“Women have gone from being considered inferior to men and viewed as property, to being considered inferior and viewed as objects.” Persephone Speaks director Ivana Ivkovic Kelley on justice for survivors of rape in war.

A few months ago I covered the Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the documentary Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia, directed by filmmaker Ivana Ivkovic Kelley. Kelley and her team followed one woman, Bakira, through Bosnia to expose the systematic rape of countless thousands of women during the war and try to bring the men who authorised, organised and perpetrated these rapes to justice. A survivor of the mass rapes herself, Bakira has become a campaigner for other victims, despite receiving death threats and being subject to harassment and intimidation by those who wish to silence her and sabotage her work.

The first campaign for Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia was successful. Filming has been completed. Kelley has now launched a second campaign, to finish post production on the film, and there are only four days left to support this. Update, on 10th Feb 2014: you did it! The campaign is succeeding, meeting and exceeding its target.

At the heart of Bakira’s work and Ivana Ivkovic Kelley’s film is a challenge to the international community to open its eyes, acknowledge and address the use of rape as a concerted strategy in war; the particular sickness, destructiveness and cruelty of rape as a type of violence; the support of rapists’ actions by a wider macho, misogynist rape culture which operates in all societies globally even in peacetime; the devastating years-long psychological, physical, cultural and social effects of rape on survivors; and the stigmatisation, punishing, abuse, denial and silencing of survivors, often by their own societies and even their own families.

As Kelley stated in the original fundraising campaign,

Females are nonstop targets during wartime, as demonstrated by the mass rapes implemented as a policy of genocide during the Bosnian war.  Because this atrocity is grossly ignored by the international community and international tribunals, this film revisits one survivor who continues to fight for justice on behalf of others all over the world.  ... The continued treatment of women around the world, especially during times of conflict, needs to be heard through as many channels as possible.  Unfortunately, war rape survivors are often seen as a problem, a by-product of war that needs to be swept under the rug.

However, the fight for justice is a hard won, waged by those who carry not just psychological and physical trauma but who have the least in terms of power, money, mobility and status. Both individually and at a mass scale, within families and within governments, within cultures and within whole societies, the trend is to punish victims and protect perpetrators, to silence victims and give perpetrators a platform, to abuse the abused and assist the abusers, to expose the victims and cover for perpetrators, to expose and question the behaviour and words of victims and condone and gloss those of the perpetrators. It is the victims who must do all the hard work, in addition to recovering personally, to gain justice – or even to be heard – while the perpetrators sit back, enjoying the victims’ torment and their own impunity. This is the case in all instances of male sexual violence, in wartime and peacetime alike.

The perpetrators and those who authorised them are fully entrenched in and enfranchised by established networks of patriarchal force. They are well-connected, well-resourced and mutually supportive. They are interested in power, not justice, and cannot be shamed morally because they are proud of what they did. If rapists did not love raping, they wouldn’t do it. If their apologists did not love rape, they would not assist and cover for rapists. Perpetrators and their apologists alike are enraged which victims of male violence speak up. However, despite their sadism and lack of shame – indeed, the shame and guilt which perpetrators should feel is transferred onto the victims – they can and must be brought publicly to justice through established international legal channels.

Persephone Speaks follows Bakira as she collects other survivors’ testimonies are seeks to have them heard in the courts in Sarajevo or the Hague. She also tracks down where some of the perpetrators live and presents this information to the courts. Commenting on the rewarding of perpetrators, Kelley wrote in the original fundraising campaign:

In many cases, the perpetrators are either awaiting trial or have been rewarded by the Serbian government for successfully running a "camp", often in the form of a promotion within the local police force.  We have witnessed incidents of this same "reward" behavior in similar conflicts around the world.  In situations such as these, many survivors have expressed anger, fear, and shock, especially when they see their attacker, years later, in high level positions or vacationing beside them on the Adriatic coast, which numerous victims have witnessed. 

The first campaign for Persephone Speaks:The Forgotten Women of Bosnia was successful. Filming has been completed. Ivana Kelly has now launched a second campaign, to finish post production on the film.

The context has obviously not changed. It beggars belief that the world community and people in general live not just in denial of this but are actively antagonistic and punitive towards survivors. One of many shocking moments during Kelley’s research has been the conversion of a rape camp into a luxury spa and hotel, whose manager dismisses survivors’ testimonies as “lies, lies, all lies.”

