Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]

Baroness Hollins Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on the Bill. I am grateful for the helpful briefing from the Refugee Council. We all watched shocking reports from Afghanistan. We saw people fleeing for their lives, terrified, confused and hungry, leaving everything behind to try to save their families. Sometimes they even left disabled family members behind. I tried to imagine what I would do in their situation, how I would protect my family, especially as a woman. The thought of being in that situation is frightening, especially because I am the mother of disabled adults with additional support needs. It has made me reflect deeply on the invisible and ignored challenges some Afghans will be enduring. What about those Afghans who are carers of disabled adult relatives, some of whom may have been left behind, relatives with learning disabilities, autistic relatives, relatives who will be struggling to understand why their world has been turned upside down and why they are running away from their homes leaving behind everything that made them feel safe and calm?

The media rarely focus on the struggles of disabled people in humanitarian crises. Millions of people become refugees every year, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has said that one in seven of them is a disabled child or adult. Most refugees will have no words to describe the trauma they have been through in their own language, let alone in the language of the strange new country in which they find themselves. That situation is made worse if they have arrived in a country by a means other than official routes, resulting in them being detained for lengthy periods.

Seeking refuge in a refugee camp is tough for anyone, but for an autistic child or adult or somebody with learning difficulties the situation is amplified beyond comprehension. This is a huge challenge for organisations working with them, including for interpreters who often have very little experience of working with disabled refugees who also need to be reunited with their families. I declare an interest because Beyond Words, the charity that I founded and now chair, has published a free wordless story to help refugees, refugee organisations and others cross that language divide. Wordless stories can be particularly helpful for many people in refugee communities because they are not language dependent. This resource was in development and being tested with refugees from other countries in the UK and in refugee camps abroad, and their children, before the current Afghanistan exodus. The feedback has been that it helps them feel understood and validates their trauma. They have told us that the pictures are powerful and give an accurate representation of some of their experiences. Beyond Words hopes that this short story will help children and young people in schools offer a genuine welcome to refugee children and to understand something about the traumatic journeys some may have had to face in the days and weeks before they arrived in their school.

Children over the age of 18 can be included in a settlement application if they were granted the status of being an applicant’s dependant when the applicant received their original grant of asylum but, noting that disabled dependants of all ages are the most likely family members to be left behind, can the Minister explain what mechanism might be available for disabled adult family members to be reunited with their families, who are typically their main carers?