Campaigners are calling on the UK government to allow children who have been granted refugee status to apply for family members to join them.
A 30,000-strong petition will be delivered to ministers on Thursday when activists will unveil a giant paperchain linking the Home Office and the Department for Education – the two departments campaigners say are responsible for the policy.
Amnesty says the UK is one of only two European countries – along with Denmark – which denies this opportunity for refugee children.
Kerry Moscogiuri, Amnesty UK’s director of campaigns, said it was “a travesty that vulnerable children who have come to this country, fleeing conflict and persecution, are not entitled to apply for their family members to join them”.
She added: “Many of them are already deeply traumatised and this cruel policy only exacerbates their suffering. We want to send a strong message to the UK government to change the rules to allow them to be reunited with their loved ones.”
MPs on the home affairs select committee said last year the system was perverse.
“It seems to us perverse that children who have bee granted refugee status in the UK are not then allowed to bring their close family to join them in the same way as an adult would be able to do.
“The right to live safely with family should apply to child refugees just as it does to adults. The government should amend the immigration rules to allow refugee children to act as sponsors for their close family.”
Hayley Cohen, case work manager for the Young Roots charity supporting young asylum seekers in Croydon, said the government’s position had a big impact on the children staff worked with.
“These are already some of the most vulnerable children that have been through a terrible time to get here. They then face endless barriers from language, culture, accessing appropriate support... and the whole process of trying to get refugee status in a new and unfamiliar country.
“To say, at the end of all that, that they are not allowed to be reunited with their family is one of the most difficult things that the children we work with face.”
Cohen said it was having a “profound impact” on the mental health of the young people she worked with, who were predominantly from Afghanistan and Syria.
“We see a lot of self-harm, problems with sleep, post traumatic stress disorder. You have to remember these are children who have often been through unimaginable things and now they are being told they can not be reunited with their families.”
However, a Home Office spokesperson rejected the calls, saying it would create “perverse incentives”.
“Widening our refugee family reunion criteria to allow children to sponsor family members would create perverse incentives for them to be encouraged, or even forced, to leave their family, risk hazardous journeys and seek to enter the UK illegally in order to sponsor relatives.
“It would play into the hands of criminal gangs who exploit vulnerable people and goes against our safeguarding responsibilities.”