This is a film which must be completed and shown to the world. In the new campaign for post production funding, Kelley states,

We saw the same thing occur in Rwanda, the Congo, Liberia, Uganda, Bangladesh, Haiti, Cambodia, Cyprus, Darfur, and now in Syria... all in devastating numbers.  How survivors are treated post-conflict in one region of the world, regardless of whether it is in the heart of Europe, or the heart of Africa, and whether perpetrators continue to be brought to justice, has a huge  impact on how survivors will be treated going forward, regardless of geographical location.  The sexual violation of women erodes the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can.  Rape's damage can be devastating because of the strong communal reaction to the violation and the pain stamped on entire families. 

The campaign for post-production seeks to raise $16,000, but ideally $22,000 and is partway there. Every time I and my colleagues cover the issue of rape in war the kickback is so interesting: in amongst the perpetrator excusal, hate mail (“You wouldn’t write about rape so much if it didn’t make your cunt tingle” is one choice line from the messages I receive) and victim-blaming there is a strong seam of positive passion and support, of other victims and survivors worldwide who are determined that this story be made loud instead of being silenced. Each film or article is a door opening onto millions of untold testimonies. Whenever I write about male violence against women and girls I uncover the immense trauma and pain of survivors, and their rage. These are a form of energy in themselves, which far outshout the bleating of apologists. We do not have the hatred, violating malice and anger of perpetrators and their friends but pain, determination, truthfulness and the desire for justice are far worthier substitutes.

To support this second and final phase of the Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia campaign, I contacted Ivana Ivkovic Kelley. She very kindly gave her time to answer my questions.

Why is it so important to make Persephone Speaks: The Forgotten Women of Bosnia?

I have been haunted by the reality women and girls seem to be increasingly facing during wartime. Women and girls have transitioned from being “the spoils” of war, to part of an operational military doctrine to ruin a community, a culture, a country: they have gone from being spoils to being used as actual weapons with which to conduct genocide in some cases. This is how we know we continue to live in an extremely unjust, unfair global society in which women have gone from being considered inferior to men and viewed as property, to being considered inferior and viewed as objects.

We really should not be measuring how much things have changed for women by the number of successful women that exist in our world today, but rather by how little has changed when there are parts of our world where it is legal to commit femicide if a woman simply looks at another man, rides a bicycle, leaves an abusive husband, gives birth to a girl child; or in wartime is used as the cheapest, most destructive weapon around. It is the most destructive because raping a woman or girl is not just an attempt to kill her spirit, it is the attempt to kill the spirit of her loved ones. In turn, multiplied, this has the ability to destroy entire communities at their core. The woman, after all, is the heart of a community.

What is your particular reason for wanting to make Persephone Speaks?

I have been haunted by the stories and testimonies I translated during the last years of the war in Bosnia. I was in college in the US at the time but  knew I had to be “in it” to help in some way, so I wrote my thesis on systematic rape used as a tool of genocide, that it was the first time in history that it’s been documented as part of a plan to wipe out a people. I travelled there while the war was still going on and connected with a group in Zagreb that was assisting the [mostly] Bosnian Muslim survivors of the rape camps, travelling to refugee camps often across enemy lines, providing them with food, clothes and medical aid as well collecting testimonies for eventual use in the Hague and local criminal courts. I knew that one day I would return to document where these women are now, and what has changed, both judicially and whether those who were vocal before have given up their fight for justice.

Has it been risky to make Persephone Speaks?

Yes. From the onset we have been receiving hateful, oftentimes degrading, comments on our Facebook page as well as individual emails through our project page on Kickstarter…sometimes an individual will send me a tweet saying they would like to interview me for a story they’re doing, only to end up shouting on the other end of the phone that I better watch myself because I don’t know what I’m talking about, that it was only Serbian women who were in the camps and that they were raped by Bosnian Muslim soldiers wearing Serb uniforms…or if I knew better, I’d keep my mouth shut or the same thing will happen to me.

It hasn’t happened as often as I would expect, but I feel that it’s pretty horrible for even one person to come forward and completely deny the reality of that war, the reality of photographs by such courageous photojournalists as Andree Kaiser and Ron Haviv, the reality of testimonies and the reality of what you feel when you look into a survivor’s eyes. There’s absolutely no denying the blanket atrocities that were done by a distinct, very clear perpetrator, especially when there is documentation and there are testimonies by individual perpetrators who have been brought to justice at the Hague that yes, this is what happened.

