PRESENTATION BY ALIYA, to the closing of the EWL European Campaign on Women Asylum Seekers

Brussels, 15 December 2001 

  First I want to thank EWL for inviting me and making my participation possible.  Before I start I want to highlight the following: -

·        Being a refugee or asylum seeker is a legal status provided by UN Refugee Convention.

·        The Geneva Convention is a result of the Second World War.  At one time most European were seeking refuge and it is that sense of solidarity of helping each other and of providing refuge to those who were in need that helped the developing Europe of today.  Those values of solidarity to provide refuge are the values that Europe of today should be proud of not ashamed of.   

·        Being a refugee or asylum seeker is a temporary status that is not a permanent and not part of their humanity. It is a process in which one can be an asylum seeker then a refugee on a later stage a resident or even a citizen otherwise the application can be rejected and the individual will then be deported. 

  These facts are important to be highlighted before I give account of my own reflection. My personal experience is going to be a mixture between the general and the personal.  It is not a unique story in fact a great number of refugees can see themselves through my story.

  Refugees and asylum seekers are forced to leave their country not of choice but because of fear of persecution.  And when they/I started my journey I was not planning to end up in the UK. I did not plan my movements in fact I didn’t have time to pack, rethink or even to organize my movements. It was not a matter of choice my movements were dictated by necessity. I left everything my belongings, home car everything as if I was going to the nearest newsagent to buy a newspaper and come back.  When I was pushed, kicked out of the womb of my mother country I was crying and the whole scenery is still vivid in my memory.  Although you can see that I am not crying right now but since I left my country I am always crying inside.  I left my world, family and friends and arrived to the unknown. No body heard about the social welfare system; what mattered then was personal safety and what drove me/us to Europe was the fact that we were brought up to believe that the West is the heaven of democracy, Human Right and justice.  And because the history of colonisation in our country we tend to relate to the colonial country as we look to the acquaintance.

  From the start we found that asylum seekers were criminalized even before they arrived in the UK.   They are regarded as a flood of bogus refugees coming to grasp the wealth of the country.  The media play a major role in portraying refugees in a negative way. They tend to portray the situation in a personal manner in such a way that what they get is the ‘other (native) person’s personal loss; ‘they’ (refugees) will take your wealth, job etc.  Those who made it to Europe are the educated and represent a very tiny portion of millions of the refugee population who seek asylum in the neighboring countries.  No body says of them that they are bogus or after the social welfare benefits as those hosting countries are poor and have no social welfare system.  Does these factors ring any bell as counter evidence of the accusation that asylum seekers are bogus?  The media portray asylum seekers to be and look different for the purpose to identify them as easy target to be discriminated against as well to be humiliated as a mean to deter others from coming. They dehumanise and humiliate them by hurting their dignity; the wound of humiliation never fades.

  What is it that appeals to me is it the technological advancement in the West?  My country is beautiful with its diversity with its different rainbow shade, with the people who are hospitable and loving human beings, with the extended family that provide you with the sense of security and safety.  They were there for you at the time of need.  All my livelihood, childhood, studying years with all its marks how we discover the world, how we laughed, sang and how we were adventurous, the nights in the open space and the sky is the limit I used to believe that the moon is specially smiling at me sharing my secrets, encouraging and comforting me during the difficult times.  My place, my room, my car, my friends, my future the essence of my humanity my country was paradise to me and paradise is what we believe in.  Now I miss everything; a hurt human being hollow from inside.

  If you take women asylum seekers the situation is much worse. They were invisible in the public eye and the most marginalized.  They face different barriers, limitation and different forms of discrimination than males within the same group.  Also for the media they tend to see them as mainly dependant on their spouse.  They suffer in silence domestic violence, harassment and other forms of abuse. They may also suffer language barriers or cultural insensitivity that may also deter them to pursue their rights.  And the language they need is the language that facilitates their daily lives how to tell the doctor that she has a stomach ache, how to communicate with the teacher of her children and the language to enable her access the transport and to buy her necessities. In fact they need to be informed on their rights what to expect and how and where to complain if something went wrong. They lack the knowledge on their legal and civil rights.

