Promoting the rights of women seeking asylum in the UK
Women for Refugee Women news
Women and asylum in the press and research publications: a selection
Emily Dugan in the Independent, 06 July 2008, "From Mugabe's thugs to a life of poverty in Britain. Ministers are urged to allow refugees to support themselves through work" Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 02 July 2008, "Asylum-seekers put at risk by law, warns top judge" Read more
Patrick Sawer in the Telegraph, 29 June 2008, "Asylum refugees' treatment inhuman" Read more
Bill Morris in the Guardian, 18 June 2008, "Let them give something back". A call for the restoration of the right to work for asylum seekers. Read more
Mark Haddon in the Guardian, 15 June 2008, "The hell of being an asylum seeker" Award-winning novelist Mark Haddon discovers the horror of being a refugee in the UK today. Read more
Thomas Quinn in the Guardian, 15 June 2008, "Refugees portray their ordeal in Festival film" Read more
Rachel Stevenson and Harriet Grant in the Guardian, 13 June 2008, "All across the country, communities are organising themselves to stop their friends and neighbours from being deported. From lobbying the Home Office to foiling dawn raids, the resistance will stop at nothing to keep failed asylum seekers safe in Britain." Read more
John Carvel in the Guardian, 17 May 2008, "Boy, three, suffering from sickle cell disease to be deported" Read more
Angela Kelly in the Bolton News, 14 April 2008, "One hundred refused asylum seekers - including men and women in their late 80s - are living rough in derelict houses and on people's floors in the Bolton area". Read more
Emily Dugan in the Independent, 12 April 2008, "NHS ban for failed asylum seekers is 'unlawful'". Read more
Emily Dugan in the Independent, 11 April 2008 "Mothers detained in immigration centre hold 'naked' protest". Read more
David Rose in the Guardian, 06 April 2008. "How migrants fuel Britain's boom town" Read more
BBC News, 27 March 2008 "Asylum system 'shameful for UK'". Read more
The Independent, 27 March 2008, Leading article on the shocking failings of the UK asylum system. "A system that could do much, much better". Read more
Duncan Campbell in the Guardian, 10 March 2008 "£15,000 for asylum seeker illegally detained in UK". Read more
Sarah Cassidy in the Independent, 7 March 2008, "Traumatised and neglected: how Britain fails child asylum-seekers". Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 02 January 2008 "A mother's legal battle to stop the Government deporting her sick, three-year-old daughter threatens to shame Britain over its treatment of child asylum-seekers in a test case being considered by the European Court of Human Rights." Read more
Amanda Shah in the Independent, 02 January 2008 discusses the detention of children "Over the past 12 months, the cruelty inflicted on many families has become increasingly incomprehensible." Read more
Emily Dugan in the Independent, 27 December 2007 on the denial of health services to failed asylum-seekers. Read more
Alice O'Keeffe in The New Statesman, 13 December 2007 highlights how British detention policies are harming children "In detaining children for immigration reasons, the UK breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Children can be detained for an unlimited time without charge or trial." Read more
Natasha Walter in the Guardian, 10 December 2007 examines the differences in attitudes towards the detention of terror suspects and asylum seekers "While MPs and journalists debate whether suspected terrorists should be detained for more than 28 days without charge, for instance, a young girl of 13 can be held in Yarl's Wood detention centre for three months." Read more
Michelle Pauli in the Guardian, 29 November 2007 "A collection of prize-winning stories about the personal face of the immigrant experience has been launched in an attempt to move the debate on British identity beyond the tabloid headlines of Polish fruit pickers and boatloads of asylum seekers." Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 05 October 2007 on allegations of assaults on failed asylum-seekers during deportation, reports "shocking claims of physical and mental mistreatment of some of the most vulnerable people in our asylum system" Read more
Emma Ginn in the Independent, 05 October 2007 reports on abuse during deportation "It is easy to abuse when the victim is deported out of sight, out of mind". Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 05 October 2007 writes of the violent attempted removal of a failed asylum-seeker "beaten, bleeding – and then returned in a wheelchair" Read more
Rahila Gupta in the Guardian, 5 September 2007 explains the links between failed asylum and slavery. "People who cross the borders end up occupying a twilight world of illegality and are forced into slavery" Read more
Louise France in the Guardian, 22 July 2007 on the desperate lives of the UK's women asylum seekers. "It is as if I am dead already". Read more
