Call on the Prime Minister to act urgently to help Afghan civilians

Call on the Prime Minister to act urgently to help Afghan civilians at risk

Thousands of Afghan civilians are in danger. Call on the Prime Minister to ensure the UK plays its full part in securing safe passage for people at risk of being targeted by the Taliban.

The UK and allies should have foreseen and averted the tragedy in Afghanistan. We need swift and effective action now. Thousands of Afghans at serious risk of Taliban reprisals are in danger of being abandoned to a profoundly uncertain future.

The UK Government must urgently improve and expand its relocation scheme and implement its settlement scheme to ensure Afghan civilians at risk can get to safety. This means delivering support for both relocation & resettlement from neighbouring countries, providing protection to Afghans in the UK not merely suspending removals to the country, and enabling people with family in the UK to be reunited here.

The UK Government pledged to champion the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan. It must not abandon them now. The Prime Minister must ensure safe and legal routes to women human rights defenders and their families facing imminent danger.

Finally, a new potential law - the Nationality and Borders Bill - seeks to essentially shut down the asylum system and punish refugees from Afghanistan and elsewhere, who must often take treacherous journeys to seek asylum because no visa is available. The chaotic scenes in Kabul showed how some people fleeing conflict and persecution do not have the opportunity to access visa schemes, even if they are formally available, before they escape.

Help us urge the Prime Minister to ensure the UK plays its full part in providing safety for all those at risk of being targeted by the Taliban and a humane response to the refugee crisis.

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Call on the Prime Minister to act urgently to help Afghan civilians at risk

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Dear Prime Minister,

I am writing to express my concern about the situation in Afghanistan now that the emergency evacuations have ceased. Urgent action remains needed to protect Afghan civilians targeted by the Taliban. We cannot leave people at risk; teachers, journalists, and women human rights defenders, among many others, face a profoundly unsafe and uncertain future.

The UK Government pledged to champion human rights in Afghanistan and support these brave women and men struggling for a safer and fairer future in Afghanistan. You must not abandon them now.

I urge you to do everything in your power to:

- Ensure asylum is both available and accessible to Afghans who are at risk of reprisal and persecution in the country and need to escape.

- Ensure the UK's relocation (ARAP) remains open for as long as there remain people eligible under it; and extend its scope to both include family members, who would have been eligible but for a locally employed staff member now being killed or missing, and to remove the stipulation that eligible persons must be in Afghanistan.

- Ensure the UK's resettlement scheme (ACRS) is quickly established and implemented.

- Ensure Afghans with family in the UK are reunited in safety, suspend all returns to Afghanistan and provide Afghans in this country the protection status they need.

- Drop proposals in the Nationality and Borders Bill that aim to criminalise and exclude people seeking asylum in the UK simply because they have had to make a dangerous journey to the UK without a visa.

- Enable an international humanitarian response that swiftly and effectively responds to the scale of the crisis; to prevent more violations of international human rights law, refugee law and international humanitarian law; and to set up a UN Fact-Finding Mission to monitor and report regularly to the UN’s Human Rights Council, General Assembly, and Security Council, and to collect and preserve evidence for future prosecutions.

I urge you to act now to help ensure the safety of those at risk in Afghanistan.

Thank you,

Yours sincerely,

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