About Safe Passage international
Our vision and mission
At Safe Passage International, we believe that everyone has the right to be safe; safe to be with their family and safe to rebuild their lives. Our vision is a world where people in danger have safe passage to a place of safety, family and justice.
We reunite child refugees with their families in safe countries, after becoming forcibly displaced and separated due to war and persecution. We provide essential legal advice, representation and protection to help families access safe routes and prevent the need for dangerous journeys. We go on to provide tailored arrival support to help children and their families settle into their new communities. Beyond our direct support, we work alongside refugees to campaign for change and build public support for safe passage for all. All our areas of work are guided by the principles of working with, not for, refugees.
How we work
We defend the rights of refugees and displaced people as they flee persecution, using the law to help them access a safe route to a place of safety. We work alongside refugees to campaign for change and build public support for safe passage for all.
We do this by:
Leading the fight for safe routes across Europe. We advocate for existing safe routes to be improved, based on the experiences of our clients who have travelled through them. But we also recognise these are too few, and often broken — so we also push for the expansion of safe routes such as family reunion, campaigning with young refugees to make sure our calls are based on the real needs of people, not politics.
Defending the fundamental right to seek safety. We fight alongside people on the move for greater dignity, security and rights as they seek a place where they can rebuild their lives and be with their loved ones. That often means pushing back against moves that punish and criminalise people for the act of seeking refuge and holding Governments to account for their international legal and moral obligations.
Where we work
We focus on refugee routes to and within Europe, in particular the European Union and the United Kingdom. We are based in the UK, France and Greece but work with partners beyond our borders to open and expand routes, share knowledge and campaign for wider change. Still today, 86% of the world’s refugees are hosted by developing countries, with just 10% of refugees hosted by the European Union and UK combined.
We remain focused on increasing safe routes within and to Europe because the richest nations of the world have the capacity and a responsibility to do far more in providing protection to refugees.
Our journey
Our organisation was founded in 2015, in response to the catastrophic failure of European governments to prevent the humanitarian crisis that saw thousands of refugees risk and lose their lives taking dangerous journeys to reach protection.
Our journey began when a small group of volunteers from Citizens UK visited Calais refugee camp in northern France. Amidst the devastating camp conditions, the team met with many refugee children who were unaccompanied, living alone in the camp. When they asked children why they were there, the answer for most was simple: they had relatives in the UK who they were desperately trying to reach. Many of them were unaware that they had the legal right to join their family safely, without needing to take a dangerous journey across the Channel to get there.
Recognising the urgency of the situation, the team partnered with various legal organisations to safely reunite these children with their families. Their focus was on securing access to safe pathways, eliminating the need for deadly journeys across the Channel. In January 2016, after 1,400 pro bono legal hours, the first three boys and one dependent older brother from Syria were successfully reunited with their families from Calais via the Dublin III regulation — a vital protection which was since lost as a result of Brexit. This would later pave the way for thousands of unaccompanied refugee children to reunite with their families in the UK.
In 2018, to enable the expansion of our vital work, we became an independent charity and formally de-merged from Citizens UK. Since then, we’ve established offices in London, Paris and Athens, and continue to deliver legal advice and representation to refugee children who have become separated from their families due to war and persecution.