Thursday, August 14, 2008
STAR signs the Women’s Asylum Charter
STAR has signed up to a charter for the rights of women seeking asylum in the UK. Signatories including STAR, Refugee Council, Liberty and Amnesty International UK are calling upon the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to treat women seeking asylum with fairness, dignity and respect.
The Refugee Womens Resource project at Asylum Aid leads the campaign, with research offering procedures and safeguards to remove barriers of discrimination against women seeking asylum. International and national legislation exists to protect the human rights of asylum seekers and promote gender equality. However this charter calls for a gender-sensitive culture within the UKBA as a whole. This will ensure that if a woman suffers rape, domestic violence or honour crimes in their home country and comes to the UK seeking protection, the immigration system should respond correctly with the similar gender-sensitive practices used if the abuse had happened in the UK.
The charter lists a concise range of actions the UKBA should implement to put women’s rights into practice. For example, it advises the UKBA to provide appropriate and regular training to ensure staff understand the importance of women’s rights initiatives and then use them effectively, as well as recommendations that all women have the opportunity to use female interpreters during interviews. These actions deal with the asylum process as a whole and highlight the failures of the current asylum process in providing protection for women.
The Women’s Asylum Charter can be viewed on the Asylum Aid website at http://www.asylumaid.org.uk/pages/current_campaigns.html
Posted by STAR team on 14/08/2008 at 08:05 AM
