Mothers & children

seeking asylum

We are mothers who have had to flee to the UK leaving our children behind in our home country. Our lives were at risk – most of us have been through rape and other torture; some of us have seen family members killed. We left our children when we saw they would be safer without us. We didn’t know where we were going, or how, or if we would survive. 

When we claim asylum we are not recognised as mothers who are suffering separation from their children. Even when we win the right to stay, we still face the pain of being prevented from reuniting our family.

We sometimes lose contact with children back home. Or we hear of them suffering without our protection --- living on the streets after caring relatives have died; taken by the military; or even turning to pick-pocketing and prostitution to survive and feed the younger ones.

We have hardly enough to feed ourselves but we do all we can to send money home for them.  And if we don’t know where they are, we raise money to search for them. We do low-paid, illegal work or even sleep with men for money for them.

But if our kids turn 18 while we wait – often for years – for an asylum claim to be settled, we lose the right for them to join us.

This government talks so much about the importance of families and claims that “Every child matters”, yet our children are denied their mothers’ love and protection.  None of the media stories about missing children which highlight the parents’ distress, even mention what we and our children are going through.

“We are consumed by guilt and worry. Every meal we eat we think of whether our children have food. But our love for them is also what keeps us going. Sometimes you feel so hopeless, you want to end your life but knowing your children need you is what makes you keep fighting.”

We demand:

·   To be recognised as mothers, with dependent children

·   That when the government grants amnesty to families with children here –  their right to stay without having to establish a fear of persecution – that we, together with our children back home, must also have a right to family amnesty.  Though we are divided, we are a family.

When we win our right to stay we demand:

·   Unconditional right to family reunion to everyone who wins the right to stay in the UK (whether under the refugee convention, humanitarian protection, human rights act, legacy process or other grounds). 

·   The right of children to join their mother even if they turned 18 before her asylum claim was settled.

We urge British embassies/high commissions in our home countries to show their commitment to families by helping to find our missing children and reunite them with their mothers.

“Mummy, you are the only person I have to save me from everything I’m going through.  Thomas screams every night. . . . I don’t even know what to say about Michael but he’s a baby boy who needs his mummy right now.”  Letter from a teenage girl whose mother was forced to leave her four children behind.

For more information, including how you can help, contact

All African Women’s Group, aawg02@googlemail.com

Crossroads Women’s Centre

230a Kentish Town Rd, London NW5 2AB

Tel: 020 7482 2496