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Despite its tough talk on tackling sexual violence in war, Britain is failing rape victims who ask for help, says Asylum Aid
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
This year politicians in Britain have spoken out forcefully on tackling a global epidemic of sexual violence, yet there remains a glaring hypocrisy when it comes to our efforts to protect survivors who seek asylum here.
These women are too often missed out of the discussion when it comes to protection from violence. The basic protections that we consider to be obvious for British women and girls who have suffered sexual violence - such as being able to speak to trained female officers and being referred to counselling and support services - are not in place for women who have gone through the same experiences abroad, and are seeking our protection.
The United Nations’ 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence, which launched last week, is focussing on militarism. The theme fits with a growing understanding in this country about how women and girls face different and additional threats in conflict situations.
The Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, hosted in London this summer by actress Angelina Jolie and Britain’s then Foreign Secretary William Hague, produced an international protocol stipulating protections for the survivors of war-time rape so that they are protected from further traumatisation.
But if those same women flee sexual violence and war and come to the UK to seek asylum, they will not be offered the standard of support detailed in the protocol.
From South Sudan to the Democratic Republic of Congo and across the Middle East, as global conflict and displacement levels rise, women and girls are on the frontline when it comes to the impact of war, but when those women and girls come to us to seek safety, we treat them with suspicion rather than compassion.
When people talk about asylum seekers as though they had carefully calculated their movements in advance so as to benefit from the most advantageous asylum system out there, I think of the confusion of our clients when they’ve just arrived. Young girls like Jendyose* from Uganda, who made the terrifying journey here alone as a child, having lost both her parents.
When her father was abducted because of his political activities, a couple of years after her mother’s death, Jendyose went into hiding at the house of a friend. But her hiding place soon became her hell when she was raped by two men brought to the house by the friend. She ran away again, this time finding smugglers who could get her out of the country.
Jendyose was abandoned by the smugglers at a tube station in London, a survivor of sexual violence, with no idea where she was, destitute in a foreign country at the age of just 16. Jendyose had no idea how the asylum system worked, she was given no specific information and did not know that the fact that she had been raped could be relevant to her application to stay. When her application was initially refused, she sank into depression and attempted suicide. It was only with time, counselling, and legal representation from Asylum Aid, that Jendyose was able to tell her full story and was finally granted leave to remain. How can we continue to put rape survivors through this torment? How can we talk of scared children as calculating benefits cheats?
Like the many women who apply for asylum here who have experienced rape or other forms of gendered violence, Jendyose needed some basic measures to help her tell her story fully, and explain why she needed protection.
We need to give gender-sensitive information to women in the asylum system, provide them with female interviewers and interpreters and offer child care so that women don’t have to describe their ordeal in front of their children. Women who have experienced violence should be referred for counselling, and decision-makers and interpreters must receive adequate training on trauma and memory. These are absolutely basic rights that would make a huge difference to Jendyose and many others.
These are things that we already consider to be standard requirements for our own nationals, and that we are calling on other countries to provide. It is only when a woman crosses a border and asks for protection that, ironically, she falls through this protection gap in the UK system.
The 16 Days of Activism is a valuable time when women come together and demand action to protect them from violence and discrimination, but we cannot claim to be truly standing up for all women, if the experiences of those like Jendyose will be once again ignored. Asylum Aid is standing up with women across the country during these 16 days, and speaking out to ensure asylum seeking women are not forgotten.
*Name and identifying details have been changed.
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