End Child Detention Now, Shpresa Programme and Student Action for Refugees are launching the "Keep Your Promise" campaign on Saturday 26th March from 5pm-6.30pm with an event at Oxford House, Derbyshire Street, Bethnal Green.

On 12 May 2010, Nick Clegg on behalf of the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition government announced that the immigration detention of children in the United Kingdom was to be brought to an end. On 16 December Mr Clegg described the detention of children as ‘a moral outrage’ and announced the closure of the family wing of the notorious Yarl’s Wood detention centre in Bedfordshire. He said no children would be detained over Christmas. However, not only was a child detained on Christmas Day, as many as 100 children were detained by the UKBA in the first six months of the coalition government.

The new plans for a more humane approach to dealing with families whose asylum claims have failed includes converting a special needs school into ‘pre-departure accommodation’, surrounded by a 2.8 metre security fence – a new detention centre in all but name. This is why ECDN has teamed up with Shpresa Programme, which supports Albanian speaking families in London, and STAR, which represents 5,000 student volunteers across the country, to initiate the Keep Your Promise campaign to hold Clegg and Cameron to their pledge to end child detention now and forever.

Speakers include:

Esme Madill, ECDN
James Fisher, STAR
Syd Bolton, Children's Legal Centre
Luljeta Nuzi, Shpresa Programme

Featuring:

- Launch of the Keep Your Promise campaign video
- Dancing from the young people of Shpresa Programme
- Postcard signing
- Q&A on the new Home Office families' removal programme and the 'pre-departure accommodation' facility in West Sussex