It is so important, I feel, for a particular government to confront its past, acknowledge and apologise to the victims, survivors, their families and communities, in order for healing to work. This is what human rights champions and survivors such as Bakira will publicly state when she holds forth, risking her life, in front of a memorial at a mass grave, as the local Serb officials in what is now an ethnically cleansed town attempt to erase the word “genocide” from said memorial.

This is a pretty big problem. As certain countries attempt to enter the EU, there needs to be outside pressure from Belgium to first recognise genocide happened and for the said government to formally acknowledge and apologise. Instead, those Serb politicians in the minority who have spoken out and have acknowledged genocide and mass rape are not only the least favourite but they are, oftentimes, placed on a death list. When we were shooting footage in the ethnically cleansed town of Visegrad (now part of Republika Srpska), we were met with our own share of passive hostility: asked to shut our camera off and leave the premises as soon as we entered the lobby of Vilina Vlas (a former rape camp now spa hotel); confronted on a tour bus led by a Serbian Orthodox priest denying the genocide; even in talking to local Serbs saying that they’ve always lived here and no, there was never any massacre of hundreds on the bridge and no, there was never any rape camp here. It all ended with me having my picture taken by a local Serbian man sitting on a bench with his friends, holding up his cell phone and menacingly telling me “now we have your picture too.”

Back in the States, I’ve received hate mail from Serbian Americans, some who are successful, running such things as a publishing company. I keep stressing that this film is about what happens to women throughout the world, during times of conflict, yet it is very hard to ignore the geopolitical reality of what happened in Bosnia. When discussing what happened to the women and girls there, there is simply no escaping the military doctrine put in place by one country to ethnically cleanse the other. There are risks that simply come with the territory and I'm certainly not the first documentary filmmaker to encounter it, nor will I be the last.

What exact work remains to be done on Persephone Speaks?


We completed production in October 2013 and are now in post-production. We are having the material transcribed, then any dialogue in Bosnian translated, then we get to the heavy duty editing. We have about 40-50 hours of footage from time spent in Bosnia in 2010 and 2011 and our first meeting with Bakira, to our time there this past summer and autumn.

We are in dire need of assistance to help us cover our costly post production costs. During the editing process, we will cover archived footage, music composition, sound and eventually the transition from a rough cut to a polished cut that we will be submitting to film festivals. Our hope is for this film to have its premiere at the Sarajevo International Film Festival this coming August, 2014, as we couldn't think of a more appropriate venue.

Is there anything like else like Persephone Speaks: Forgotten Women of Bosnia?

There are similar documentary films that have come out, such as Calling the Ghosts (1996) by Mandy Jacobson and Karmen Jelincic Ross and the brilliant documentary series Women, War & Peace (2013) produced by Abigail Disney. Part One of that, I Came To Testify, is about war rape in Bosnia.

What sets mine apart is seeing the day to day struggles that a survivor and activist encounters both on a professional and personal front. Showing a woman like Bakira not just fighting the good fight but reminding an audience that these are women who love to play with their grandchildren and find a meditative, healing solace getting their hands dirty in a garden. That regardless of ethnicity, culture, language, these women are our sisters, mothers, grandmothers, and friends. When an atrocity on such a grand scale happens to women anywhere in the world, we need to help spread their call for justice. Hopefully one day, women will not be viewed as property to be killed legally or sexually trafficked en masse, we won’t be viewed as weapons of war. Until that happens, in some ways, the work will never be done.

Contribute to the final campaign, to fund post-production on Persephone Speaks: Forgotten Women of Bosnia, here.

Further articles:

• Syrian Exodus: health, help, hypocrisy (Huffington Post)
• Women, war and peace: what we can all learn from the Zimbabwean women fighting violence as elections approach (Huffington Post)
• Busting a rape myth for Mumsnet's We Believe You campaign (Mumsnet)
• Women's rights: have things really improved for women in the last 50 years? (Daily Mail)

Disclosure: I was one of the many funders in the first campaign, donating $1000 to support it. Ivana Ivkovic Kelley is a stranger to me. She is not a friend of mine. I had never heard of her before I became aware of the campaign and I have never met or spoken with her, except to ask her via email for some comments for this feature. I have no role in the making of the film and am not invested in any way in its outcome, except as a human rights journalist who cares about the issues.

