Outrage as UK locks up 1000 asylum seeking children a year

by Paul Conneally | February 17, 2010 at 01:24 pm

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The UK unlike the US is signed up to UNICEF's UN Rights of Child (except for two articles) but it is still locking up child asylum seekers a practice that Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the Children's Commissioner says must stop.

A thousand children are locked up every year at Yarl's Wood Centre in Bedfordshire where conditions are said to pose a serious risk to health and safety.

Last week 80 women in the centre went on hunger strike over conditions with four of them being taken to prison.

David Woods of the UK Borders Agency shocked children's rights campaigners when he said that the agency does release children when "continued detention is not in the best interest of the children" implying that for most it wasn't considered a problem.

Ministers were last night urged to stop locking up children and teenagers in a controversial immigration detention centre after its conditions were condemned by the Children's Commissioner.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green said "high-risk" practices at Yarl's Wood centre in Bedfordshire were jeopardising the safety and health of children held there.