“We had to be silent there” – A Syrian woman’s perspective on seeking asylum from the war

by Kate Nustedt, Interim Director, Women for Refugee Women

Dalida, 28, is not used to giving her opinion.  “Assad controlled my mind.  We had to be silent.  For the last 53 years in Syria, it’s only safe if you don’t speak against the regime.”  Like many Syrians, Dalida realised that she couldn’t be silent any more when the uprising started, triggered by the arrest of a group of school children for painting revolutionary slogans on a wall.

Breaking her silence meant that Dalida put her life at risk, and so she came to the UK 15 months ago and was glad to be given asylum.  She’s now studying and working for a pro-Assad family in London, giving piano lessons to their daughter.  “Sometimes we talk about what’s happening, and I respect they have a different opinion to me.”  But this respect is stretched when she gets news from home.  She was particularly reeling from the recent news that more than 100 people had been killed, and hundreds more injured, in a bombing by the regime in a suburb of Damascus.  “I could have seen this from the window of where I used to live,” she tells me.

Whilst separated from her family and friends, Dalida appreciates how fortunate she is compared to the thousands of other Syrian women who face the danger of rape and other forms of sexual violence.  Lauren Wolfe, of the organisation Women Under Siege, has documented how rape and sexual violence are being used as a method of “control, intimidation and humiliation” in the conflict.

Even when they are in the supposed safety of a refugee camp, recent reports have shown that young Syrian women may find themselves vulnerable to sexual exploitation and forced marriages.

Sharron Ward, a news reporter whose film about a Libyan refugee woman was shortlisted for our ‘Speaking Together’ media award, has made a powerful news film about this troubling issue.  Dominique Hyde, the United Nations Children’s Fund representative in Jordan, said that while no official statistics are available, UNICEF has seen an increase in marriages between Syrian girls as young as 12 and 13, and men from Jordan and the Gulf States.

Since becoming a refugee in London, Dalida has joined the weekly demonstrations infront of the Syrian and Russian embassies.  She’s met many other Syrian families and been invited to community events.  These mostly take place in school halls, with food and entertainment, with the aim of raising money for the refugees in the camps.  Dalida wants this and other humanitarian aid to go towards building awareness and protection of the vulnerable young women in the camps.  “Awareness about sexual exploitation is as important for survival as water,” she says.

Up to now, Dalida has mainly seen Syrian people at these community fundraising events, but she is keen to open them up and to connect with many people to raise wider awareness and support for the Syrian people.  She has an idea that the way to do this is to invite all Londoners to a concert by Syrian children.  A talented musician, Dalida is writing a Song for Syria, to be performed by Syrian and British children.  She says hopefully, “The future for Syria is our children, and I want to raise money for the children in Syria by putting on a concert where the children perform.”

“Stop Fighting”. Drawing by six-year-old Tala with herself and all the cats on her street in Homs.

Dalida helps at a Syrian children’s group in London, providing singing and art lessons.  Six-year-old Tala, drew her hope for the future of Syrian – herself on her streets in Homs, with lots of cats.  Tala’s wish was simply to “stop fighting”.

Dalida has also become an active member of the new London Refugee Women’s Forum, a group who are keen to ensure that women who have sought asylum can play a more active part in campaigning and community-building.  They have recently carried out research on poverty and destitution among women who have sought asylum and would like to see every woman who seeks asylum in the UK given the right to work so that they can make a contribution to society.  “I know there are a lot of people in the UK who feel that there isn’t room for more immigrants,” Dalida says.  “But I am very grateful for the chance I have been given to rebuild my life here, and I will make sure that I give back to British society.”

Blogging to change the world

Len Grant (pictured below) writes about his blog, Life Without Papers, which won the online category at the first Speaking Together Media Award. This award was presented on International Women’s Day as part of the Migrant and Refugee Women of the Year Awards at the Royal Festival Hall with Samira Ahmed and Juliet Stevenson.

I had imagined ‘Ruth’ with me at the award ceremony, both of us on tenterhooks as the time came to announce the winner of our category.

But for her, an undocumented mother of four-year-old Dyanna, the trip down from Manchester would have been too much. Yes, we could have helped with childcare and taken care of her travel expenses, but she was worried how it might look at her part-time (and yet illegal) cleaning job from which she earns just £70 a week. A tenner of this pays her daughter’s school dinners because, of course, Ruth is not on benefits. She’s invisible, under the radar.