Persephone Speaks: The forgotten women of Bosnia

I am urging everyone to back a major new documentary by the brilliant film-maker Ivana Ivkovic Kelley, whose project Persephone Speaks focuses on the use of rape as a war strategy. The film follows a survivor's quest to shed light on the international community's failure to acknowledge the effects this crime has on women's lives, long after the war has ended. There are only 10 days left before the fundraising campaign is over.



The project is more timely than ever, given that global awareness of this issue is rising. It's also amazing to witness the power of film-making on global politics, with William Hague stating that his consciousness was raised by Angelina Jolie's hard-hitting 2012 film In The Land of Blood and Honey, which focuses on the issue. That feature was a sombre and extremely admirable fictionalisation of real events, strongly influenced by actual witness and testimony. 

For readers who want to know more about the global issue of rape in war (although, I should add, rape and all forms of gendered sexual violence and gendered abuse are absolutely endemic in peacetime societies too, everywhere in the world, regardless of colour, class, religion, culture, language and hemisphere) then I strong recommend the Women Under Siege Project, which provide extremely gritty and exhaustive documentation, testimony and research. A trigger warning strongly applies. 

Persephone Speaks shows a survivor tracing and confronting perpetrators, testifying to the reality and aftermath of rape and seeking formal justice in the international community and courts system. As Kelley says, she wishes to

...acknowledge the effects this crime has on women's lives, long after the war has ended. Females are nonstop targets during wartime, as demonstrated by the mass rapes implemented as a policy of genocide during the Bosnian war. Because this atrocity is grossly ignored by the international community and international tribunals, this film revisits one survivor, Bakira, who continues to fight for justice on behalf of others all over the world.   

From her tiny smoke-filled office on the shrapnel-damaged outskirts of Sarajevo, to her monthly sojourns to the Hague, her goal is for perpetrators to be brought to justice. To this day, war rape survivors continue to join her group, finally sharing their stories with this woman who will ensure their testimonies are heard in the courts in Sarajevo or the Hague.  

 In many cases, the perpetrators are either awaiting trial or have been rewarded by the Serbian government for successfully running a "camp", often in the form of a promotion within the local police force. We have witnessed incidents of this same "reward" behavior in similar conflicts around the world. In situations such as these, many survivors have expressed anger, fear, and shock, especially when they see their attacker, years later, in high level positions or vacationing beside them on the Adriatic coast.  

Bakira... sets out to find where the perpetrators, named in numerous testimonies, now live, subsequently providing this evidence to the Hague and other courts.

Kelley and her team have initiated a Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000 which will enable the completion of Persephone Speaks by autumn so that it can hit the international film festival circuit when it debuts. More than $8,000 has already been pledged (disclosure: I pledged some after reading the Women's Views on News feature - Kelley is a stranger to me) but according to Kickstarter custom the full target must be reached, or nothing.

Please help. In the words of the director,

It is through projects such as these that light is shed on human rights issues. The continued treatment of women around the world, especially during times of conflict, needs to be heard through as many channels as possible. Unfortunately, war rape survivors are often seen as a problem, a by-product of war that needs to be swept under the rug. Our work will be done when the world comes together to ensure female victims of war are not forgotten and the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Be a part of making Persephone Speaks happen by becoming a backer here and showing your support on the documentary's Facebook page here.

You might also be interested in finding out about Women for Women International's March of Peace from 5th-12th July 2013, which follows a 120 km route through Bosnia and Herzegovina to Srebrenica - the exact route taken by refugees of the war.

Dinner with a rapist

This, from Change.org:

In 1992, Mike Tyson was convicted of raping an 18 year old woman and served just three years. Now Portsmouth Guildhall are describing him as a "legendary figure" - as did Sky Sports magazine last year - and promoting a dinner with him.

Local women's organisation, Aurora New Dawn, say heralding a rapist as a hero sends a dangerous message. They've started a petition on Change.org asking the Guildhall to immediately remove Mike Tyson from their programme. Click here to support their campaign. Aurora New Dawn believe that describing anyone convicted of rape as a legend or hero diminishes the importance and seriousness of rape and sexual assault.

Last year in Belfast an event with Mike Tyson was cancelled following public outcry. Aurora New Dawn believe that if enough people speak out, the Guildhall will have to reverse their decision and protect Portsmouth's reputation as a city committed to eradicating violence against women.

