around 10 on Tuesday, all of whom qualify for relocation under the Dublin Regulation because they have family living in the UK.

Local government officials in Calais told AFP there was “no deal for a larger-scale plan” for the UK to take more.

The Home Office said that after a meeting between the home secretary, Amber Rudd, and the French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, it had sent a team to Calais to help identify children who qualified. Cazeneuve said he was asking “Britain to assume its moral duty”.

At least 187 children in Calais have been identified by the Red Cross as being eligible under the Dublin rules. However, the Home Office has been accused of dragging its feet over processing their cases. In the first nine months of 2016, just 140 children were brought to the UK under the Dublin rules, 80 of them from France.

The UK has also made a wider commitment to taking in unaccompanied migrant children under the Dubs amendment passed in the House of Lords this year.

The Home Office said it would send a second group of staff to France to help identify and prioritise children to be brought to the UK under the amendment.

It was originally expected that the amendment – which was introduced by Lord Dubs, who came to the UK from Nazi Germany as a child on the Kindertransport – would see around 3,000 children given a home in the UK. However, Rudd said last week that it would be a “good result” if the UK ended up taking around 300 unaccompanied children from the camp in Calais.

The Calais camp – a dirty and unsafe collection of makeshift shelters – is home to around 10,000 people, with official estimates suggesting there are between 600 and 900 unaccompanied minors. The French were originally planning to begin demolishing the camp as early as Tuesday, but the plans have been postponed for at least a week.

“As the home secretary told the House of Commons on Monday, our priority must be to ensure the safety and security of the children in the Calais camp,” said a Home Office spokesman.

“When she met the French interior minister she made it crystal clear that we intend to transfer as many minors as possible who qualify for transfer to the UK to claim asylum on the basis of close family in the UK under the Dublin Regulation, before the start of the clearance.

“In addition, children who are eligible to come to the UK under the Dubs amendment to the Immigration Act 2016 must be looked after in safe facilities where their best interests are properly considered. Work is continuing on both sides of the Channel to ensure this happens as a matter of urgency.”
Syrian child refugees previously settled in the Calais jungle legally immigrate into England.