Safe Passage
In 2015 George led a small team from CitizensUK visiting the Jungle refugee camp in Calais. In a meeting with Syrian refugees there in the sand dunes they learned for the first time that among the “swarm” of migrants described by David Cameron as trying to break into Britain there were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of kids trying to reach family members.
Through building a partnership with some of those extraordinary refugees, and working with lawyers from the Migrant Law Project, Bhatt Murphy Solicitiors, and Doughty Street Chambers, a case was brought to court on behalf of those children and a campaign launched.
In January 2016 a court ruled in our favour and the first four boys ever were safely and legally transferred from Calais to the UK to be reunited with their families.
Alongside this push on child refugees with family links the campaign joined forces with Lord Alf Dubs, Save the Children, Choose Love and many others to advocate for children without family links to the UK.
The same day as the court ruled in our favour the government announced the creation of a new route to safety for children from the MENA region without family links in an attempt to deflect pressure. During the course of the “Dubs” campaign, where the coalition government faced its first parliamentary defeat, this scheme was expanded to help 3,000 children while the Dubs route itself would eventually help hundreds more.
In autumn 2016 with an election immanent the French authorities moved to demolish the Jungle. By that point the campaign had built enough momentum in both the courts and public square and 769 children were brought to the UK.
As 2016 ended the Guardian newspaper selected Safe Passage as one of the beneficiaries of its Christmas donation drive and we began urgently to expand our work to Italy and Greece, aiming to operationalise family reunion provisions from the moment of arrival into Europe.
Over the next two years Safe Passage grew to a multimillion pound project with over 30 staff working in five countries, and as such began the process of spinning off from CitizensUK. It’s work was recognised with the European Parliament’s Citizens Prize (2016), a Liberty Human Rights Award (2016), a Sheila McKenchie Campaigners Award (2017) and the Ockenden Prize (2018) before George Gabriel left and the organization began a new chapter led by Beth Gardiner Smith.
You can follow Safe Passage’s ongoing and critical work here. Lessons are drawn from the work of Safe Passage on the importance of organising those most directly experiencing oppression in the blog post Into the Fight.
Image Credits: Safe Passage International
