“Obviously we have concerns about kids falling through the cracks, not getting sufficient attention if they need attention, not getting the emotional or mental health care that they need,” said Leah Chavla, a lawyer with the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group.
“This cannot be the right solution,” Ms. Chavla said. “We need to focus on making sure that kids can get placed with sponsors and get out of custody.”
Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Steve Earle are among the headliners for the first-ever Lantern Tour, a series of five concerts organized by the Women's Refugee Commission to support migrant and refugee families in the United States.
In October, Nash will play on The Lantern Tour Concerts for Migrant and Refugee Familieswith Emmylou Harris, Jackson Browne, Steve Earle and Mary Chapin Carpenter. The proceeds will go to the Women’s Refugee Commission in support of families seeking safety at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“Basically, if we don’t teach our children a better way of dealing with other humans beings, then humanity itself could be in danger,” he says, referring to his definitive composition “Teach Your Children.”
Sarah Costa, Executive Director, Women’s Refugee Commission said: “Promoting self-reliance for refugees and displaced populations matters now more than ever. It is what refugees want. It is the part of the change the humanitarian system needs.”
On the sidelines of the 2018 UN General Assembly (UNGA), the Aurora Humanitarian Initiative (AHI), RefugePoint and the Women’s Refugee Commission partnered to host a forum titled, “Better Lives Now: Leveraging Refugees’ Talents” to launch the Refugee Self-Reliance Initiative, a joint effort by a coalition of organisations, government agencies, foundations, research institutes and other partners focused on promoting opportunities for refugees to become self-reliant.
Palacios works part-time with Justice in Motion, an American NGO that, along with Kids in Need of Defense and Women's Refugee Commission, has partnered with the ACLU. He has found 19 deported parents thus far. One morning earlier this month, he boarded a public bus and went to a small village close to the Mexican border to reach another of these parents, Erik, who was deported without his 8-year-old son in June.
妇女难民委员会(Women’s Refugee Commission)移民权益与司法项目主任米歇尔·布朗说道,有许多被驱逐父母的下落未能记录下来,尤其是那些逃离暴力地区的人。“政府将这些家庭分离时根本没有让他们团聚的计划及安排。”
These changes “undermine family reunification, the fundamental principle of child welfare law, by turning safe placement screening into a mechanism for immigration enforcement,” the Women’s Refugee Commission and National Immigrant Justice Center said in a statement.
The Women's Refugee Commission criticized the memo at the time, warning that it "replaced the best interests of children with the operational expediency of immigration enforcement."
The Global Refugee Youth Consultations in 22 countries, organised by UNHCR and the Women’s Refugee Commission in 2015 and 20161 , brought a request from refugee youth for UNHCR and partners to ensure that young refugees are given opportunities to shape their own futures, and develop the skills they need during displacement and beyond. The importance of post-primary education is expressed throughout the Seven Core Actions for Refugee Youth emerging from the Global Refugee Youth Consultations, including addressing the need to empower youth through meaningful engagement, as well as to recognise, utilise, and develop youth capacities and skills.
"There is no question that from the very beginning this administration had a goal to shut down or extremely limit the refugee program,” said Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.
"A reminder as the hearing ends: Flores protects children, is grounded in child welfare principles, & ensures court oversight. This admin is desperately trying to overturn it to be able to lock up more children, for longer periods of time, & make it even harder to seek protection."
To qualify for asylum in the United States, you have to prove that you can’t return to your home country because you have suffered, or are likely to suffer, persecution there. But how do you provide evidence that returning home could put you in danger? Who’s actually deemed eligible for asylum, and who’s turned away, especially under the Trump administration?
Later in October,the artist will join Steve Earle, Jackson Browne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Graham Nash and more for the Lantern Tour, a five-city trek to raise awareness and funds for the mission of the Women's Refugee Commission.
According to a government source familiar with the crisis, no protocols were put in place for the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services to track families who were broken apart, “leaving behind paper files, incomplete lists of names and a black hole.” There are no records of many deported parents’ locations, especially if they were fleeing violence in their home countries, says Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission. “Let’s not forget,” she tells me, “the government separated these families with really no plan for reunifying them.” (The administration is still seeking to harden immigration policy. In September, it moved to sidestep time limits on child detention. If approved, a new regulation would allow authorities to hold kids with their parents indefinitely until cases are resolved in immigration court.)
“This is an administration that has not complied with the settlement agreement as it is,” Michelle Brane, the director of Migrant Rights and Justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, told NPR.
“The Trump administration has been whittling away at the basic rights of women and children since they came into office,” Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission told The New York Times.
The Women’s Refugee Commission and National Immigrant Justice Center predicted the effects of the agreement this summer, writing that it would “accelerate not only the decline in releases to parents, but also releases overall, leading to longer stays in ORR custody.”
In 2009 researchers with the Women's Refugee Commission predicted that “problems related to providing care and safety in increasingly large facilities are likely to deepen as apprehensions continue to increase, unless DUCS (Division of Unaccompanied Children Services) begins to rely on smaller, more homelike facilities with better staff-to-child ratios.”
“Efforts to weaken or eliminate basic child protection standards by calling them a burden or loopholes, and eliminating their obligations for the basic care of children, is just another example of the administration’s abdication of human rights,” said Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.
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