London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Jul 25, 2025

Why things don’t bode well for Afghans seeking asylum in the UK

Why things don’t bode well for Afghans seeking asylum in the UK

Analysis: For 20 years Home Office has gone to extreme lengths to return Afghans to country they risked their lives to flee
Announcing that Britain is looking at a “bespoke arrangement” for Afghan refugees, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, declared on Tuesday that Britain was a “big-hearted nation” which had “always been a country that has provided safe haven for those fleeing persecution”.

This is not a picture of Britain’s asylum system that many Afghan asylum seekers in the UK will recognise. Over the past 20 years, the Home Office has gone to extreme lengths to return thousands of them back to the country they risked their lives to flee.

British officials have faced repeated criticism from international refugee organisations for the frequency with which young Afghan asylum seekers have been denied formal refugee status when they turn 18, despite having spent large parts of their childhood in the UK; many of these adolescents have subsequently been forcibly returned to the country they left years earlier.

Until Tuesday morning, the official Home Office position, set out on its website, was that Kabul was a safe place to which refused asylum seekers should be returned. A spokesperson said Home Office-organised enforced returns to Afghanistan have this week been “paused” while officials “consider the situation”.

“We have been closely monitoring the situation in Afghanistan and due to the escalations this weekend are urgently updating our information and policies to inform asylum claims,” the spokesperson said.

Several immigration experts said the scene of extreme panic at Kabul airport on Monday was a very stark illustration of the degree of fear experienced by clients who have fled Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

Jamie Bell, an immigration lawyer with the law firm Duncan Lewis, who has represented about 100 Afghan citizens claiming asylum, said those seeking refuge here had for years faced a “lengthy uphill battle to be recognised as refugees”.

Until 2016, the Home Office was operating monthly charter flights to return refused asylum seekers to Afghanistan en masse; more recently the UK government has continued to return people whose refugee claims have been rejected to Kabul on commercial flights.

“For years, Afghans have fled their home country seeking refuge in the UK only to be disbelieved, detained and forcibly returned to the warzone that they left behind. My hope now is that the culture of disbelief and disinterest towards Afghan asylum seekers becomes a thing of the past and the thousands seeking protection in the UK already are given the support and protection that they deserve,” Bell said.

Although there is a determination to welcome any scheme designed to offer asylum to people whose lives have been upended by the situation in Afghanistan, lawyers, charity workers and immigration experts stress that a new policy for Afghan asylum seekers will need to be combined with a radical rethinking of proposed new immigration legislation.

There is particular concern about aspects of the nationality and borders bill, which is designed to penalise refugees who have been forced (in the absence of safe, legal alternatives) to make their way into this country through irregular routes – most recently on boats across the Channel.

Beth Gardiner-Smith, of Safe Passage, a charity helping unaccompanied child refugees access legal rights, said: “The government cannot in all conscience talk about a compassionate response, while continuing to push through immigration legislation that punishes those refugees, many of them from Afghanistan, who come into this country through irregular routes. The reality is, even with an expanded resettlement programme, most Afghan refugees will still not have access to the official programmes.”

The Syrian vulnerable person’s resettlement scheme set out to resettle 20,000 Syrians in need of protection by 2020, was administered by the UNHCR, and has been broadly viewed positively by immigration experts. There has been speculation that a new scheme could be similar in scale, but with the UNHCR warning that there could be up to 3 million internally displaced people in Afghanistan, a figure that has increased by up to 500,000 since the beginning of this year, pressure for places on any scheme will be intense.

Any new government scheme to resettle Afghan refugees would need to commit to firm targets for the number of people to be helped, to avoid the risk of dwindling political willingness to fulfil commitments, once the crisis has passed. Campaigners remember how a government promise to support 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children in Calais 2016, many of them from Afghanistan, ended up only helping about 380.

Several charities stressed that there needed to be wholesale cultural change within the Home Office departments assessing Afghan asylum claims, pointing to a historical absence of compassion, which has led to so many young Afghan asylum seekers – who studied for their GCSEs in British schools – being removed from the country when they become adults.

Between 2009 and 2015, the Home Office deported 605 Afghans who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied minors. The approach toward Afghan asylum seekers was particularly tough; in the same period, only 6% of unaccompanied Afghan children were given refugee status, compared with 15% of other child asylum seekers.

Bella Sankey, the director of Detention Action, which has assisted large numbers of Afghan asylum seekers held in immigration removal centres over the past two decades, said: “The UK government has forcibly removed thousands of Afghan asylum seekers to danger over the past 20 years. It must now urgently step up, bring these people back and create a generous resettlement scheme for those most at risk from Taliban brutality.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
Thai Civilian Death Toll Rises to 12 in Cambodian Cross-Border Attacks
TSUNAMI: Trump Just Crossed the Rubicon—And There’s No Turning Back
Over 120 Criminal Cases Dismissed in Boston Amid Public Defender Shortage
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
Trump Announces $550 Billion Japanese Investment and New Trade Agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
×