Detention Action are honored to be shortlisted for the 2015 Liberty Human Rights Campaign of the Year Award for our fight to end the Detained Fast Track, which has since been suspended after being ruled unlawful on five separate occasions.
We are also delighted that Nathalie Lieven QC, from Landmark Chambers, has been nominated for the 2015 Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year for her (exceptional) work representing us in our litigation against the Home Office. She, and the rest of our legal team, deserve all the accolades they get. More generally, it is wonderful to see so many asylum and migrant rights campaigns and organisations represented in this year’s shortlist.
Primarily, however, this nomination is recognition of the injustice so many of our clients experienced at the hands of a system which routinely incarcerated individuals at the political and administrative convenience of the Home Office, just for seeking protection in the UK.
It also important to note that the Detained Fast Track is just one part of a much larger story about our country’s addiction to detention. The UK is still the only country in Europe with no time-limit and still detains more migrants than any other country in the EU. Hopefully, success in this campaign will mark the beginning of the end of the chronic overuse of detention in this country. We will certainly be continuing the fight to turn that hope into a reality.