Gender, asylum, and a message for the UKBA’s new Chief Executive

This is an edited version of the speech delivered for the launch of Asylum Aid's new research report at Amnesty International on January 25^th

Rob Whiteman arrived at the UK Border Agency (UKBA) as the new Chief Executive in September last year. He immediately received a letter from 161 organisations organised under the Charter of the Rights of Women Seeking Asylum, asking him to ensure that the asylum system he was about to run was sensitive to the needs of women and girls and to anyone fleeing from gender-based persecution. 

Now Asylum Aid has a present for the Mr Whiteman. It is a comprehensive review of all the UK asylum law and policies most relevant to women, which are brought together in a single document for the first time. Entitled “I feel like as a woman I’m not welcome”: A gender analysis of UK asylum law, policy and practice, this new report sets this detailed legal analysis next to interviews with asylum-seeking women and refugees from across the country, and with the legal representatives working with them every day. 

For the new Chief Executive, it is further evidence of the poor treatment that women continue to experience through the asylum system – but it also provides a road map for how to make that system gender-sensitive.

Coincidentally, it is also a year since Asylum Aid published Unsustainable (read the Migration Pulse blog on this), our previous research focusing on the quality of initial asylum decisions for women. It a good time, then, to review the impact of that research, and the importance of this new work.

Responding to Unsustainable last year, the UKBA confirmed that its own internal statistics mirrored our findings, and showed that women were disproportionately likely to see a refusal overturned when scrutinised by an appeal judge. Something was evidently going badly wrong when the Border Agency considered claims with any kind of gender dimension. In recognition of this, the Deputy Prime Minister and Immigration Minister used public speeches to commit the Coalition to gender-sensitive reform.

Some steps have been taken. The Border Agency has disaggregated appeal statistics by sex and made these public for the first time, so that they are better equipped to evaluate the gender-sensitivity of the asylum system. The UKBA is also developing a one-day training module on gender, which will be compulsory for decision-makers at all levels. 

But a gender-sensitive asylum system is still a long way off. I’ll give you a couple of recent examples. I have listened to the UKBA defend its policy of dispersing women who are pregnant to areas separated from vital support and midwifery services, in the face of vocal opposition from the Royal College of Midwives who have consistently stressed the importance of continuity in ante-natal care. Given that asylum seekers and refugees constitute one in eight of all maternal deaths in the UK, continuity of care could hardly be more important.

And I have seen women who have claimed asylum after suffering domestic violence or on the grounds of their sexuality routed into the detained fast track, despite the fact that such claims are inherently complex. Such cases cannot possibly be dealt with quickly, so do not fulfil the key criteria for directing cases into the fast track.

Let me put this into a wider context. Listening to the Today programme last week, I heard that the Department for International Development (DfID) has promised to make women and girls the focus of "everything it does" in Pakistan. The programme talked about DfID prioritising its work to support and protect women from honour killing, acid burning, domestic violence, and other abuses.  But when women flee to the UK because they have experienced and fear precisely such violence, it’s a different story. The support and protection in the asylum system is inadequate.

One key message to Rob Whiteman relates to the glaring inconsistency here: international development work to protect women in danger abroad is welcome, but it isn’t replicated if the same women claim asylum in the UK. 

The UKBA needs to recognise these critical shortfalls in policy and practice.  And until they do, Asylum Aid will continue to work with our colleagues for a gender-sensitive asylum system.