Diane Taylor, in the Observer, 16 September 2007, interviews a perpetrator of torture who is urging the Home Office to stop the deportation of Congolese nationals to the DRC. Responsible for authorising and carrying out torture on opponents of the Kinshasa regime, many of whom were deported from the UK and Germany, Ndumba is now seeking asylum in the UK as a potential victim of torture if he returns. He says: "I know that human rights no longer exist in DRC. Arrests are arbitrary and frequent as are rapes and torture... In DRC, people live in fear. It is easy to rape a woman and it's easy to torture a person. Nobody will intervene, neither government nor judiciary." Read more
Rahila Gupta, in the Guardian, 5 September 2007, explores the links between present day slavery and UK asylum laws that may condemn women, children and men to destitution. "Slavery is driven by poverty, but most of those who are enslaved in Britain today are trapped by our immigration laws. Their passport is in the hands of somebody else, be it an "employer", a "spouse", an "agent", a "trafficker", or the government, as in the case of failed asylum seekers." Read more in her book, Enslaved
Louise France in the Observer, 22 July 2007 on the injustices experienced by women asylum seekers in the UK: "They have fled torture, rape and oppression, often leaving their children behind, in the hope of finding sancutary. But once here, they have to contend with destitution - and a government system geared up to sending them back." Read more
Alice O'Keeffe in the New Statesman, 19 July 2007, visited Yarl's Wood and met women who are detained despite having experienced genuine persecution. "An outspoken and intelligent 45-year-old from Uganda, Sarah told me she had experienced beatings, rape and torture at the hands of the Ugandan army. She escaped to Britain, where she waited for eight years for a decision on her asylum case. In the year before her detention, she had been sleeping rough. She has both external and internal injuries as a result of rape and torture, and has difficulty walking. Since arriving at Yarl's Wood she has been vomiting bile." Read more
Melanie McFadyean in the Guardian, 15 June 2007, reported on the trafficking of young girls into domestic slavery in the UK. One young girl from Nigeria whose family sent her to live with friends in England ended up working from 6am to 2am, beaten by her employer, unable to attend school, make friends or even speak to anyone. On reaching 18, trafficked children risk being deported. Read more
Glenys Kinnock MEP in a letter to the Guardian, 11 May 2007, urged the Home Office to address the injustices of the asylum system: "The government's asylum policies have serious shortcomings and do not protect those who have been forced to flee their countries." Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 30 March 2007, reported on the condemnation by the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the UK's asylum policy. The report is an indictment of a system that deported a dying refugee back to a country with no palliative care and that leaves women fleeing persecution destitute regardless of their needs, such as six-month pregnant Rui Juan Ms Rui said: "I am very scared and very homesick. If Positive Action in Housing had not been here to help I would have to live in the street. I don't know how else to live here or how to deal with this problem. Read more
Melanie McFadyean in the Guardian, 28 March 2007, asks why the suicides of asylum seekers and migrants are rarely reported in the press. "Nusrat Raza, a young Pakistani woman living in Bradford, was seen by a passer-by as a "great ball of fire coming down the stairs of her house in June 2005. She had lost her asylum claim's Read more
Victoria Mitchell in the Independent, 20 March 2007, reports on a Nepalese asylum seeker who, terrified at being deported back to Nepal, set himself alight at an Asylum and Immigration Tribunal Centre in Glasgow. Robina Qureshi, director of Positive Action in Housing, a charity that works with ethnic minorities, said: "Uddhav Bhandari... was a victim of an asylum policy that persecutes and tortures the victims of persecution and torture." Read more
Ian Herbert and Nigel Morris in the Independent, 13 March 2007 reported on the threatened deportation of a mother whose two sons served in Iraq. Joy Bowman and her daughter were due to be deported back to Jamaica, which Joy fled because her reports of domestic violence were ignored by the state. "I was proud to serve my country and the Government was happy enough for me to risk my life fighting in Iraq," said Leven Bowman, 28. "I can't understand how they can now threaten to deport my mother." Read more
Colin Firth wrote to the Guardian to complain about the threatened deportation of a nurse from the Congo. Read more
Nigel Morris in the Independent, 10 February 2007 reported on two sisters whose parents were murdered while the girls slept in the house, who were being detained in Yarls Wood detention centre and could be deported to Kyrgyzstan at any moment now. Read more
