There are a lot of international days to observe. Really, it depends which ones you count. But even a very conservative tally means there’s over 200 days a year where we should focus on a particular worthy cause.
As much as we would love to, Scottish Refugee Council cannot give them all a mention on the blog – if we did, we would never have time to tell you about the Glasgow Girls or our destitution campaign. But the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is a day that we think deserves particular attention.
The broad message of the day is enough in itself to warrant attention; the character and scale of violence against women around the world is utterly appalling. The UN estimates that at least one-in-three women around the world will be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime and the abuser will usually be someone she knows personally. Despite the world becoming a less violent place, the scale of violence against women remains nothing short of endemic.
Refugee women’s experience must be recognised
The way gendered violence impacts our work drives us to highlight today. Of the more than 20,000 refugees in Scotland at least a third, possibly even more, are women.
The numbers are inexact because, often due to cultural norms and the UK Border Agency’s own failings, many women are not registered as asylum claimants in their own right. Instead they are relegated to being registered as dependents on a husband, father or partner’s claim.
Deprived of their own individual claim, some women find themselves trapped in abusive relationships, unaware that their right to safety and asylum is not dependent on anyone else.
Asylum process fails women
Furthermore, when they do lodge independent claims women are astonishingly poorly served by the asylum process. Unfortunately the UK Border Agency has consistently shown a disinterest in the gender specific claims of female refugees.
An institutional misunderstanding of the use of rape as a weapon of war, the practices of female genital mutilation and forced marriage, and the nature and power of family, tribal and community ties in perpetuating gender-based persecution means that female claims are rejected at first assessment 87 per cent of the time. Shockingly half of these people are granted asylum following appeals.
It is important in the context of our campaign against destitution to note that a higher proportion of refugees facing destitution, at any given time, are women than the proportion of women claiming asylum overall.
A survey of destitute people getting help from support organisations in the city over one week in March 2012 found at least five pregnant women destitute, with no support. All of this means that women who have faced persecution abroad and arrive in Scotland to find safety, are more likely to be put in positions of vulnerability and suffer the most as a consequence.
International Day for the Eradication of Violence against Women provides us with a useful opportunity to examine one of the most glaring failures, not only of human rights globally but of our asylum system locally. Please remember and recognise the asylum seeking women that are so often forgotten in an inhumane asylum system.
