Right now in Calais over 1000 people- including around 200 unaccompanied minors- are living with little-to-no shelter in industrial wasteland, woodlands and on the side of roads. They have little access to many basic human rights such as sanitation, water and housing, and are heavily reliant on the services of NGOs to get access to food. 

Over the last few months of the pandemic, such organizations were forced to reduce their services, meaning life for these people became even more difficult than it already was. Fortunately, with the gradual easing of government restrictions on travel, NGOs were able to begin to resume providing their essential services. 

It is shocking then, to discover that this has been upended by the French government, who have, in the last couple of weeks, criminalized the distribution of food in Calais city centre. As NGOs and the individuals volunteering with them now find themselves to be doing incriminating work (the provision of food), displaced people are denied access to food and water. In this situation, the UK is massively guilty. 

While it is difficult to find exact figures, the UK pumps millions of pounds every year into the 'securitisation' of our border with France. This permits that refugees and migrants are kept out of Britain, thereby reflecting and emphasising the increasingly hostile environment in this country. As taxpayers, we are all stakeholders in this regime. As such, we hold a duty of care to the most basic rights of humanity, a duty which is currently being directly conflated by our government's spending.

We must therefore demand that the British government put immediate pressure on the French government to reverse this new implementation of law. Food is the most basic and essential human right, and aid organizations should not find themselves in incriminating positions through their deliverance of this. 

This is the smallest thing that could possibly be asked for. To ask that the French government simply permits the distribution of food by NGOs is to ask that they simply do not spend their resources on implementing hunger. This is an appeal to the most basic sense of humanity. 

These are unprecedented times for all of us. However for most of us in the UK, we do not have to not think twice about our access to food, sanitation and the ability to social distance. In these fortunate positions, we must come together to protect the most vulnerable. To deliberately deny displaced people access to food is deplorable on behalf of both the British and French governments. Please support the demand that this is changed. 

(Photo by Abdul Saboor).