Will you join Aurora New Dawn and ask the Guildhall, Portsmouth to cancel the evening with Mike Tyson?

Aurora New Dawn provide services to women who've been victims of sexual and domestic violence. In recognition of their and other groups' work, Portsmouth was awarded 'White Ribbon City' status. But by inviting a convicted rapist to speak at the Guildhall, local groups believe their work is being undermined.

Click here to sign their petition calling for the event to be cancelled now.

All text (c) Change.org

UPDATE: I have now been contacted by one of the many people involved in the protest against Portsmouth Guildhall. This is what they say:

We have had no indication from the Guildhall so far that they have any intention of cancelling the event, but there have been similar campaigns in the past in other cities, and at least one that I know of was successful.

The Guildhall are currently holding the position that Tyson has 'served his time' and should now be allowed to appear in public on the basis of his boxing career. This does not hold water for the Aurora campaign team - we hold that Tyson's openly misogynist positioning in public means that his dangerous attitudes to women cannot be separated from his boxing career. Indeed, he has consistently conflated the two in order to gain publicity (for example giving interviews where he expresses incredibly violent attitudes towards women) and it is hypocritical to suggest that other people should be able to separate the two when he does not. It is not possible to separate Mike Tyson the boxer from Mike Tyson the misogynist and convicted rapist. He cannot demand that people separate the two whenever someone wants to call him up on making a living from glorifying misogyny and violence.

The writer Sarah Cheverton has reported on this issue for Women's Views on News as it has been ignored by the national media.

Rape, refusal, destitution, denial: refugees dancing at the edge of the world

Earlier this year I spent several months doing outreach work in migrants’, refugees’ and asylum seekers’ centres in London, in association with English PEN. My students were male and female, aged from twenty to over sixty, from Uganda, Cameroon, Iran, the Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and beyond. I have never met such garrulous, anarchic people. They introduced me to the useful concept of ‘international time’: lateness of anything up to 45 minutes is permissible and any chagrin on the part of the teacher is caused by grave cultural misunderstandings relating to unnecessarily rigid Anglo Saxon scheduling methods – although once, when I myself was late to turn up, I was collared by a student (literally) and dragged ruefully up the stairs into the room while the student declared with great glee, “I found Teacher on the street! And she was running!”  The class teased, argued, encouraged, remonstrated and back-slapped, trading jokes across the classroom. I taught them little but laughed a lot, in between being jovially bullied, teased and exhorted to talk about something useful, explain why ‘Van Gogh’ and ‘cough’ were pronounced similarly but ‘cough’, ‘through’, ‘rough’ and ‘slough’ were all pronounced differently from each other, intercede with various authorities on their behalf and contact the Home Office with a testimony of their ardent desire to be granted leave to stay, to work, to learn, to teach, to participate fairly and equally in British society and to help others in a similar position navigate life in a new, uncomprehending and sometimes incomprehensible country.

Yet close beneath the students’ good humour were countless experiences of brutality, which their high-spirited conversation and patient writing exercises occasionally hinted at. I had been counselled in advance not to use any journalistic cunning to coerce these women and men for their ‘stories’. The students were there for writing and composition classes. They were not to be used to elicit exciting narratives, unlocked through guile or coercion under the pretence of rightful concern, then enjoyed for the vicarious, exotic thrill they provided. They warned me themselves that if I were to ask what brought them to the UK, “You will have nightmares.” They did not want to talk about the persecution, civil and cross-border wars, terrorisation, corruption and violence that caused them to risk everything, yield all that was familiar and beloved and leave their lives and identities behind: homes, jobs, histories, studies, parents and siblings, children.

Despite their determination to focus on survival in the present, hints about their previous lives crept through as the sessions continued. As we gained each other’s trust, I learned more about the many places in the world that are unstable with violence, poisoned by corruption, soaked in spilt blood, tormented by trauma, betrayed and exploited (or split into warring factions) by their own rulers, intimidated by aggressors and divided by countless inequalities and abuses. I saw the effect on ordinary people, not rulers, not activists, certainly not the high elite or the privileged, and the way environments of extreme danger and violence had forced each of these people to act with unimaginable bravery in leaving. They had to change their lives in every way, in an attempt to save their lives. I have written an account of those revealing and transformative months, composed with my students’ blessing and featuring some of their own testimonies, and it will be published in a forthcoming book, to be announced next year.

