Child Refugee wins the right to be re-united with their parents

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) has successfully represented a child refugee in their appeal, before the Upper Tier Tribunal at the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal, against a decision to refuse their application to be reunited with their mother and brother.

Under the current rules governing family reunion, adult refugees in Britain are allowed to have their spouses and children join them in the UK. However, the rules do not provide the same rights to refugee children who arrive in the UK alone and who wish to be reunited with parents living outside of the UK. As a consequence many refugee children remain separated from their families and are forced to grow up alone in the UK.

The Strategic Legal Fund provided a grant to JCWI to carry out research and to identify a case in which to challenge any discrimination child refugees faced when applying for family re-union.

Although the judgment of the Tribunal does not provide an automatic right for all refugee children in the UK to be re-united with their families, it does recognise that a refusal to grant family members permission to come into the UK can breach the right to family life for refugee children as set out in the European Convention on Human Rights. The judgment should also help rectify some of the difficulties refugee children experience when making applications to be reunited with their immediate family members.