Following our 2017 Autumn Seminar, Voices of Refugee Women (VoRW), we have continued to want to show our solidarity with refugee women and highlight what life is really like for them here in the UK. Thanks to WILPF International’s Movement Building Grant we were able to produce a booklet with the aim of continuing this legacy, Tales from Women Seeking Asylum.
Starting with a narrative report of our Seminar, it details the stories of three women who came to the UK to seek asylum. You can read a copy here.
It hopes to continue raising awareness of what life is like to be a woman seeking refuge in the UK and combat the ugly rhetoric growing in prevalence in our country by giving refugee women themselves a platform to share their own stories.
Considering the recent hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood, we believe that it is of the utmost importance that we hear from refugee women themselves and promote their stories. We need to humanise these women and counter the ugly rhetoric which has been gaining traction across the country.
We also believe that the UK Government has obligations to protect these women and their human rights through various national and international human rights instruments including the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Therefore, we submitted the booklet as part of our evidence to CEDAW’s Shadow Report on England in February.
We hope that our evidence will help shed light on the reality of life for women seeking asylum in the UK and the importance of our government taking a more humane approach.
You can see our campaign materials which we shared on social media with the aim of busting myths about women refugees here, and read more about the VoRW campaign here.