I also learned about strength, survival and resistance from the asylum seekers, refugees, displaced and undocumented people I worked with. In many cases, their treatment in the UK matched their mistreatment in their home countries, with the cruel addition that their testimonies were dismissed as lies. The majority of my students had not been granted indefinite leave to stay, permission to work or study, the provision of stable housing or any sustainable means of support. Some were caught in a years-long limbo, awaiting a final decision on their status from the Home Office. Others were or had been homeless. Many had been refused permission to stay and were awaiting deportation. Many were living on the kindness of friends and near-strangers, walking for miles (or taking interminable bus journeys) from the further parts of Greater London to reach my classes, living on five pounds or less a day. Many were working illegally and in exploitative, sometimes dangerous, unstable and heavily underpaid conditions as factory labourers, unskilled building site workers, cleaners and casual help. Many had been persecuted, prosecuted, incarcerated in prisons and detention centres, bullied and harassed by officials of various kinds. All were intelligent, politicised, professional, multi-lingual. Many were educated to college or university level. All wanted to work legitimately – in fact, they were desperate to do so. All were affected mentally and physically by the small, crushing humiliations, degradations, frustrations and limitations of daily life in a society that did not see them, help them, acknowledge them, respect them, listen to them or believe them. The class of twenty roared with laughter and recognition when one man described his Home Office interview, when his account of what he had witnessed and experienced in the Congo was met the with words, “Everything you’re telling me is [….the whole class chimed in…] a story you’ve just made up.”

While all spoke about the violence they had witnessed, many of the women approached me during breaks in my teaching sessions and talked specifically about the additional issue of gendered brutality. “If we go back they will take us and rape us and kill us. Please believe me, I am telling the truth,” said one.

I did believe her. I do believe her, as I believe all survivors of sexual violence, violation and abuse. But so often the Home Office does not. The disbelieving of survivors of gendered brutality is endemic all over the world, in all societies in all hemispheres, in peacetime and wartime, crossing cultures, languages, religions and regimes. The denial of victims’ testimonies is as ubiquitous as the violence itself, and is part of it and reinforces and redoubles it. To deny victims is to support perpetrators, to aid perpetrators and to tacitly promise all perpetrators that they can continue to rape and abuse women with impunity.

Now the charity Women for Refugee Women has released Refused, a major research project which uncovers extremely disturbing evidence about the treatment of women seeking asylum in the UK and the gendered violence they have been subjected to before their arrival here. It casts a critical light on the Home Office’s treatment of these women, which represents in intensified and concentrated form the attitudes always brought to bear upon sexual violence survivors in all contexts. The consequences of victim-denying in this specific case, however, are even more severe than is usual.

The following factual material is taken from Women for Refugee Women’s full report, Refused, and from the report summary. The research was carried out by Women for Refugee Women, Women Asylum Seekers Together (WAST) London, WAST Manchester, Women Seeking Sanctuary Advocacy Group Cardiff, Embrace in Stoke on Trent, Bradford Refugee & Asylum Seeker Stories, the Women’s Group at the Young Asylum Seeker Support Service in Newport and the Refugee Women’s Strategy Group in Glasgow.

Along with other countries, the UK has made a commitment to give asylum to those fleeing persecution if their own state cannot protect them. Refused explores the experiences of 72 women who have sought asylum in the UK.

• 49% had experienced arrest or imprisonment as part of the experiences they were fleeing
• 66% had experienced gender-related persecution, including sexual violence, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.
• 52% had experienced violence from soldiers, police or prison guards
• 32% had been raped by soldiers, police or prison guards
• 21% had been raped by their husband, family member or someone else
• Others were fleeing forced marriage, forced prostitution and female genital mutilation
• Altogether, 66% had experienced some kind of gender-related persecution and 48% had experienced rape

Almost all these women (67 out of 72) had been refused asylum.

• Of these, 75% said that they had not been believed
• 67% had then been made destitute (left without any means of support or accommodation)
• 25% had then been detained.
• Not a single woman felt able to contemplate returning to their country of origin.

The consequences for these women were severe:

• Of those who had been made destitute, 96% relied on charities for food and 56% had been forced to sleep outside.
• 16% had been subjected to sexual violence while destitute and a similar number had worked unpaid for food or shelter.
• One woman said, “I was forced to sleep with men for me to have accommodation and food. I was forced to go and be a prostitute for me to survive.”
• When asked what they felt about being refused asylum, 97% said they were
• Depressed, 93% were scared and 63% said they had thought about killing themselves.