Ruth and Dyanna are the subjects of one of my stories on the Life Without Papers blog where I photograph and write about the lives of undocumented migrant families and young people.

I met Ruth through a small charity that supports asylum seekers. She agreed that I could tell her story and so, for the last six months, I’ve written regular updates about this resilient young woman. And she needs to be resilient: since we met I’ve helped her move ‘home’ twice and she’s about to move again, relying on her friends’ hospitality.

The blog is a commission from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation and Unbound Philanthropy, part of a wider project to investigate innovative ways of supporting children and young people with irregular immigration status.

Life Without Papers follows on from a successful 12-month blog project about a teenage mother from Manchester’s Moss Side. Throughout most of her turbulent childhood Francis was on the child protection register, but she’s determined her daughter Mia will have a different upbringing. Her First Year tells their story.

Unlike case studies or profiles, my blog style is immersive. I am part of the story. I am there on the bus, at the food bank, asking questions and taking pictures on behalf of the readers who wouldn’t have any idea of Ruth’s situation if they were to pass her in the street.

The reaction to Ruth’s story, and others like it, has been one of astonishment and anger. How dare we allow a young mum to risk imprisonment each time she goes off to work? How dare we regard ours a compassionate society when destitution is only a few streets away?

It’s just one story. For things to change we just need the right people to read it.

www.lifewithoutpapers.co.uk

www.lengrant.co.uk

Speaking Together: the new award

Sophie Radice, Communications Executive of Women for Refugee Women, discusses setting up a new award for outstanding coverage of women and migration

On International Women’s Day, this Friday 8 March, we are launching the first ever ‘Speaking Together’ Media Award. This will be celebrated at the reception for the Migrant and Refugee Woman of the Year awards, which is part of the Women of the World festival.

There has been a lot of debate about why some of the media are negative towards asylum seekers and how negative coverage of migrants affects government policy. As a journalist myself I know that it can sometimes be difficult to cover these themes well, to tell stories that are engaging without being exploitative, and that appeal to editors as well as readers. But alongside that we know that there are many journalists in the UK who  are determined  and interested enough to cover these fascinating, challenging stories. Rather than look at the negatives, we wanted to celebrate the best of our media.

As the nominations came in for each category – print, online and broadcast – it was exciting to see how much had been filmed and written that more than met our criteria. We wanted to find work that showed that the journalist had made an effort to discover new facts and stories, had used first person accounts where possible and challenged myths and stereotypes rather than following them. One of the difficulties for us was that none of the media work that Women for Refugee Women had inspired could be eligible for the award! So we were sorry not to be able to recognize any of the marvelous journalists we worked with last year, from Anushka Asthana at the Times, to Eleanor Mills at the Sunday Times, to Jane Garvey at Woman’s Hour.

We chose judges who really understand the power of telling stories: Gillian Slovo, who is a novelist and playwright and president of English PEN, Hannah Pool, who wrote a memoir of her own family history and works as a freelance journalist, Julia Hobsbawm, who founded Editorial Intelligence, and Yasmeen Khan, who writes and broadcasts. They were faced by longlists which had a real  mix; some of them were hard-hitting stories which revealed the difficulties that women seeking asylum face and others were positive, even inspiring stories that showed what migrant women could achieve in the UK.

The judges took the longlists down to shortlists of three in each category. When we contacted the shortlisted journalists, we were struck by how many of them told us  how important these stories about refugee women had been for them and how glad they were that their work in this area had been recognised. The judges could easily have given more than one award in each category, and we are really looking forward to Friday 8 March, and to celebrating the outstanding work of all the nominated journalists. And we are already noticing some fantastic work – radio, print, television – which we know will be on the longlists for next year’s award.

Above all, we hope that when you look at these award shortlists you will feel, as we do, that you are enriched by hearing these stories that cross cultures and borders.

Emperor’s New Clothes

  Julia Hobsbawm was one of four judges for the ‘Speaking Together’ Media Award which is part of the Migrant and Refugee Woman of the Year award celebration at the Royal Festival Hall in London on International Women’s Day on March 8th 2013. She links London Fashion Week with the way asylum seekers are treated in the UK.

Do you dress well? I try to. It’s London Fashion Week and the whole of the UK media celebrates fashion as an economic driver and determinant of British individuality. The Prime Minister’s wife always supports the men and women of fashion because it is ‘in’ to stand out and equates with our most treasured democratic value of freedom.

We are all clothed in labels and not just on our backs. Who we are as individuals in society, and what makes us stand out is language too – “I am a mother” or “I am a doctor”.  Immediately we associate status and bring opinion to bear on the clothes of identity.

