The UK temporarily houses unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels, thus keeping them outside the country’s child protection system and placing them at risk of being traffickedwarned three UN special rapporteurs on Tuesday*.
In a joint statement, the experts noted that the United Kingdom must guarantee the protection without discrimination of all children seeking asylum and put an end to the practice of lodging in hotels when arriving alone.
The rapporteurs asserted that by hosting them in hotels, these children are outside the responsibility of local authorities, as it should be.
They added that this practice occurs in an environment of growing hostility towards victims of trafficking or contemporary slavery, as well as towards refugees, asylum seekers and migrants.
“The current policy of placing unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels places them outside the UK child protection system and is discriminatory”, they insisted, adding that failures and gaps in child protection increase the risks of trafficking.
disappearances
According to experts, from June 2021 to January 2023, the UK accommodated around 4,600 unaccompanied children in six hotels, including 440 disappeared and the whereabouts of 220 more were unknown. Most of these minors were citizens of Albania.
The rapporteurs expressed great alarm at these disappearances and urged the country’s authorities to locate the minors and provide a reception and protection consistent with human rights to them and to all unaccompanied children arriving on their territory requesting asylum
Such protection must be granted without discrimination based on nationality, immigration status, race, ethnicity or gender, they stressed.
Breach of international law
They also indicated that the United Kingdom government would be failing to comply with its fundamental obligations under international human rights law “to ensure the best interests of the childwithout discrimination, and to prevent the trafficking of minors”.
The special rapporteurs also reported that some members of Parliament have criticized trafficking victims seeking protection under the Modern Slavery Act and the National Diversion Mechanism, which undermines the State’s obligation to protect victims and prevent such crime.
Experts reported that they have raised their concerns with the UK government.
The signatory rapporteurs of the statement are Siobhán Mullallyabout human trafficking; Felipe Gonzalez Morales, on the human rights of migrants; Tomoya Obokata, about slavery.
* The special rapporteurs are part of what is known as Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN human rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent investigative and monitoring mechanisms that address specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. . Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent of any government or organization and provide their services in an individual capacity.
