1. Women for Refugee Women works closely with women who have come to the UK to seek asylum to challenge the injustices of the asylum system. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to submit evidence to this inquiry. Our response is focused on the third of inquiry’s overarching themes, meeting the needs of survivors of sexual violence in conflict. Specifically, we address the question asked by the call for evidence, ‘what evidence is there on the effectiveness of the Government’s support, assistance and reparation for survivors of sexual violence in conflict?’
2. As an organisation working in the UK, we are specifically concerned with the support and assistance provided by the Government to survivors of sexual violence in conflict who subsequently seek asylum in the UK. Around 6,000 women claim asylum in their own right in the UK every year, and many of these are survivors of torture, rape and sexual violence, including sexual violence in conflict.
3. We welcome the Government’s international work in the area of preventing sexual violence in conflict. However, we are very concerned about the way women who have experienced sexual violence who subsequently come to the UK to seek protection are treated, as we set out below. We set our concerns out under four main headings: asylum decision-making; asylum support; destitution; and immigration detention.
Our work is currently predominantly focused on the use of immigration detention for women seeking asylum, and one of the key policy reforms we want to see implemented is an end to the detention of survivors of rape and sexual violence. We end our evidence with a case study on the experience of one of the women in our network, who fled sexual violence in conflict and was subsequently held in immigration detention in the UK before being granted refugee status.
4. As highlighted above, many of the women who come to the UK to seek asylum are survivors of torture, rape and sexual violence, including sexual violence in conflict. While it is not possible to extrapolate from the following statistics the prevalence of survivors of sexual violence in conflict among women seeking asylum in the UK, it is nevertheless worth noting that across our three research reports (Refused, 2012; Detained, 2014; and I Am Human, 2015) between half and three quarters of the women we spoke to who disclosed their experiences of persecution said they had been raped in their countries of origin, and between a quarter and a third said they had been raped by soldiers, police or prison guards.
5. Our research, alongside that of organisations including Asylum Aid, has documented the serious problems women seeking asylum, including those who have experienced sexual violence in conflict, face in getting their need for protection recognised by the Home Office.
6. Women who have survived sexual violence can find it extremely difficult to disclose what has happened to them. The difficulty of describing the trauma they have experienced is exacerbated by what can be a hostile and intimidating environment, including because they may be expected to disclose their experiences to a male interviewer, or with the help of a male interpreter. As childcare is not consistently available at asylum interviews, they may also be expected to talk about their experiences with their children present. Moreover, although the impact of trauma on memory has been well evidenced, and it is now well known that going through traumatic experiences can significantly affect a person’s ability to give an accurate and chronological account of events without discrepancies, this is often not taken into account by decision-makers and apparent ‘mistakes’ and inconsistencies can result in a claim being refused.
7. Our research and that of others has also pointed to a lack of knowledge of gender-based persecution among decision-makers, and thus lack of recognition of women’s experiences in their countries of origin as constituting persecution. Decision-makers may also rely on inaccurate information about women’s home countries, or may use country of origin information reports inaccurately and inappropriately, and women may also have poor or no legal representation. A number of research reports have also documented a ‘culture of disbelief’ within the Home Office, and women we work with have spoken to us about this time and again: three quarters of the women we interviewed for our report Refused said they were refused asylum because they weren’t believed by Home Office staff.
8. The majority of the women we spoke to for Refused (67 out of 70) had had their claims for asylum rejected. It is important to highlight that a significant proportion of decisions on women’s asylum claims are overturned on appeal: research by Asylum Aid found that 42% of the decisions they looked at were overturned on appeal, compared with a rate of 28% for asylum cases generally.
The refusal of their asylum case has a significant negative impact on women who have already been through serious trauma and are extremely vulnerable. Women who are refused asylum may be made destitute or held in detention (see below), and refusal also has a serious effect on women’s mental health. Ninety-seven per cent of the women we spoked to for Refused whose claims had been rejected said they were depressed, 93% said they were scared, and 63% – almost two-thirds – said they had thought about killing themselves.
9. We recognise, as set out in the Women’s Asylum Charter submission to this inquiry, that UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) has included recommendations from the Protection Gap campaign in its Asylum Gender Action Plan to help improve women’s experiences of the asylum decision-making process. However, as the Charter Group response also notes, progress in this area is very slow and UKVI has limited resources for this. Much, therefore, remains to be done.
10. Those seeking asylum are not usually allowed to work while waiting for the outcome of their claim, and asylum support levels are very low. The current weekly rate of Jobseeker’s Allowance is £73.10; for those awaiting a decision on their asylum claim, the comparable rate is £36.95 – so, those seeking asylum are expected to survive on half the amount those on mainstream benefits receive. The women we work with find it very difficult to subsist on this, and they struggle, for instance, to fulfil their basic health and nutritional needs. Additionally, a reduction in the amount of financial support given to families who are seeking asylum was introduced in August, so women seeking asylum who have children now receive significantly less than they did previously. For instance, a single parent with one child now receives a total of £73.90 in weekly financial support, compared with the previous amount of £96.90.
