Asylum: no woman should be missed out

A few weeks ago I wrote a long feature entitled Rape, refusal, destitution, denial: dancing at the edges of the world, about my experience working with asylum seekers' and refugees' centres in London and describing some of the incredible work of Natasha Walter's charity Women For Refugee Women. In particular, WFRW highlighted the experiences of rape and other forms of gendered violence survived by a number of female asylum seekers who had been refused asylum in the UK. You can read the full feature here.

I have now been contacted by another amazing and important charity, Asylum Aid, whose new campaign No Woman Should Be Missed Out calls for far more detailed commitments to protect the safety of women seeking asylum in the UK. The following text is from their press release.

No Woman Should Be Missed Out is particularly timely given that in November the government is due to report on the progress of its Strategy to End Violence Against Women and Girls. The strategy was published shortly after the coalition came to power and promised work across government departments to address the causes and consequences of violence against women, providing “cohesive and comprehensive” action in the UK and overseas. Asylum Aid say it "dedicates just one, heavily-qualified sentence to the needs of women seeking asylum."

Debora Singer, Policy and Research Manager at Asylum Aid, said:

The government’s Violence Against Women and Girls strategy provides a vision of how women’s basic rights should be protected in modern Britain and around the world. So it is absurd that thousands of women each year on our doorstep are largely missed out.

Documents like this one help decide policy priorities and how to allocate funds. We see women who have fled from rape and sexual violence overseas and claimed asylum, yet end up destitute on our streets and in danger of yet more abuse.

We aren’t asking for special treatment – just the same rights as everyone else. These women cannot be missed out from government thinking.

 

NOTES:

• Asylum Aid is a registered charity that provides free legal advice and representation to asylum seekers and campaigns for their fair treatment in the UK. The Women’s Project at Asylum Aid provides legal advice specifically for women asylum seekers, backed up by a programme of research, advocacy, outreach and training.
• You can read more about Missed Out here.
• The Charter of Rights of Women Seeking Asylum is co-ordinated by Asylum Aid, and has been endorsed by more than 300 organisations including Oxfam, Liberty and Amnesty International. The previous campaign launched under the Charter was Every Single Woman in 2009.
• The government’s Call to End Violence Against Women and Girls was published in November 2010, and can be downloaded here.

The Swimmer, a film by Orange longlisted author Roma Tearne

The Swimmer: the true story is a chamber piece shot entirely on an iPhone. The film grows out of the Suffolk sky, landscape, the fragile coastline, and the birds that migrate to the marshes every year. But the starting point for this mock documentary is the work of Sri Lankan novelist, Roma Tearne. Her fourth novel, The Swimmer, long listed for this year’s Orange Prize, deals with the barely reported anguish perpetrated by the civil war in her country, together with the subsequent plight of those fleeing as refugees. Roma Tearne is writing a blog about the filming process which you can read here.

The film includes brutal footage from that conflict and then goes on to explore the boundary between fact and fiction. It is not, however, an adaptation of the novel; instead it complements the book by developing its own self-contained narrative. The action is played out by a tiny cast of local untrained actors, and accompanied with a soundtrack created by composer and sonic artist Paul Whitty. For this he has employed sounds recorded along Suffolk coast integrated into a score by Franz Shubert and Ceremonial music from Sri Lanka.

The catalogue includes texts by the artists, Professor John Tollach from the University of NSW, Agnes Kohlmeyer and the sponsors: Adnams of Suffolk, Andrea Hill of Suffolk County Council and Jane Basham CEO of Ipswich and Suffolk Council for Racial Equality.

The Swimmer: the true story will be shown at this year’s Venice Biennale at the Palazzo Zenobio from June 3rd. Thereafter it will be screened at the DSC South Asian Festival in London in October and at the Delhi Festival, India in 2012. For more details click here.