Putting “Papers for all” into practice by All African Women’s Group and Legal Action for Women.  

Whilst 80% of the displaced people worldwide are women and children and it is estimated that 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK have been raped, women’s issues and demands and our particular experience of persecution including as rape survivors is often hidden. 

A number of organizations based at the Crossroads Women’s Centre have been working for legal, social and economic justice for immigrant people and asylum seekers for many years.  In 2003, the All African Women’s Group (AAWG) was formed made up of women seeking asylum from Africa but also India, Pakistan and other countries.  We work together on the basis of self-help where the woman (and occasionally man) whose life is at stake is “centrally involved”[1] in her own case and campaign. We provide daily support to women in detention and fight for each to win the right to stay.  Rape survivors can call on the expertise of Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape. 

Whilst we support regularisation for all[2] and an end to racist immigration controls, we organise on the basis of demands which address the practical help and resources needed for women, children and men to survive and to win safety and protection.  These include rape being recognized as torture and therefore grounds for asylum[3]; reversal of legal aid cuts so that adequate funding is available to prepare cases; an end to detention and the apartheid system of health, housing, benefits and education; and support for the self-help activities of asylum seekers[4].  As AAWG says:

“We need food, housing and health care. These are political demands, and what we all need, because if women are safe, the whole world is safe. Is politics not about changing the world so that we all get what we need? We women are not less political, but our politics are often more practical and concrete. We don’t like abstractions, we like words and actions that speak about our situation and struggle for survival and justice. We are tired of men living off our hard work and then telling us that they are more political than we are.”

People seeking asylum, particularly women, have courageously spearheaded the movement against deportation and detention, staging hunger strikes, refusing to get on planes and other actions.  While there is a devoted network of support, it is still rare to see events organised by supporters with travel costs, childcare, translation and with consideration of other needs, to ensure that people seeking asylum are able to attend and speak for themselves. 

Many women come to our Centre after being turned away by well-funded voluntary organisations – what we call the “asylum industry”.  The privatisation of services has been used to corrupt NGOs through lucrative contracts available to those ready to implement the government’s brutal asylum policies.  Lazy, negligent and corrupt lawyers have also been our target as they bear much responsibility for individual deportations, and we have tried to recruit other lawyers to take a stand with us in cleaning up their profession. 

We concentrate on bringing together the scrupulous legal work needed to win cases – including where necessary on compassionate grounds[5] – with campaigning, so that every victory is counted and publicised.  In this way, every person who wins the right to stay becomes a precedent and a power for all.  We cannot ignore individual cases and allow people to be deported to their death; we cannot allow the demoralisation that such defeats impose on the whole movement.  Individual victories are a major part of mobilising public opinion as well as specialist help and of building the movement for justice and against immigration controls.  Nothing succeeds like success is as true in fighting deportation as in anything else.