  Gender-based problems are not considered to be a ground for asylum i.e. asylum determinate by EU countries.  Such situation is affecting women coming from special countries who suffer from body violence such as female Gentile mutilation, forced marriage that means more burden on women specially if there is sexual abuse and/or rape involved.  Women tend to burry such humiliations deep inside themselves because of cultural and religious prejudices and the fear of honor killings or to be stigmatised within the family and the community.  Thus when they open up at a later stage and most likely after counseling, the immigration officers tend to reject their claim on the grounds that they have changed their stories.  There are lots of issues that need to be looked at from the processes of interviews right through to their settlement including their daily activities. Thus there is a need to train officers in the frontline from immigration, social, welfare and employments officers on gender related issues and cultural sensitivity.

  In addition refugee women lack the knowledge of the system, specialised skills which make them subject to the exploitive labour market practices.  Also lacking the appropriate education and the language barriers make them unable to help their kids with their homework and school assignments, mothers feel more and more alienated from their children along with their feeling of alienation from the whole society.  This will create a parenting gap and help increase stress, depression and mental health problems for refugee women.  The mental health of refugee women is an important and should be considered as a priority need for the well being of the whole society. Investing in these areas today will help create better societies for tomorrow.  There is a need to adopt different policies to ensure the future integration of this population we need to start now because future start from today.

Presentation: Sophia, Refugee Women’s Resource Project

 I work as a Research Officer for the Refugee Women’s Resource Project , a sub-project of Asylum Aid and the idea of which emerged from the Refugee Women’s Legal Group work and thinking on how to promote the rights of women asylum seekers.

 I would like to illustrate through some of RWRP’s experience why it is so important that ‘gender guidelines be adopted in the UK but also at the European level.

  RWRP is an integrated project which encompasses casework for women asylum seekers only, outreach work all over the UK and research work.  The information used by the research unit is partly provided through the work of the outreach worker and the caseworker.  The aim of the research I conduct is to highlight the impact UK asylum policies have on women asylum seekers both in terms of procedures (access to the asylum process) and determination of their claims (substantive issues) and how the system discriminates against women asylum seekers. 

  One such policy was the dispersal scheme implemented since April 2000 and for instance I was able to interview an Afghani women who was dispersed with her four children to Middlesborough, North of England.  It was the middle of the winter and she and her family were put in an accommodation with no heating and no electricity on their first night of arrival .  Although she was told someone would come to help them the next morning, nobody turned up. Her children were hungry and although she did not speak English, she decided to go out herself and tried to find the arrival point.  Later on she was also put in an accommodation with an Afghani man that she did not know, the refugee agency that accommodated them just presumed they were from the same family because they were from the same country. He threatened to commit suicide if the woman’s daughter would not marry him.

  These are the sort of stressing conditions that women asylum seekers have to suffer when dispersed.  I will not go into details of the problems the dispersal and voucher schemes generated for women, there are many including the inability to get nappies for infants, inadequate accommodation, safety issues, access to legal representation, and other services.

  I would just like to provide some examples of what obstacles women asylum seekers face when the Home Office makes a decision on their claims using the first study we produced which was a review of Home Office refusals letters to Kenyan women asylum seekers.  The study (referring to women’s cases only) is the first of its kind in the UK.

  Kenya as an asylum seekers producing country was interesting for two reasons in particular: It has very strong historical, economical and diplomatic links with the UK (even the Foreign Office describes the relationship between the two countries as one of mutual support in international fora).  Kenya is a country where torture is rampant and women’s torture in the form of sexual assault in prison, police stations, detention centres, etc… is almost 100% systematic (incl. rape, insertion of objects or hot pepper in the vagina, etc ).  One woman told us that when state agents came to her house to ‘interrogate’ her, she hid her daughter because she knew her daughter would otherwise be raped.  She was herself subjected to rape even though she was pregnant at the time.

  One of the shocking findings (but not so surprising) is that the Home Office completely dismissed women’s experiences of torture.  On the basis that ‘there was a vociferous human rights debate’ going-on in Kenya, they could not have possibly have been tortured and raped or sexually assaulted.  No consideration whatsoever was given to the women’s experience.

  Also these forms of torture were said to be the result of ‘misbehaviour’ from individuals who happened to be police officers or prison wardens.

  The study also revealed that women’s experiences of persecution for imputed political reasons were totally dismissed.  Many women in Kenya are being persecuted because they belong to the Kikuyu tribe traditionally affiliated to the opposition.  So when their husbands, brothers, or fiancés are in hiding because sought after by the authorities, women and their children at home are the target of state violence and oppression. 

