Promoting the rights of women seeking asylum in the UK
About Us
Yeukai Taruvinga, who sought asylum here from Zimbabwe, and Angela, who sought asylum here from Uganda, just before meeting Harriet Harman, Minister for Women, with Juliet Stevenson, in November 2009.
Women for Refugee Women works to raise awareness of the injustices experienced by women who seek refuge in the UK. Women who come to the UK fleeing gender-related persecution (such as rape, honour crimes, female genital mutilation, and trafficking for forced prostitution) are too often turned down for asylum.
If women are turned down for asylum they are at risk of destitution, detention, and deportation to places where their lives may be at risk.
We work alongside existing organisations to increase understanding of the experiences of women who seek asylum in the UK. We work through public events, through meeting up with politicians and policy makers, through talking to journalists, through undertaking research, and through supporting a self help group of women asylum-seekers. Above all, we try to provide platforms for asylum seekers to speak out for themselves about the injustices they experience. These women deserve to be heard.
Natasha Walter, the founder of Women for Refugee Women, explains in the Guardian in August 2009 why we should be concerned about women who seek asylum in the UK.
"Four years ago I met a woman called Angelique. She came to this country from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she had been imprisoned and tortured because of the political activities of her father. She had been turned down for asylum and was destitute in London. So she walked the streets. She walked and walked, crisscrossing the capital, begging for food, even though she was heavily pregnant."
The fact that Angelique had to live like that in our country when she had come here as a genuine refugee shocked me so profoundly that I set up a small charity called Women for Refugee Women. This organisation works to enable people to see what is going on among women seeking refuge here. As I have learned more about what women and children go through in the asylum system, my sense of shock has not lessened – it has increased.”
Women for Refugee Women gratefully acknowleges the support of the City Parochial Foundation, the Barrow Cadbury Trust, and Ruth Rogers
Women for Refugee Women, registered charity 1121174, email wrw@womankind.org.uk