In 2024 and 2025, 22 children lost their lives at the UK-France border.
These deaths did not happen in isolation. The UK government will have spent at least £1.44 billion funding border enforcement in northern France since 2014, including a new figure announced in April 2026 of £662 million – while at the same time restricting and removing access to safe routes to asylum.
STOP BORDER VIOLENCE is a new campaign from Humans for Rights Network, Project Play and Asylum Matters calling for an inquiry into how UK funding at the border in northern France has contributed to increasing state violence and fatalities.
A Changing History: The UK and Its Role in Refugee Protection
For decades, the United Kingdom has held a global reputation as a country that offers refuge to those fleeing war, persecution, and political unrest. However, this legacy has been steadily undermined by increasingly restrictive immigration policies. Over the last two decades, successive governments—both Conservative and Labour—have shifted towards a securitised, enforcement-first approach to migration. The concept of the “hostile environment,” introduced formally by Theresa May during her tenure as Home Secretary, marked a turning point, embedding suspicion and control into everyday interactions between migrants and the state.
What was once a system designed to offer protection has become one increasingly focused on deterrence, criminalisation, and exclusion.
Border Criminalisation: Punishing the Journey, Not the Crime
At the core of this hostile environment is the criminalisation of movement. People arriving irregularly are automatically treated as suspects. Dinghy pilots—often desperate asylum seekers coerced into steering boats—are being arrested, charged, and imprisoned for facilitating illegal entry, even when they are fleeing for their own safety.
This criminalisation is not only unjust; it is strategically dehumanising. It reframes people fleeing persecution as national security threats, erasing their stories, their trauma, and their legal right to seek refuge.
Our work with Humans for Rights Network is bringing us into direct contact with individuals caught in this net of border violence. From raids in coastal towns to criminal charges imposed without proper legal support, we have documented the deepening criminalisation of those seeking sanctuary. Our advocacy challenges not only the laws, but the false narratives that justify them.
Children on the Margins: Findings from Project Play
Children, often the most vulnerable in any crisis, are not spared from the brutality of the UK’s border regime. A new report from Project Play lays bare the everyday violence experienced by children in and around border areas. The report documents children living in makeshift camps and temporary accommodation without adequate access to education, healthcare, or safety. It also reveals deeply disturbing accounts of child asylum seekers being exposed to trauma through police raids, abrupt relocations, and the constant threat of family separation.
These children—some of whom have already fled war zones—find themselves retraumatised by the very country they sought protection from. The UK’s failure to uphold its duties under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child is evident in every report of a child denied schooling, denied safety, or denied dignity.
What Needs to Change
The UK must urgently reverse its approach to asylum and border policy. That means:
Repealing punitive legislation like the Illegal Migration Act and the Rwanda plan.
Ending the criminalisation of people arriving via irregular routes.
Investing in community-based reception systems that uphold human dignity.
Respecting children’s rights and ensuring their access to education, housing, and protection.
Holding institutions accountable for human rights abuses at the border.
Join Us
The UK’s border violence is not just a policy issue—it is a moral one. Every raid, every prison sentence, every child left without support is a decision made in our name.
We are working to hold power to account, and we need your voice. Join the FAR campaign, stand with those impacted, and say no to a future built on fear and exclusion.
The border must stop being a site of violence—and become again a place where refuge begins.