Speaking to an audience at the Aula Magna (Great Hall) at the London Jesuit Centre, Dame Rachel challenged policymakers and the wider public to look beyond increasingly polarised rhetoric around migration and recognise the human reality at the heart of the debate.
“It is easy, from a distance, to talk about asylum seekers as strangers. It is much harder, and much more important, to remember that we are talking about children.”
Drawing on her experiences as Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel spoke about children who have experienced violence, exploitation and trafficking on their journeys to the UK, and raised particular concerns about young people whose ages are disputed by the authorities.
She said that, in the latest six months of data available to her, 1,897 people had been assessed as adults, with 442 of those decisions subsequently overturned and hundreds more still pending. The consequences can include children being placed in immigration detention or adult accommodation.
“I do not believe there is such a thing as ‘basically an adult’, or ‘nearly an adult’ or ‘old enough where it’s less of an issue’. A child is a child.”
Dame Rachel also called for honesty in public debate about migration, arguing that supporting refugees does not mean ignoring questions around integration and social cohesion.
“We cannot live by lies. We have a duty to what is good, and what is true.”
Her appeal was also personal. Dame Rachel revealed that her own mother had been a refugee child, taken in by nuns in Bavaria in 1945 before later moving to England to reunite with family.
“They understood the need to protect her. They saw a little girl and they loved her.”
Reflecting on what the treatment of refugee children says about Britain as a society, Dame Rachel said:
“I believe firmly that the nation that fails to value childhood fails to value anything at all. It fails to value itself. It fails to value its own future.”
She concluded the lecture by returning to “The Stranger’s Case”, the appeal attributed to William Shakespeare and spoken through the character of St Thomas More, which asks how we would wish to be treated if forced from our homeland and dependent upon the welcome of strangers.
“Let us always live in truth. Truth about the children we help. Truth about what they need. Truth about who they are. And truth about the moral requirement to support them.”
“Let us never forget the stranger’s case.”
Jesuit Refugee Service UK is a work of the Jesuits in Britain, accompanying, serving and advocating for refugees and other forcibly displaced people. You can find out more about their work here: Jesuit Refugee Service UK.
