Today, 5 July 2024, the Labour Party has won the United Kingdom’s General Election and will now form a majority Government in the House of Commons.  

We would like to welcome the new Government and the new MPs who have just been elected to Parliament and call on them to join us to Welcome Every Woman who has come to the UK in search of safety. 

We hope that this marks an end to the hostility, cruelty and increasingly punitive laws that we have seen over recent years. Under the previous Government, successive laws (1) have punished people seeking safety, inflicted immense harm, and undermined the very right to claim asylum in the UK. In that time, the public and political debate on asylum and migration has become increasingly toxic and hateful. The women we support have been on the sharp end of these harmful policies and have felt the impact of the dehumanising rhetoric first-hand. 

But today is the beginning of a new chapter. 

While the new Government is inheriting an asylum system which has been purposely broken, it can be rebuilt. We are pleased that Labour has already committed to: scrapping the Rwanda plan; halving violence against women and girls; clearing the asylum backlog by processing claims swiftly and fairly; and putting an end to the use of unsuitable hotels as asylum accommodation. 

But we can and should go further.  

We urge the Government to focus on building a fair and compassionate asylum system here in the UK that recognises the particular experiences and needs of women seeking safety. All women fleeing persecution, war and gender-based violence should be treated with compassion and respect and supported to heal and to thrive as they rebuild their lives in the UK. 

So as we welcome a new Government with all the promise and hope that it brings, we call on all of our new political leaders to join us to welcome every woman. 

Refugee and asylum-seeking women from our network share a message to the new Government:

Sign our pledge to Welcome Every Woman to become part of our movement for refugee women’s rights.

(1) Nationality and Borders Act 2022; Illegal Migration Act 2023; and the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024