Nigel Morris in the Independent, 01 February, 2007, writes on the apparent policy of going for 'soft targets' - 'those likely to offer the least resistance' - in the Home Office's drive to reduce successful asylum claims under the streamlined New Asylum Model. With asylum decisions speeded up and an inflexible approach to asylum claims, about 19 out of 20 claims are rejected. Only about 20% of those lucky enough to qualify for appeal of their decision are successful. "...[T]he increased urgency in the system has brought complaints that the Home Office has created a series of injustices." Read more
Gethin Chamberlain in the Sunday Telegraph, 4 December 2006, asks why the UK Government is sending a gang rape victim back to Darfur, Sudan, where systematic rape has been recorded by the UN and international NGOs as a deliberate weapon used by Janjaweed militia against civilians since the conflict began in 2003. Yet the Sunday Telegraph found that in 2005, 900 out of 995 asylum claims made by Sudanese claimants were rejected. Amongst them were rape victims. Dr Halima Basheer, who worked at a clinic that treated victims of the conflict, fled to the UK after she was gang raped and imprisoned by Janjaweed militias after they learnt that she had described the rape of more than 40 young girls by the militias to aid workers: "They said to me, 'You told those people about the rape at the school. Why did you do that? You are always talking about rape, but you don't know what it is. We will teach you a lesson about what rape is.'" This article relays how disbelief and deportation of women who allege rape is the norm rather than the exception in the UK. Read more
Paul Lewis in the Guardian, October 19, reports on the House of Lords' decision to uphold a young woman from Sierra Leone's claim to asylum based on fear of female genital mutilation. The unanimous ruling by five law lords was described by one law lord as 'blindingly obvious' and rejects previous rulings that FGM does not present legitimate grounds for claiming asylum: "Lady Hale of Richmond, said the decision was significant for the "many other women in the world who flee similar fears". She said women were "just as worthy of the full protection of the refugee convention as are the men who flee persecution because of their dissident political views". Read more
Harmit Athwal, 21 September 2006, of the Institute of Race Relations, outlines the IRR's catalogue, Driven to Desperate Measures, of 221 asylum seekers and migrants who have died in the last 17 years in the UK or in attempting to reach it. This number does not include those who have settled in the UK, who have leave to remain and have died in the custody of the police, prison and psychiatric hospitals or in racially motivated attacks. Read more
Ed Vulliamy in The Observer, 17 December 2006 discussed how some asylum seekers find support from churches in the UK: "Charlie Happi Koameko is one of several mass rape victims from Africa to whom Fr Peter has been summoned. Ms Koameko was ordered to become the 18th wife of a tribal chief in Cameroon and refused. Her punishment was 17 months of incarceration, serial mass rape, whipping and cutting with chilli rubbed into the wounds. She arrived in Liverpool traumatised and pregnant by one of her rapists, only coming round when one of Fr Peter's communicants placed a French Bible beside her hospital bed. But her application for asylum was rejected and Ms Koameko was taken to Yarlswood detention centre in Berkshire for deportation last week." Read more
Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail, 13 December 2006 wrote in support of the asylum claim of Farhat Khan, who is an asylum seeker from Pakistan and a leading community worker in Manchester: "In the season of goodwill to all men - and all good women - I suggest to Immigration Minister Liam Byrne that the treatment of Farhat Khan violates the British sense of fair play. A lovely Christmas present for the Khans would be the security to live a normal life without dreading a knock at the door. Or is there really no room at the inn?" Read more
Laura Smith in the Guardian on 6 December 2006 wrote about the above report and how poor decision-making affects women asylum seekers: "Although it is estimated that at least 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK have experienced rape or sexual violence in their countries of origin, a report published yesterday found that in two thirds of cases rape claims were dismissed as fabrications." Read more
Rape and asylum: a dossier from Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project, 5 December 2006. Women raped by soldiers were told the rape they suffered was "simple dreadful lust" and therefore not persecution. Rape survivors told that it would be safe for them to return to their country of origin and live thousands of miles away from their homes. Read more
Melanie McFadyean in the London Review of Books, 16 November 2006 wrote about the rising rates of suicide among asylum-seekers in the UK: "Nusrat raza, a young Pakistani woman, was seen by a passer-by as a 'great ball of fire coming down the stairs' of her house. Raza, an asylum seeker who lived in Bradford, had recently been told that the Home Office had refused her claim to stay in the country." Read more
