Last week your local MP, Andrew Western, spoke in Parliament about age-disputed refugee children. As an Officer of the APPG for Refugees, creating a fairer asylum system is deeply important to Andrew and the treatment of age-disputed refugee children is very much part of this effort.  

The current system for dealing with these children is letting many of them down, with their safety and wellbeing put at risk as a result. When young asylum seekers arrive in the UK, Home Office guidance instructs border officials to guess their age based on a short visual assessment of their “appearance and demeanour”. This process has been widely described as unfair and inaccurate.  

The Refugee Council have obtained data showing that over an 18-month period between January 2022 and June 2023, more than 1,300 children were wrongly assessed to be adults by the Home Office. Incorrect assessments result in children being placed in adult accommodation and immigration detention, exposing them to significant safeguarding risks and denying them the support they need to rebuild a life that has already been distorted by trauma and hardship.  

In preparation for his speech, Andrew was privileged to speak with Omer, Motawakil and Amanual (pictured above), three child refugees who have been wrongly assessed as adults and now live in totally inappropriate accommodation with unrelated adult men. Each of them described their perilous journey to the UK, the family, and friends they have left behind and how they were desperate to live with people their own age, access education and rebuild their life.  

While the stories of Omer, Motawakil and Amanual were heartbreaking, they are the tip of the iceberg. Other refugee children who have been forced to stay in adult accommodation have suffered physical abuse, sexual assault, and attempted suicide. There are also deeply worrying examples of children fleeing from their adult accommodation and essentially disappearing, with authorities having no idea if they have become homeless or trafficked into crime.  

The system for assessing the age of young asylum seekers who arrive in this country must urgently change. It should be a process that is based on fairness and decency in which trained social workers help determine a person’s age, not border officials.  

Children seeking asylum have been driven away from their homes by violence and persecution, they have been separated from all they know and love and forced to undertake a dangerous journey to the UK. These children should not face new risks to their safety when they get here, and they should not be thrown into the terrifying limbo that is the adult asylum detention system. 

Andrew will keep fighting for change on this important issue.