Do more to help people fleeing

The Amnesty International Kent Network is calling on Kent MPS to add their voices to calls for the government to step up efforts to assist refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine.

Amnesty has described the UK’S response as “chaotic” and “lacklustre”, warning that “history is repeating itself ” after similar failings in response to last year’s emergency in Afghanistan.

UK ministers have spoken of an aspiration to provide sanctuary to approximately 200,000 people from Ukraine, though narrow visa requirements have remained in place amid a bureaucratic and ill-managed system.

Amnesty believes the UK’S deeply inadequate response to the Ukraine refugee crisis is evidence of a “corrosively antirefugee attitude” within the Home Office. The government is currently taking its Nationality and Borders Bill through Parliament, which will fundamentally undermine the UK’S asylum system and damage refugee rights globally.

In response to the Ukraine crisis, Amnesty has launched a new campaign calling on Boris Johnson to ensure the government “does its part to help those fleeing the war”.

Amnesty’s Kent Network calls on Kent MPS to urge the Prime Minister to strengthen international efforts to protect civilians, provide humanitarian relief and help bring suspected perpetrators of crimes under international law to justice; press for parties to the conflict to create and respect humanitarian corridors to safe havens, for all civilians to have access to transportation and time to leave, and for international observers to be granted access to monitor their safe passage; fulfil the commitment to provide sanctuary to 200,000 Ukrainian refugees in the UK by providing safe routes to travel here, such as by a temporary visa waiver; abandon measures in the Nationality and Borders Bill which will do serious damage to the UK’S asylum system. Graham Minter

Amnesty Kent Network