Diane Taylor in the Guardian, 4 November 2006 wrote about families in France who are taking in asylum seeking children to save them from deportation: "Some people look at what we're doing and say: 'You can't solve all the world's problems, you know.' That is true, but equally we can't stand by and do nothing." Read more
Natasha Walter in the Guardian, 18 October 2006 wrote about the case of "Fornah", the young woman who was finally granted asylum because she feared female genital mutilation if returned to Sierra Leone, and other women asylum seekers who flee female genital mutilation: "They could come for me at any time," Jane tells me. "What kind of a life would I have then? I know my family would circumcise me and my child. I would rather kill myself and my daughter than be sent back now." Read more
Caroline Moorhead in the Guardian on 23 August 2006 wrote a terrifying account of what is happening to asylum seekers who are deported to Uganda: "There is also Janet (not her real name) held and tortured for political activities in Kampala, who reached the UK in 2000. Refused asylum, she was deported this summer - as it happens, illegally, because her escort had switched off their mobile phones and did not receive the message from the Home Office that the deportation had been postponed on medical grounds. At Entebbe airport, she was arrested and raped. Since freed, her back is said to be covered in scars from beatings." Read more
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown on 22 May 2006 in the Independent wrote about the launch of Women for Refugee Women and how the UK government fails asylum seekers: "Last week at a meeting of Women for Refugee Women - attended by Oona King, Jenni Murray, female stars of The Bill, Juliet Stevenson - we heard stories to make the heart burst. Victims of multiple rapes, child marriages and torture are stuck in dreadful British detention centres, then put on planes back to hell. The government simply wants to deport these pitiful and damned folk, to get the targets right." Read more
Natasha Walter on 15 May 2006 in the New Statesman wrote about the situation faced by women asylum-seekers who are not believed by the Home Office: "Women such as Angelique and Farhat are being treated as beggars and criminals when they have come to this country to seek refuge." Read more
Deborah Orr on 10 May 2006 in the Independent wrote about the persecution that women suffer worldwide and why women asylum seekers should be taken seriously: "The lack of leeway given to female asylum-seeking refugees in Britain is now so great that a campaign group made up of various charities, Women for Refugee Women, is gathering a petition with a modest, unanswerable aim. "We call on the UK Government to ensure that the persecution women face, including rape, honour crimes and female genital mutilation, is taken seriously in asylum claims. We call on the Government not to make destitute, detain or deport women who are at risk of gender-related persecution." Until our Government accepts the moral logic of such a position, it is no more a believer in the rights of women than the elders in Tasleem's village." Read more
The Refugee Women's Resource Project at Asylum Aid in March 2006 published a report on how the Home Office fails to follow its own gender guidance in handling asylum claims, and showed how: "Respondents identified a culture of disbelief at the Home Office." Read more
Deborah Orr in the Independent on 1 February 2006 wrote about how failed asylum seekers are forced into destitution, and focused on "a destitute mother of three from the Democratic Republic of Congo, known as K, who claims her daughter, 7, was sexually exploited by security forces" Read more
Motherland news
Motherland in the press: a selection
Anthony Barnett on Guardian Unlimited, 11 March 2008, "Try to get in to see the play Motherland... You learn from a mother how she was separated from her newborn child and offered pills to dry up her milk," Read more
Robert Verkaik in the Independent, 02 March 2008 "Stars of British theatre, film and television will tonight turn the spotlight on what they describe as the brutal treatment of women and children seeking asylum in the UK" Read more
'Glam Happenings' on Glamour Magazine's website, 28 February 2008 "Mother's Day is all about celebrating the women who inspire us - our mums - and there's no better way to do that and help support Women for Refugee Women than heading down to the Young Vic to see Motherland" Read more
The Daily Telegraph interview Juliet Stevenson about Motherland, 18 February 2008 "How is it possible for a woman who has arrived in this country in a very brutalised state to produce medical evidence of that rape - at Heathrow? She doesn't speak the language, she's in a state of trauma, she doesn't know where her husband is, she may have left children behind. But if she doesn't provide medical evidence, she won't be believed - and she won't get refugee status." Read more
The Ham & High on Juliet Stevenson in Motherland, 08 February 2008, "The Highgate-based star of Truly Madly Deeply is set to take part in Motherland - a moving piece of theatre where actors will read the testimonies of women and children who have come to Britain seeking asylum." Read more