Why have 222 asylum seeking children gone missing on this government’s watch and what can the Kindertransport teach us about it?

In February 2023, it was revealed that 222 asylum seeking children had gone missing on the Home Office’s watch, dozens kidnapped from a hotel in Brighton, most likely trafficked for criminal exploitation.

Between November 1938 and September 1939, the UK’s Kindertransport Scheme helped 10,000 Jewish children travel to Britain and escape the Holocaust. A voluntary scheme led by organisations including the Central British Fund for German Jewry (now known as World Jewish Relief) welcomed fleeing children and oversaw their welfare.

If, during a world war, using paper records, one small charity could keep track of thousands of child refugees – why has the Home Office, with the available digital resources of today, lost contact with 200 vulnerable children seeking asylum?

The government was warned repeatedly of these children’s vulnerability to traffickers due to its policies, which refuse to provide safe routes to the UK, deprive children of proper safeguarding, and treat them with suspicion. This hostile environment undermines the Refugee Convention and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, set out in response to Jewish experience in the Holocaust.

The government has failed to learn from history, and it is imperative that we remind it of its lessons. This panel, hosted by René Cassin, will take us from the Kindertransport to the present day, exploring how and why vulnerable children have been kidnapped and exploited on this government’s watch and what we can do about it.

Panel

Debora Singer

Debora is a member of the René Cassin team and leads on the campaign to safeguard the Human Rights Act in the UK. Her background is in policy and campaigning for the rights of women seeking asylum and in 2012 she was awarded an MBE for services to women. Her mother and uncle fled Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport.

Lauren Starkey

Lauren is a Specialist Social Worker for young people who have experienced trafficking and exploitation. She has spent the last three years at Love146 UK, supporting child trafficking survivors to rebuild their lives and campaigning to end this extreme form of abuse once and for all.

Jennine Walker

Jennine recently joined Good Law Project from Safe Passage International where she led the legal team. Before that she practiced as an asylum and immigration solicitor at Wilson Solicitors LLP including working with unaccompanied minors.

Esther Raffell (chair)

Esther is René Cassin’s Campaigns Manager

свернуть