One woman said, “They kill me already. I feel like the walking dead.”

The director of Women for Refugee Women, writer Natasha Walter, highlights the failure of the government to respond to the needs of survivors of gender-based violence "who have survived rape and abuse [and] are refused asylum and experience destitution, detention and despair in this country.”

Debora Singer, Policy and Research Manager at Asylum Aid, said: “The harrowing stories told in Refused are a crucial reminder of how often women are failed by our asylum system. These are women fleeing unspeakable violence, yet they are routinely let down when they turn to the UK for help.” She added, “Women are routinely, arbitrarily disbelieved by officials when they explain what has happened to them. We know that women are more likely than men to see asylum decisions overturned on appeal, so woeful is Home Office decision-making. And we know that the government hasn’t honoured its promise to introduce meaningful gender-sensitive reforms. As a result, women are left destitute on our streets, exposed to exploitation and abuse. The whole system desperately needs reform, and it needs it now.”


The reform of the asylum process and the issues it raises must not be hijacked by the tabloid press, by fear, by racism and xenophobia, by reductive thinking, by generalisation, by meaningless rhetoric or by ignorance. In order to create a progressive, just and peaceful world society campaigners, politicians and leaders must publicly challenge the poisonous myths (about sexual violence, about race and culture and about immigration) which keep inequality in place and support abusive, cruel and inhumane practices.

The report advocates several measures including ministerial leadership and influence in challenging the Home Office culture of disbelief; improvements in the quality of asylum decision-making by everyone up to judge level, through training, guidance and consciousness raising about the nature and impact of gender-related persecution; access to free quality legal advice and representation for all asylum seekers; a ceasing of the destitution of those refused asylum; granting asylum seekers permission to work if their case has not been resolved within six months or they have been refused but temporarily cannot be returned through no fault of their own; welfare support for all asylum seekers who need it, until the point of return or integration.

The report states:

The numbers of people entering the UK to claim asylum are not large. Many of the women who come here to seek refuge have fled persecution that we would struggle to imagine, and are desperate to find safety. It is time that we built a just and humane asylum process, in order to give every woman who comes to this country fleeing persecution a fair hearing and a chance to rebuild her life.

Women for Women International, in association with many other groups focused on the rights and welfare of asylum seekers, asks the government to heed the findings in Refused, note the upsurge in campaigning and concern around the issue and reform the asylum process in such a way that women are respectfully heard, understood by informed and enlightened listeners, believed and then treated with humanity and dignity. These women (and also their brothers, fathers, sons) are victims, not perpetrators; survivors, not criminals; refugees and escapees, not parasites and exploiters.

A criticism of asylum seekers is that they want something for free. I agree with that. They demand an awful lot which is free: kindness, basic humanity, faith and trust. And they deserve to be given it.

Notes and links:

• Women for Women International have produced a short film which summarises the issues in Refused. Click here to view it.
• The foreword to Refused has been written by Baroness Helena Kennedy QC and the report launch was hosted by Baroness Joan Bakewell at the House of Lords late last month.
• Novelist Esther Freud has written an interview with a refugee woman for Refused, while Livia Firth, Mariella Frostrup, Oona King and Juliet Stevenson have recorded filmed messages of support.
• The Times featured the story of Saron, a refugee from Ethiopia who had been imprisoned, raped and tortured in her home country, but who was refused asylum in the UK
• Natasha Walter spoke on Woman's Hour on Radio 4 with a woman who fled Ethiopia after she was imprisoned and beaten.
• Comedian and campaigner Kate Smurthwaite wrote about the issue in The Independent.
• There was further coverage by Sky News, MSN, The Scotsman, ITV, The Huffington Post, Belfast Telegraph and Mumsnet.
• Women for Refugee Women enables women refugees themselves to speak out. Find out about Journeys, which tells the story of Saron and Alicia, who were refused asylum, detained and threatened with deportation; Motherland, which tells the stories of women and children detained at Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre; and the Break the Silence event which showcased Lydia Besong’s play How I Became an Asylum Seeker.
• Finally let me express my admiration for Natasha Walter, who not only talks the talk and writes the rights, she also rights the wrongs and walks the walk.