The Asylum Seeker Memorial Project is a journalistic project by Liberty Investigates. It seeks to tell the stories of the 140+ people who have died in asylum accommodation in the UK since 2016.
People in the asylum system are generally barred from working. This pushes people into poverty at a time when they should have protection and safety.
The UK Government is responsible for housing people while they wait for a decision on their claim. Until 2020, people were generally given housing provided under contract by private firms such as Clearsprings, Mears and Serco. Poor living conditions, difficulties accessing medical care and fears around evictions were widespread.
In 2020, as the pandemic reared, the Home Office began to use other types of accommodation such as hotel rooms and ex-military barracks. For those moved into hotels at the start of the pandemic, their meagre allowance of £5 a day was cut to nothing.
In Glasgow, the links between the hostile environment and deaths in the asylum system are all too clear. Refugees for Justice, set up after the Park Inn incident in Glasgow in summer 2020, are still demanding justice, accountability and change for the decisions which led to the tragedy. An inquiry they commissioned into how people seeking asylum were treated in Scotland during the pandemic has called for a complete overhaul of the asylum support system in the UK.
The UK Government doesn’t publish data on deaths in asylum accommodation, so Liberty have taken on this vital, necessary work. We supported the project with data on the devastating number of people who have lost their lives in our asylum system.
These figures do not include those who have died in detention or short-term holding facilities such as Manston, or those who have died at our border or crossing the Channel.
Graham O’Neill, policy manager at the Scottish Refugee Council:
“This memorial models what the UK asylum system must do: recognise the humanity of all those who lost their lives and support loved ones in mourning, learn lessons to prevent further loss of life as much as possible, and be transparent and accountable to families, friends and the public.
“No one can prevent all loss of life but the UK asylum system must address its grim acceleration in recent years, to prevent the need for this memorial to exist.”
Visit the Asylum Seeker Memorial Project.
