[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Kizzy

Nobody... nobody is organising anything that is the whole issue, where have you got the idea there are no children, have you seen the news today?

I'm pointing out the fact that they brought over young men whose age was clearly suspect while leaving kids as young as 8 behind, the youngest should have been prioritised and then the rest





Last week, the home secretary, Amber Rudd, told MPs the French authorities had agreed to verify a list of 387 child refugees with a legal right to come to the UK drawn up by Citizens UK. “Once we have that official list we will move quickly within days and remove very quickly those children,” she said.

Earlier on Monday, Rowan Williams said the safety of up to 400 unaccompanied children stranded in the Calais refugee camp was being put at risk by the government’s “foot-dragging”. The former archbishop of Canterbury said the time was short for the remainder because of the imminent dismantling of the site.


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He described the refugee children as “extraordinarily vulnerable” who were trapped in the “chaos of the camp and the chaos of the demolition”. Williams called on the government to expedite the cases of up to 400 children remaining in Calais. “I’m not sure why there is such foot-dragging,” he said at Croydon Minster. “The clock is ticking, the likelihood is the Calais camp will be demolished in the next 10 days.”

The Home Office said the group of 14 who arrived on Monday were among about 100 to be resettled in the UK. They came from countries including Syria, Afghanistan and Kuwait’s stateless Bidoon community. The department confirmed that the children, aged 14-17, were transferred on Monday morning. They will be assessed and screened and may be cared for in specialist accommodation before being reunited with their relatives.

However, Tina Brocklebank, a volunteer who has been conducting refugee counts with the charity L’Auberge des Migrants, said the most vulnerable children in Calais could miss out on being helped amid what she called a confusing census carried out by another charity, France Terre d’Asile
She said: “FTDA registered a very small number of children on Friday and then shut the gate and told everyone to come back on Monday. It’s a despicable way to build up hopes, withhold and keep changing information and confuse everybody. We are concerned that buses may at some point arrive for the children, and the ypushy ones will get on while the most vulnerable ones will still be hiding in their shelters and tents – either because they don’t know what’s going on or will be too scared to get on a bus.”

The French interior minister has warned of a damaging blame game between his country and the UK over the Calais refugee crisis, with accusations of selfishness and inhumanity preventing action being taken to support vulnerable individuals.

Writing in the Guardian, Bernard Cazeneuve said there had been a litany of misunderstandings between the two countries but added that there was now an urgent need for a common outlook to tackle a situation “everyone agrees is a disaster”.