About AVID

We exist to enable and support the vital role of visitors to people detained whilst providing a platform for collective action amongst UK visitor groups. We have a strong track record of providing essential practical and emotional support for visitor groups; influencing detention policy and practice and of raising awareness of the human impact of detention.

Our Mission

Our mission is to join with and support communities to reduce the immediate suffering of people in immigration detention and work towards a future without detention. We achieve this by facilitating a network which provides solidarity, guidance and advocacy to visitor groups across the UK, whilst also building connections with the wider movement. Together we strive for a more just and compassionate society that upholds the dignity and human rights of all people.

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“One of the underlying things I love about the network is just the sense of solidarity among the group, and the generosity of sharing. And the rapidity of sharing! I found that really nourishing and helps you keep going because you think there are so many people out there with such incredible experience and knowledge, and so ready to share it.”

AVID member

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We build communities of belonging, hope and resistance in anticipation of the society we want to create.

Reason

We resist the practice of immigration detention which displaces people and prevents them from participating in local communities.

Principle

Visitors groups build relationships between people in detention and those in the community, thereby reconnecting them with wider society. As visitors groups, we collaborate in working towards our shared vision, becoming bigger than the sum of our parts. We value the diversity of our network and the strength that this brings. We seek to connect with the wider movement in the struggle for freedom from detention.

We stand alongside and act in partnership with people in detention.

Reason

While trying to offer help, visitors groups risk adopting paternalistic approaches that reinforce unequal relationships of power. When this happens, we become part of the problem by silencing the people we hope to support.

Principle

We are actively on the side of people we visit, and we work against the culture of disbelief faced by people in detention. We work towards relationships based on trust and mutual respect. We recognise the power imbalance which exists between visitors and people detained. In standing side-by-side with people in detention, we use this power to speak out when people in detention speak out and to hold the system to account. This is not simply because we want to ‘help’, but because we know that until people in detention are free, none of us are free.

Our aspiration is to be led by people who have been impacted by detention.

Reason

We denounce immigration policies which exclude people from participating in local communities. People who have first-hand experience of incarceration and displacement bring expertise that is essential to achieving our vision. In our own organisations and network, not enough has been done to build alliances that truly value and are inclusive of people who have experience of detention.

Principle

We seek to embed the leadership of people impacted by detention in our own network and at all levels of our organisations. We confront and address the barriers to participation and leadership that exist in our groups. We centre the knowledge and expertise of people impacted by detention whilst recognising that we all have a shared responsibility to make our vision a reality.

We defend the human dignity of people in detention.

Reason

Immigration detention is a dehumanising process that disempowers and deprives people of control over their lives. By its very nature, it fails to affirm people’s right to be treated with dignity.

Principle

We meet with people in detention as fellow human beings and refuse to participate in the dehumanising ways that the system operates. We support people in detention in their struggles for justice and challenge the system and its indignities.

We actively seek to redress structural inequalities and racist discourses which feed and are fed by our immigration system.

Reason

Our immigration system is inextricably linked to ideas of race, to racial inequalities, and to Britain’s colonial history. These create mechanisms whereby some people are deemed to be ‘deserving’ while others are ‘undeserving’, leading to exclusion from society. Freedom from detention for all will not be possible without confronting and dismantling these wider systems of racial oppression and discrimination.

Principle

We don’t discriminate on any grounds, including but not limited to religion, nationality, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, disability or age. As a network, we challenge hierarchies in our immigration system that create ideas of who does and doesn’t deserve to belong. We are inclusive of our support to people in immigration detention and do not discriminate on the basis of previous sentences served. We work together to confront oppressive systems and transform them into ones that champion liberation both within our own organisations and for people affected by detention.

We are independent of the government and all those who run and benefit from the practice of immigration detention.

Reason

Holding ourselves apart from the places we visit is vital to avoid compromising our role as visitors in solidarity with people who are detained. It is necessary in order that we can hold the government and companies running detention centres to account.

Principle

We do not participate in the running of the centres we visit and identify ourselves as separate from staff. This allows us to give independent and confidential support to people in detention. Where we build relationships with centre management, we do so to support our efforts to stand in solidarity with those we visit.

We are accountable to people impacted by detention and support one another as a network in our efforts.

Reason

We must also hold each other to account if we are to live our network’s values in practice. The nature of detention, which creates vulnerability, demands strong accountability mechanisms that protect people from harm and do not put them at risk.

Principle

We have a duty of care to those we support and to our visitors. Our groups’ policies and practices enable and empower visitors to carry out their roles safely, respecting their own boundaries and those of people in detention. We work to build processes for collective care, feedback and accountability within our organisations and network.  

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