11. Women who are refused asylum but who are unable to return home may, in limited circumstances, be deemed eligible for Section 4 support, which is cashless support (on a payment card) of £35.39 per week. This type of financial support causes particular difficulties and hardship because of its inflexibility, as the payment card can only be used in certain shops and leaves women without cash for, for instance, buses or phone calls.
12. The difficulties of living on asylum support are illustrated by the experience of one of women in our network, a survivor of torture from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who has been refused asylum and is preparing a fresh claim with the assistance of Freedom from Torture. She has two young children, including a son who has recently started school. She is currently eligible for Section 4 support, and she is accommodated in NASS (Home Office) accommodation which provides only one room for all of them, in a house in which they must share the bathroom and kitchen with other residents, and which is overrun with cockroaches.
On her current support she struggles to ensure that her children have the most basic of day-to-day necessities, including food and toiletries, let alone items that her son now needs in order to attend school such as the correct school uniform and the bus fares to take him to school. We assist her with small cash handouts when we can but we are aware that her children are living well below the poverty line, and that this is having a serious impact on her mental health as well as her children’s health and wellbeing.
13. The Home Office position is that if an individual has their asylum claim refused, they should take steps to return to their country of origin. However, as highlighted above, women seeking asylum face significant problems in getting a fair hearing and many women whose claims are refused have very real and justified fears about returning to their home countries. Although, as highlighted above, in limited circumstances the Home Office will continue to provide low-level cashless support to those whose claims have been refused, the majority of women we work with who are refused asylum have experienced destitution: they are refused accommodation and financial support.
14. Our research has documented the impact of being made destitute on women seeking asylum in the UK. In Refused, 45 women who had been made destitute told us about their experiences of living without any support in the UK. Of these:
Women we spoke to told us about the serious impact of destitution on their physical and mental health. Some also explained that they had become involved in prostitution or had engaged in transactional sex to survive while destitute.
15. We have real concerns about the sexual violence, exploitation and abuse that asylum-seeking women who are made destitute are exposed to. We have spoken to women who have been raped or sexually assaulted while destitute who have told us that they haven’t reported it to the police because they are afraid to talk about their situation, and are worried about the possible consequences for them of going to the police. Women have also told us how they have remained in violent and abusive relationships to avoid going back on the streets. By driving women who have been refused asylum but who cannot return to their home countries into destitution, the Government is making women who have already fled rape and sexual violence vulnerable to further abuse.
16. The Home Office appears to think that making those who have been refused asylum destitute encourages them to return to their countries of origin. However, our research for Refused found that despite being made destitute, not a single woman we spoke to felt able to contemplate voluntary return. This was also the case when we carried out follow-up research with 30 women a year later, even though some had experienced prolonged periods of destitution, including one for 13 years, one for eight years, one for six years, and others for periods of between six months and five years. Our experience of working with refused asylum seekers who are living destitute shows us that such punitive action does nothing to encourage people to return home, but simply re-traumatises vulnerable individuals and makes them vulnerable to further exploitation.
17. We are also very concerned about the use of immigration detention for women seeking asylum, and our work is currently focused predominantly on this area. Around 2,000 women seeking asylum are detained every year in the UK, mainly in Yarl’s Wood detention centre near Bedford. The majority of these women are survivors of torture, rape and sexual violence, including sexual violence in conflict. The case study which closes this submission, below, sets out the experience of a woman within our network, Margaret, who was imprisoned and repeatedly raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo before fleeing to the UK, where she was locked up in Yarl’s Wood.
18. The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Nick Hardwick, recently called Yarl’s Wood a ‘place of national concern’. Women who have fled rape and sexual violence have told us how being locked up forces them to relive the trauma they experienced in their home countries, and our research reports have highlighted the high levels of mental distress among asylum-seeking women in detention. One in five women we spoke to for Detained said they had tried to kill themselves in detention, and 40% of the women we interviewed for I Am Human said they had self-harmed. Similarly, the most recent Prisons Inspectorate (HMIP) report draws attention to the ‘evidence of the distress caused to vulnerable women by their detention’, noting that 54% of women held in Yarl’s Wood said they felt depressed or suicidal when they first arrived, and that levels of self-harm had almost tripled since the last inspection.
19. The trauma of being detained is exacerbated by conditions in Yarl’s Wood. Our research has documented how women held there are routinely watched by men in intimate situations: in I Am Human, more than 85% of the women we spoke to said that male guards had seen them in intimate situations, including while naked, partly naked, in bed, in the shower and on the toilet. This happens when male guards enter women’s rooms without knocking or waiting for a response, and when women who are placed on suicide watch or ‘constant supervision’ are watched by male guards. Women also told us about being rub-down searched while male officers watched, and their rooms and possessions being searched by male guards.
