The child refugee crisis has reached a new low – we must act now

The facts are stark – and shaming. A child, a refugee aged 14 whose brother is already in the UK, is given the right to come here. But getting official passage to take up that permission is mired in the bureaucratic process.

The weeks and months pass. Despairing, he decides to take his luck by climbing onto a lorry bound for Britain, and dies in the attempt. He is the youngest refugee to die trying to cross the UK border from the Jungle and the third young person to die in similar circumstances this year.

Sometimes it seems to need a tragic event to hammer home a wider massage. If there is anything positive to come from this particular story it must surely be that prosperous western nations have an obligation not only to accept refugees, under whatever terms they have agreed and are legally bound to do. They must also provide honourable and competent administration of this process.

On Saturday a number of speakers at a rally in London made these points, and on Monday and Tuesday the United Nations will host a summit for heads of state and government to help develop a global response to the refugee crisis. It will be, as the UN puts it: “A historic opportunity to come up with a blueprint for a better international response. It is a watershed moment to strengthen governance of international migration and a unique opportunity for creating a more responsible, predictable system for responding to large movements of refugees and migrants”.

Those words – “responsible” and “predictable” – define the challenge for the leaders’ meeting in New York. It would be unfair and unreasonable to single out the UK for its past policies on refugees, and quite counter-productive to bundle concern over this matter into a wider political attack. This is a global issue, not a national one, and a humanitarian issue, not a political one. But the fact that we have in effect a new Government gives an opportunity both to acknowledge that we have not performed very well in the past, and a chance do better. Our Government, indeed any government in a working democracy, has to work with the grain of public opinion, and public opinion is resistant to large-scale settle of refugees in Britain. But public opinion also accepts we have responsibilities, and asks for reasonable competence in carrying out those responsibilities.

Coping with the refugee crisis requires a global response and that is what we should expect from New York. But it also requires huge attention to detail. As we have argued here before there is a specific and shameful failure in the Jungle in Sangatte, where there are an estimated 400 unaccompanied children who are eligible to move to the UK now. The Jungle is one manifestation of the multi-layered issue that we cannot easily tackle. But the fate of one 14-year-old tells us where to start.