There are many laws that the majority of the general public don’t know much about. They exist to us as bureaucracy, dealing with issues that many of us won’t face. But, look a little closer, and after a little interrogation you might just find that many of them feel outdated or just plain wrong.

This interrogation is what VCCP set out to do for Amnesty International with their latest campaign ‘Family-Free Zone’. On Saturday 2^nd March, Amnesty sectioned off an area of London’s Southbank which was patrolled by security guards, notifying passers-by that they couldn’t enter the zone as a family.

They would not be allowed to enjoy the view, take pictures or simply walk through the area if they were together. The only way they could do so is if they split up. The initiative was part of Amnesty’s efforts to draw attention to a petition pressuring the government to reunite refugee families.

The existing UK law denies child refugees the right to bring their parents with them into the country, and vice versa, meaning parents are forced to leave any child over the age of 18 behind. Amnesty’s campaign is designed to highlight the seemingly arbitrary and fundamentally ridiculous nature of the existing government rules and to call on the Home Secretary to change them.

What this campaign demonstrated is the role empathy has to play in truly understanding the situations the law can put people in. It allowed members of the public to experience the sad reality of what it would feel like to be treated under such a law, and to realise that perhaps it’s time for a change.