How we support refugee women in the UK
Power
by building community through support groups
Through our creative and educational activities such as English lessons, drama, yoga, radical knitting and more, we provide support groups for refugee women to build their confidence and skills. Our warm and welcoming space helps to combat the isolation faced by women seeking safety and creates pathways for women to rebuild their lives on their own terms.
Influence
by supporting refugee women to tell their stories
When women tell their own stories, they can change minds and build understanding about what it means to seek safety in the UK. We support refugee women in the UK, and asylum-seeking women, to speak to the media, to parliamentarians, at events and through the arts.
Change
by campaigning for a fairer UK asylum system.
Working alongside refugee and asylum-seeking women in our network, we publish robust research on the experiences of refugee women. This helps us to fight for a fairer UK asylum system, and to end immigration detention in the UK. We work with policy makers to make the case for a fairer asylum process; and creatively campaign to make change.
What can you do?
Donate and fundraise
Our campaigns for change
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Our latest news
Get updates on our campaigns for refugee women in the UK and help to put an end to immigration detention in the UK.
Joint Statement: Organisations unite to reject the Government’s divisive, racist and scapegoating behaviour guide
We've joined over 70 organisations to reject the Government's divisive, racist, and scapegoating behaviour guide for people seeking asylum - "Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers". This guide will do nothing to support, inform or empower women. All it will do is fuel suspicion, prejudice, division and harmful myths about the nature and causes of gendered violence.
Women for Refugee Women’s statement on the Home Office’s “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK” guide
We are deeply concerned by the Home Office's decision to publish a guide – Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers - which has been widely presented in media coverage as a warning to people seeking asylum not to "rape", "sexually assault" or make "kissing noises" at women. This inflammatory framing weaponises VAWG and reinforces the dangerous narrative that scapegoats men seeking asylum for it. This harms us all.
Refugee women urge Prime Minister Andy Burnham to build a compassionate asylum system
To mark Andy Burnham's first day as Prime Minister, refugee women in our network share a vital message to him, urging him to build a compassionate and fair asylum system. Watch or read their full message here.
HMIP inspection exposes systemic failures and harm in the immigration detention of women
The findings in the HMIP report provide further evidence that immigration detention is harming women and failing to safeguard those who are most vulnerable in detention.
This report confirms what women with experience of detention have told us for years: immigration detention is not a safe environment and causes deep and long-lasting harm and re-traumatisation. Existing safeguarding mechanisms are failing in practice. that repeatedly detains survivors of rape, trafficking, abuse and torture, and then fails to recognise or respond appropriately to their needs, is a system that is severely failing and needs overhauling.
