A teenage Syrian refugee in the Calais jungle whose case was highlighted in the Guardian after he was left in limbo for nearly two months, despite having the legal right to come to the UK, is to join his family in London next week.
The Home Office contacted 17-year-old Omar with a transfer date just 24 hours after the Guardian article about his plight. The department approved the “take charge request” for the teenager to come to Britain under the Dublin regulation in June, which gave him the right to join his uncle and cousin in north-west London.
Despite the Home Office approval, Omar was left living alone in the camp for more than eight weeks without knowing when he would be able to legally cross the Channel.
Last week a cross-party group of MPs, including the former shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper and Conservative MPs David Burrowes and Heidi Allen, met Omar in his makeshift hut in the Calais camp, pledging to raise his case and others with the home secretary, Amber Rudd.
The shy teenager, who was the only family member his parents could afford to send on a journey to Europe, told the MPs he had been dreaming of safety in Willesden, the north-west London suburb where his uncle lives.
“They told me it’s so beautiful, you can’t imagine,” he said. “Everything is bad here. There is a lot of violence.”
Human rights groups such as Citizens UK’s Safe Passage, which campaigns for children in the camps who have the right to cross to Britain, claim children are being left at risk of violence and exploitation in the camp, amid mass overcrowding. Numbers have recently reached an all-time high of almost 10,000 refugees.
Cooper wrote to Rudd last month highlighting the names of 110 children and teenagers still in Calais who have Dublin rights to be reunited with their families in the UK. At the current rate of progress it would take over a year to reunite every child with their family.
Cooper said that although she was delighted Omar would be safely transferred to the UK, even after the timetable was set in motion, the teenager remained at risk during the fortnight’s wait for his transfer.
“It’s good news that Omar has finally been given a date but it is shameful that it has taken this long, and that even now he has to wait another fortnight in the Calais jungle without proper care or shelter.
“As soon as the government accepted its responsibility for Omar, they should have put him on the first train to the UK, not left him a day longer exposed to the violence and abuse in the camps. Ministers should be working overtime to ensure that all of the 200 children in Calais who charities say have family here in the UK are reunited in a matter of weeks not months.”
