Refugee Week 2025

Well-founded fear: The decline of the ‘right’ to asylum

In June 2025, we mark two significant milestones: the 74th anniversary of the UN Refugee Convention, signed in the wake of the atrocities of World War II, and twenty years since Asylum Justice was established. In that time, we have witnessed enormous shifts in the political and legal landscape, but the moment we find ourselves in now is among the most alarming yet.

Across the world, the number of people displaced by conflict, repressive regimes and climate breakdown has reached unprecedented levels: over 123 million people were forcibly displaced in 2024. Yet, at a time when the need for protection is greatest, the UK Government appears intent on continuing to dismantle the very systems designed to provide it. As the only free legal service for asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants in Wales, Asylum Justice sees daily the human consequences of this “race to the bottom.”

Despite widespread misconceptions, the number of people seeking sanctuary in Wales has not changed significantly in recent years and people seeking asylum still make up less than 1% of the population. What has changed is their ability to expect a fair hearing for their case, for meaningful access to justice. A collapsed legal aid sector, coupled with increasingly restrictive policies and a continuing culture of disbelief, is leaving people – including unaccompanied children and survivors of trafficking – without the advice and representation to which they are entitled, exacerbating their exposure to destitution, exploitation and return to the dangerous situations from which they fled.

A shrinking space for rights

This Refugee Week, we must reckon with a stark reality: many of the fundamental rights set out in international law – the right to claim asylum due to a well-founded fear of persecution, the right to family life – are being systematically eroded.

The UK is rejecting asylum claims that should, on any reasonable view, be accepted. Nowhere is this clearer than in the treatment of people fleeing Afghanistan. Just 44% of Afghan asylum claims were accepted in the first quarter of 2025. This comes despite overwhelming evidence of danger on the ground, and reports that members of Afghan special forces – previously allied with the UK – are being denied protection, allegedly to suppress testimony about potential war crimes. The betrayal is profound.

Meanwhile, family reunion cases are increasingly obstructed, placing spouses and children at risk in countries where they face imminent deportation or dangers. Markedly, the UK is the only country in Europe (besides Switzerland) that does not allow unaccompanied refugee children to bring their parents to the UK under family reunion rules. These are not abstract policy failures. These are real families, whose lives are torn apart, their safety gambled away in a system driven by a false promise of ‘deterrence’ rather than justice. And for those who do have the right to reunite with their families, the removal of legal aid for family reunion cases leaves most recognized refugees unable to secure legal assistance to make their applications.

Legal Aid: Hollowed out

The degradation of the legal aid system over the past decade cannot be overstated. The LASPO Act of 2012 took entire categories of immigration cases ‘out of scope’ for legal aid, including family reunification and leave to remain applications based on family and private life, leaving thousands unable to access legal representation. Even for those areas where legal aid is still notionally available, the barriers to accessing justice are formidable as the scale of cuts to legal aid rates has forced many immigration firms out of legal aid altogether in recent years.

This has left large numbers of people without any representation at all, with one in two asylum seekers now unable to secure legal representation at any stage of their asylum claim. Dr Jo Wilding’s research charts how the proportion of asylum seekers going through the process without legal representation has jumped from 17% in 2020 to 57% in 2024 in England and Wales. With a culture of disbelief still dominating the asylum system, and no improvement in the quality of decision-making, this leaves many asylum seekers unable to put their case or have it properly understood by decision makers in the Home Office and Immigration Courts.

In Wales, the situation is especially acute. According to recent research from the Bevan Foundation, more than 60% of immigration and asylum law firms in Wales have closed since 2020. Just three remain.

Deliberate cruelty by design

These legal obstacles do not exist in isolation – they are part of a broader political strategy of deterrence. That strategy soon looks set to include removing the right to settle permanently (Indefinite Leave to Remain) from those who arrive ‘irregularly’, despite the absence of any viable safe or legal routes for asylum seekers to make their way by ‘regular’ means to a safe country. The government cannot, in good faith, claim to be protecting borders and upholding international law whilst closing every possible door to those fleeing persecution.

Young people, especially unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, are among the most vulnerable in this system. Many arrive in the UK after surviving trafficking and modern slavery, torture or sexual violence, only to be met with open disbelief and bureaucratic hostility. In Wales, we work closely with local authorities doing their best to support these children, but the psychological toll of the journey – and of being disbelieved when they arrive – is devastating.

