When I first began working at Scottish Refugee Council, I was often asked to interpret for women who had just arrived from their home countries. Some of the stories they shared with us contained descriptions of violence so awful that I would struggle to understand how the women had managed to survive, to gather the resources to plan their escape, to travel to the UK and finally to be able to describe their experiences in detail to total strangers.
Eight years on and women continue to experience violence and to flee their countries as a result. And, as our recent research with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) demonstrated, women with insecure immigration status can be even more vulnerable to abuse or violence within the UK than women whose status is secure. Their lack of stable immigration status can prevent them from leaving violent situations, and can be used as a tool to create fear and confusion by abusers who seek to control them.
No easy solutions
Possible solutions to this are complex. Throughout the debate it is important not to classify all asylum-seeking women as ‘vulnerable’ or as ‘victims’- many of the women I have worked with have been neither. Nor should women in the UK sit back and imagine that we live in an earthly paradise where women’s rights and bodies are awarded respect and dignity; the shameful conviction rates for rape in the criminal justice system are testament to this. And nor should the needs of vulnerable men in the asylum system be forgotten- too often it is single young males who fall most foul of exclusionary immigration policies.
Improving the situation
However, some simple measures could improve the situation:
- asylum-seeking women who experience violence while in the UK should be given the same access to services as UK nationals;
- asylum support policies should be amended to ensure that women whose claims have been refused are not left destitute and vulnerable to exploitation;
- decision-makers should take account of the particular needs of women and ensure that they do not apply their own ‘western-centric’ views when considering the situation and life chances of women in their countries of origin; and
- most basically, asylum-seeking women should be awarded the respect and dignity we all aspire to, regardless of gender or immigration status.
