Category: What can you do

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QARN supports the Outcry! campaign

quaker_home_themeEvery year around 2,000 children in the UK are locked up in immigration detention.

QARN is supporting OutCry!, the campaign to end detention of children and their families for immigration purposes. We have some suggestions about how Quakers can support this campaign as individuals and through their meetings – page coming soon.

OutCry!: The Children’s Society and Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) launched this campaign in November 2008 at the House of Commons, and over the next three years will be raising awareness of the fact that children in UK are detained here in the UK Borders Agency detention estate, in our name. Full report here

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Suggestions

quaker_home_themeWe support the OutCry! campaign against detention of children.

You could:

Make a donation to OutCry!
Write to your MP about children in detention, and about indefinite detention – there are ideas about what you could concentrate on here: http://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/resources/documents/Campaigns/8164_full.pdf
Write to The Friend to open other Quaker hearts to children in detention
Would your family, or your Meeting be interested in linking to a family in detention? Contact us
Make a link to OutCry! from your Meeting’s website
Sign up to the campaign yourself

Organise an activity for Refugee Week on the theme of detention

Join QARN:

Membership of QARN is open to all Quakers with an interest. It is an email group, and everyone is welcome to our meetings that are held approximately every 3 months in Manchester, London or the Midlands (we are always open to offers of new venues).

Decisions will be made through a process of discernment. We will often circulate ideas through the email group, and significant decisions will usually be made at the meetings.

If you are interested to join the email group, please email Miranda Girdlestone at BYM with details of your name and the Meeting you attend. For historic reasons the email group title is QRAG (Quaker Refugees and Asylum Group)

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Survey of Friends’ asylum and refugee work in Britain Yearly Meeting 2007

quaker_home_themeIn June 2007, the Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network decided to conduct a survey of Quaker Meetings to try to build a picture of the work done by Friends in support of asylum-seekers and refugees. All PMs were sent a copy of a questionnaire and, as well as this, many meetings were sent e-mails. The letter pages of The Friend were also used to encourage responses.

A total of 116 meetings replied, of which 32 reported no activity. Of those 32 meetings, several gave as a reason that there were no asylum-seekers or refugees in their area, or that their meetings were small and elderly (e.g. “We have five members between 85-104 years”). Several expressed their support for the work being done on asylum issues. Several meetings also hoped that there could be a more coordinated Quaker response. Continue reading “Survey of Friends’ asylum and refugee work in Britain Yearly Meeting 2007”

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One More Card

one-cardTake action to end the detention of children this Christmas

I saw bad things happening in prison and there was too much crying.

It gave me terrible headaches and I felt sad.

Dominic Mwafulirwa Junior, detained in Yarl’s Wood Detention Centre in 2009

Each family sends an average of 76 Christmas cards each year. We want you to send One More Card to help stop the detention of children in the UK. Send an extra Christmas card to Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas MP, and let him know that your Christmas wish is for him to stop the practice of detaining the children of people seeking sanctuary in Britain. Continue reading “One More Card”

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Early Day Motion 1982 Detention of Children 12.10.2009

parliament_logoMullin, Chris

That this House notes with concern that around 2,000 children are detained each year in immigration detention centres, some for periods of several months; notes the opinion of Save the Children and the Children’s Commissioner that this is unjustified and damaging; notes that families with children are among the least likely to abscond; further notes that some EU and Commonwealth countries have successfully introduced solutions other than secure detention for families who have exhausted their asylum claims; and urgently calls on the Goverment to end the practice of holding children in immigration detention centres.”

94 signatures as of 17/11/09

http://www.medicaljustice.org.uk/content/view/892/115/