Accommodation
Women for Refugee Women leads a campaign for safe UK asylum accommodation reform for all asylum-seeking and refugee women.
Every woman seeking safety in the UK should have a comfortable and supportive place to call home whilst she is waiting for a decision on her asylum claim.
Current asylum accommodation falls far short.
Many women in our network have been accommodated in hotels, including mothers with their children, for months and years on end – causing huge harm.
Our ground-breaking 2024 research, Coercion and Control, reveals the dehumanising, degrading and humiliating behaviour women seeking safety are subjected to in hotel accommodation.
Many others are forced into homelessness, sofa-surfing or staying in insecure accommodation. This places refugee women and asylum-seeking women at risk of further abuse, violence and harm. We need to improve refugee women housing rights.
This must change.
We are campaigning to:
Stop the use of hotels
Stop hotels housing asylum seekers, and the use of asylum hotels as long-term accommodation for women.
Improve conditions
Improve refugee women housing rights and conditions, while they remain in asylum hotels.
End the use of large-scale centres
Prevent the use of large-scale accommodation centres to accommodate women, and end the use of these centres entirely.
"My name is Lila.In 2021 I fled Afghanistan to escape the violent and oppressive rule of the Taliban.I travelled to the UK with my daughter. Our journey was terrifying. But all I could think about was getting her somewhere safe.Ever since then we have been living in limbo. We miss our home so much. But that home no longer exists.I’d hoped we’d be welcomed here. That I’d left fear behind. But this room is not a home. And being alive is not the same as being safe.”
Women in our Campaigns Forum have co-created their vision of what good asylum accommodation would look like. Find out more below!
"I was in a room with no windows for over a year. I felt like I was living in a coffin."
Hope, member of Rainbow Sisters and our Spokesperson Network