Planned policies, such as extending the qualifying period for applying for settlement to ten years, or offshoring people to return hubs somewhere in the Balkans, will only extend the trauma. Nor are these cost-saving measures, as the cost of keeping people in limbo has a high price tag. The failed Rwanda scheme cost the taxpayer hundreds of millions, for example, as will the proposed return hubs.

By far the biggest cost, though, is human. Many asylum seekers still wait years for their asylum interview to be processed, whilst forced to live in inadequate asylum housing or hotel accommodation, with the right to work withheld. Even when their claim is finally processed, consistently poor-quality decision-making means many are forced to wait even longer for the correct decision. Roughly half of all asylum refusals are overturned at appeal, but that means waiting at least another year for a final decision.

And for those whose appeals ultimately fail, forced removal to a so-called ‘return’ hub in central Europe seems likely to be their fate. For many of them, this will just be a new form of limbo, as legally, the rejection of someone’s asylum claim has nothing to do with whether they can be sent back to their country of origin. The lack of diplomatic relations with refugee-producing countries like Iran or Afghanistan for example, means unsuccessful asylum claimants from these countries cannot be returned. Sending them to return hubs, then, would have little to do with ‘returning’ them home, and far more to do with pandering to anti-migrant sentiment, and ‘looking tough’ on immigration, while paying poorer European countries to deal with the UK’s ‘problem’.

Language matters, and so does leadership

The public debate on asylum in the UK has recently grown darker and far more toxic. The scapegoating of people seeking sanctuary has become a political strategy, with far-right rhetoric increasingly echoed in mainstream media and government policy. In 2024, Southport saw riots targeting asylum housing. In Llanelli, organised far-right activity forced a Home Office u-turn on using a local hotel to accommodate asylum seekers.

This climate of hostility is neither accidental nor harmless. It creates fear in communities, emboldens hate groups, and pushes people already traumatised into further isolation and precarious mental health. And it betrays the UK’s international obligations and moral responsibilities.

What needs to happen?

At the UK level, the current review of civil legal aid must confront the devastating impact of long-term, systematic underfunding and reform the system to ensure that everyone can access quality representation, regardless of income or immigration status. The Welsh Government, meanwhile, must act on the recommendations made by organisations like the Bevan Foundation to rebuild the infrastructure of immigration legal advice in Wales.

Beyond legal reform, economic justice demands an end to policies that deliberately impoverish people seeking asylum. Granting the right to work would not only restore dignity, but could benefit the UK economy by an estimated £260 million per year. Enabling people to contribute, rather than forcing them into enforced poverty, is common sense.

Politically, we need leadership rooted in evidence, not fear. In the lead up to the Senedd elections, parties must recommit to the Nation of Sanctuary vision and reject the politics of division. The Anti-Racist Wales Action Plan and our tradition of solidarity with the oppressed must be more than symbolic gestures, they must guide policy and political speech. That includes recognising the UK’s colonial legacy: 68% of asylum applicants in 2025 come from countries once under British control. Indeed, the slogan ‘They are here because we were there’ is just as true of far more recent periods in British history. The rise in asylum claims by nationals of Iraq and Afghanistan over the last few decades, for example, is inextricably linked to the situation created by the occupation of those countries by Western forces during the same period, military interventions in which the UK played a leading role. 

We should also be inspired by models elsewhere. In Scotland, the New Scots strategy recognises the value of refugee communities to both society and the economy. In Spain, recent immigration reforms offer irregular migrants an opportunity to integrate. Wales must not fall behind.

Towards a fairer future

There is a better way forward. One grounded in justice, human rights, and our shared humanity. At Asylum Justice, we work each day to make that future possible – through legal representation, advocacy and in partnership with those who have lived experience of the system.

We know that this work matters. One of our clients, reflecting recently on their experience, put it simply: ‘Thank you so so so so much, you and everyone who has worked on my case. I owe you guys my life’.

This Refugee Week, we stand alongside all those seeking safety, not just in principle, but in practice. We call on leaders in Cardiff Bay and Westminster to uphold the right to asylum, to restore access to justice, and to build a system that reflects the best of who we are.

Let us be not a nation that punishes people for seeking safety, but one that welcomes them with justice, dignity and hope.