20. In June 2014, Serco, the private company that runs Yarl’s Wood, admitted to the Home Affairs Select Committee that it had dismissed ten Yarl’s Wood staff members in relation to allegations of ‘improper sexual contact’ with female detainees, explaining that the dismissals related to eight separate cases out of 31 that had been investigated over the past seven years. The evidence gathered by I Am Human pointed to ongoing inappropriate sexual conduct and exploitation at Yarl’s Wood: six of the women who spoke to us said that a member of staff had made a sexual suggestion to them, and three said that they were touched sexually. While the recent HMIP report concluded that there was no evidence of widespread abuse at Yarl’s Wood, it nevertheless highlighted that four women detained there at the time of the inspection reported instances of sexually inappropriate comments from staff, one woman reported sexual contact from staff, and one woman reported comments, contact and abuse.
The report highlighted that, given ‘the vulnerability of the women held, the closed nature of the institution and the power imbalance between the staff and detainees’ instances of sexual abuse are ‘an ever-present risk’, and ‘constant vigilance’ is needed to protect women from this. Worryingly, however, it noted that the whistleblowing policy for Yarl’s Wood ‘contained numerous warnings about the potential consequences of whistleblowing’, adding that ‘some staff felt they would not be supported if they spoke up’.
21. There are also real concerns about healthcare in Yarl’s Wood. Women in Detained and I Am Human spoke about a culture of disbelief among medical staff, and the HMIP report noted that there had been ‘a significant deterioration in healthcare provision since our previous inspection’.
22. Apart from the harmfulness of detention for women who are already vulnerable, two-thirds of asylum-seeking women who are locked up are subsequently released to continue with their claims in the community, so their detention serves no purpose at all. Detention is also very expensive – it costs just under £40,000 a year to hold someone in a detention centre – and community programmes have consistently been found to be cheaper.
23. It is important to highlight that the Home Office’s own guidance sets out that survivors of torture should only be detained in very exceptional circumstances; however, our evidence and that of other NGOs and inspection bodies shows that survivors of torture are in fact routinely detained. Additionally, although recent case law has now set out an expanded definition of rape as constituting torture, Home Office guidance doesn’t explicitly specify survivors of rape and sexual violence as unsuitable for detention. Women for Refugee Women wants to see an overall end to the detention of women who come to the UK to seek asylum: one of the key steps we want to see on the way to this is an end to the detention of survivors of rape and sexual violence.
25. [Name redacted], a woman in our network, came to the UK to seek asylum from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she was imprisoned and repeatedly raped by many different men. When she got to the UK she was detained without warning when she went to the Home Office to report. In detention, she experienced flashbacks to her previous imprisonment and became extremely depressed. She has now been granted refugee status.
‘Until two years ago I had a normal life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. I’m a mother of three kids. I was lucky because of my business. I ran a restaurant. I had a small car, I would drop my kids at school and bring them back home. I wanted to give my kids a good education. I wanted to give them everything.
One day I had just got home and somebody knocked on the door. He said, “Can you come with us? We need to ask you some questions about your brothers, the rebels.” I had no choice but to go with the men. I was scared, I had heard people were being kidnapped but I am not political so I didn’t think it would happen to me. I got in the car. They were talking, and said, “If we take her in the prison, maybe the Red Cross will come. Let’s take her to another place. She needs to talk.”
They stopped at what looked like an abandoned house. I started to scream and tried to resist. They dragged me into a room. There were five women already there, and all were naked. There was a pile of old doors in the room, stacked up to make a bed. One man pushed me on to it. Two men held my legs while a third held my arms. The fourth man raped me. Then they all raped me.
After that every morning men came into the room and raped us. About two weeks after I arrived a large group of men came and raped all of us. Two women struggled. I saw men stabbing their legs with knives to keep them apart. One of the women died just after they finished and the second died in the night. The dead women were left in the room. After this they tied us. I was tied with a thick rope around each ankle, and each rope then tied to a window handle.
They brought me food and water, but they would not take me to the toilet. Every morning I was untied and a cleaner would pour cold water and disinfectant on me. One day this man spoke to me. He said, “Every day I expect you to be dead, but you are still alive.” He talked to me. He found he knew my pastor. I said, ask him to pray for me. A few days later he said the pastor had paid the man to set me free. I was in so much pain I could hardly walk. A car was waiting on the road and my pastor was in it. We drove and drove to Uganda. I was left with a Christian family near Kampala. In Uganda I was scared to go outside in case the soldiers found me. I paid an agent to bring me here.
I didn’t even know I was coming to the UK. When we arrived in London he took me to Croydon, to Lunar House. I went into this place and said, “I have come from the Congo.” I asked for protection. I had to report to the Home Office centre every month. The second time I went in they said they were taking me into detention.
We arrived at midnight. And I saw it was a prison. I came here only just to ask asylum, I’m not a criminal. I am so depressed that they think I am going to kill myself here and I am watched by men and women night and day. When the men watch me it makes me have so many bad feelings about myself and my body. I feel full of shame about what happened to me and what is happening to me. Being in prison here is a torture in my head.’
18 September 2015