  Despite the fact that they suffer dearly from being associated with members of the opposition, their claims are dismissed.  A muslim woman was raped by state agents because her husband was a member of an Islamic party opposed to the government.  She was subsequently rejected by her husband and his family.  When she claimed asylum, it was only in the court that the fact that she had been raped was revealed.  The Home Office questioned why she had waited so long to reveal this information and said that she was lying, she was fabricating the story.   Women are expected to reveal such painful experience at the soonest opportunity.  It is hard enough for women from any society to talk about this, let alone a woman from a traditional society who had feelings of shame and guilt and had also suffered rejection from her own community.

  Again branding women asylum seekers liars on such basis demonstrate the way the Home Office completely dismisses their specific experiences.

Women’s experiences are also dismissed because the activities they undertake are not deemed deserving the label ‘political’ by the Home Office. So the Home Office decides that a woman distributing leaflets for a political party in Kenya or a woman activist defending women’s rights are not ‘important’ enough for them to get the ‘attention’ of the authorities in the form of persecution.  Yet a close study of the way women are being oppressed in Kenya would have provided many clues to the contrary.

  Internal Flight is branded an alternative with blatant disregard for the woman’s safety if she had to be returned to her country of origin. Apart from the risk of further persecution, a woman’s safety is at risk because when she fled she left behind family ties, she lost access to economic resources through family and community links (land for instance), she may have lost her social status too.  In many countries, women are not accepted socially because they are travelling or living on their own and as a result they can be condemned to a ‘social death’.  In the great majority of countries where refugee women come from there is no welfare system.  In this situation, women may have to engage in activities they would not have engaged in in other circumstances, such as domestic labor, prostitution or any other activities that put her health and safety at risk.  Yet many women are told that they had the ‘internal flight’ option.  Why did they not choose it???

  I would like to stress also that women’s experience of persecution is often very complex and their claims might be more difficult to argue because of lack of background information.  Many countries have ratified international conventions that guarantee a number of human rights for men and women, but what does actually happen in practice locally for women?  What are their status in the community, how are their rights defended in the courts? 

  We have recently a case of a woman whose father is a very high dignitary in a country led by a dictatorship.  She was sent to France to study but she fell in love with a man whose family is traditionally associated with the opposition in her country.  Her father told her to stop her relationship and  told her to ‘give up’ her children who would be ‘looked after’ (i.e. killed) when returned to the country.  She refused to do so and the father of the children went back to try to conciliate with her father but he disappeared and not even his family knows what happened to him.  Her father arranged for all her residency status in France to be withdrawn and even though she was entitled to access to social services because her two children were born in France, she was refused any form of social help.  She went into hiding and then fled to the UK.

  Yet she was told by the Special Adjudicator, the judge dealing with asylum claims in court, that the father has probably abandoned her and her children and that it was very unlikely that  French authorities would be ‘influenced’ by an African dignitary.

  The complexity of women’s claims mean that access to adequate and good quality legal representation is crucial to defend the case.  Because women’s experience of persecution is not recognised specifically under the terms of the Convention, women asylum seekers need lawyers that can articulate the arguments reflecting the complexity of their cases.  There are usually a number of interlinked issues such as state protection, social and political status, sexual violence, mental and intellectual integrity, children’s rights… 

  Yet access to good legal representation for asylum seekers in the UK is a major problem, let alone access to lawyers who are aware of how the experiences of women asylum seekers differ from that of men, and how to deal with it in the context of the claim for asylum.

  Now UK is an exception, there are countries in Europe with no access to legal representation at all…  Some countries don’t recognise persecution other than that committed by state agents (such as France).  From the way women asylum seekers are treated throughout the process (access to information in relation to their legal rights, accommodation, social support, etc.), to the way their claim is dealt with, the experience of women’s asylum seekers is often extremely diverse and very often not a positive one.

  Lastly, I would like to stress that it is important as women’s organisations or human rights organisations that we act to condemn and oppose openly our own countries’ foreign policies (whether it be in the form of political, economical, military or other forms of support) because many women asylum seekers and refugee women would not have to come to our countries if that was not for the impact such policies have.  I would like to provide one example only to illustrate this.  In Congo-Brazzaville, French interests in the production of petrol have been massive ever since the independence and they are continuously massively protected by Elf and as a result the country has been through several civil wars especially since 1997.  Thousands and thousands of women have been raped by militias armed by the French to ensure that their ‘protégé’ would regain political leadership in that country. In fact women and girls were raped by members of all the militias that are fighting.

  We have to deal with the roots of the problem too and these roots lie in too many cases in Western and European Foreign policies implemented in asylum seekers producing countries.

  Last but not least, gender guidelines are essential because women asylum seekers’ rights are women’s rights and human rights.