The Dunkirk Project

Our current project is based in Calais and Dunkirk working with migrants there who are seeking to unite with UK family members. We are:

1) Offering legal help to families on either side of the channel.

This involves

• finding advice and representation for refugees in France;
• helping prepare a case working with the families in the UK;
• taking the families to France to unite them;
• supporting the costs of legal work
• funding interpreters

2) Coordinating with existing NGOs working there

• supporting the work of Help Refugees and Safe Passage (part of Citizens UK)

3) Campaigning for a political resolution of the situation

Our goal is to make the existing system work, as set out in the Common European Asylum Policy or Dublin III regulation. This provides a detailed set of legal rights to those seeking asylum to unify with family members. But it is not functioning. The UK and France are presiding over a situation that denies rather than facilitates people exercising legal rights. There needs to be formal apparatus for helping people establish their right to come to the UK and for adjudicating on that right.

The focus of the Dunkirk work, beginning with a documentary about the current situation, will be to head towards achieving some form of systemic reform, offering help to establish a refugee’s claim and to family unification, and independent adjudication on it.

Please visit our fundraising page, watch our video, and donate here – www.crowdjustice.com/case/unitefamilies/