Today, as part of our long standing campaign work around refugee family reunion,  the Refugee Council is calling on people to tell the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, to do right by refugees living in the UK and enable them to be reunited with the family members they love and desperately miss.

As we have written about before, every day refugees living in the UK suffer at the hands of restrictive Government rules which deny them the right to be reunited with the family members they were torn apart from in conflict.

These rules mean that parents are being kept apart from the young adult children who still need them; and that children are being kept apart from the parents they still need. This is simply wrong and it must change.

As you will see in our petition, we are asking the Home Secretary to do right be refugees who have already face untold horrors and change these rules today.

Dear Home Secretary,

You have the power to reunite families torn apart by war and persecution. With the strike of a pen, you can change the restrictive rules that keep refugees in the UK apart from those they love.

I call on you to:

• • Allow child refugees in the UK the right to sponsor their close family, so they can rebuild their lives together and help them integrate in their new community;
  • Expand who qualifies as family, so that young people who have turned 18 and elderly parents can join their family in the UK;
  • Reintroduce legal aid for refugee family reunion cases so people who have lost everything have the support they need to afford and navigate the complicated process of being reunited with their families.

Please help us by signing this petition today. Together we can help ensure that refugee families can are able to reunited, just when they need each other most.

Refugee family reunification is a critically important issue to the Refugee Council and many other organisations. As part of the #FamiliesTogether coalition we are campaigning to change rules.

Read more about our work here.