So we all strive to stand out. Social media has made peacocks of us all, from Government to Vogue, from celebrities to nonentities, we all tweet and preen and strut our identity around.

Well, except some. If you are a person arriving here seeking asylum then, well, you don’t stand out at all. You might as well not exist. Try saying “I am an Asylum Seeker” the next time someone turns to you at a conference or a dinner party and asks, appraising your clothes, hair or husband “what do you do”?

The answer, if you seek asylum, is nothing. You might in fact have worked in recruitment or law or engineering or media in your own country. A country which might even be celebrated in a Hollywood movie your dining companions would see and enjoy. But now you are not a name, you are a number. And no-one wants to know you.

But you might be locked up anyway in a detention centre. And if not, locked out. Locked out of any kind of system that allows you to work, to contribute or to live. To seek asylum in Britain is to exchange whatever identity you once had for the cloth of opprobrium, suspicion, and destitution.

My heart, I should say, does not bleed liberally or blindly. I do not believe the UK can or should let unlimited numbers of migrants,  émigrés or even asylum seekers in. I do not believe that having large numbers of pressure on particular communities or community services is without stress or social consequence.

But I do believe this: the British cloth themselves in a fantasy suit of kindness, of compassion, and of political management which is revealed as naked as the Emperor’s New Clothes when it comes to doing the right thing: treating refugees with respect and as names, not numbers.

We weasel around international law protecting the right of people seeking asylum to enter the UK, but envelop most in a cloak of disbelief when they do. We then, literally, bundle them out on planes at the earliest opportunity, unless the handful of men and women who report stories turn a spotlight on what is happening.

No, Asylum Seekers and refugees are definitely not in fashion. But thanks to awards like the ‘Speaking Together’ Media Award for which I was a judge , a spotlight is thrown, albeit briefly, on a catwalk. A catwalk of shameful behaviour by a nation which pretends it is wearing silken threads of distinction.

www.juliahobsbawm.com

Why we are rising

Stella Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, explains why women are coming together on 14 February to demand an end to violence

Women aged 15-44  are more at risk from rape and domestic violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined. Whether we look at violence in the home, at work, or on the streets, women across our world face a multitude of daily threats simply to stay alive. The focus on individual cases can give the impression such horrific events are terrible exceptions, rather than the everyday in every nation. Here in Britain 750,000 children a year witness domestic violence, fewer than one in thirty rape victims can expect to see their attacker brought to justice and 24,000 girls are at risk of female genital mutilation.

One Billion Rising is an international coalition brought together by the vision of Eve Ensler, the creator of the Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day. It is a global movement that calls for violence against women and girls to be a priority for all Governments. I believe that this international solidarity is vital if we are to create change.

Women are now coming together across borders and across cultures. From Norwich to Peru, through Bute, Manila and Luxembourg via San Francisco, Nigeria and Tel Aviv, activists are organising flashmobs and performances – and they are  seeking policy changes that speak to our simple message.

What is that message? Enough. We will not wait any longer for change. It is time. Time to say violence against women and girls isn’t an inevitable fact of life. Whether in India, the Congo, Ohio or Battersea, we can’t survive, let alone thrive, in a world where 50% of our population is subject to such persistent brutality and horror. It is time not to ignore but to challenge those who make this issue the responsibility of women to resolve. It is time to say that it is for everyone to have a zero tolerance approach to violence against women. Time to say is not a matter of gender to care about these issues, but a matter of principle.

One Billion Rising is not the end, but the beginning of a worldwide call for change. By rising together on 14 February we can show our support  for those in other countries and show our desire for change in our own country. Here in Britain you can be part of this day of action by asking your MP to vote in parliament for sex and relationship education to be a statutory part of the school curriculum so that both boys and girls can be taught about respect for each other. Many have rightly held politicians to account for not recognising the value of this in helping change these patterns of behaviour in future generations.

It’s not only MPs who can lead the way in tackling violence against women and girls. Whether you join one of the 100 events being planned across the UK or decide to organise one yourself. Whether you come to London on the day to join the flashmobs and performances and lobby your MP. Be part of the rising. Be part of saying enough. It is time.

A version of this article appeared in the Huffington Post. Follow @stellacreasy on Twitter

Mother and baby face eviction

Chawada Matiwala,  mother, asylum seeker, and  whistleblower on conditions in a Stockton mother and baby hostel, faces eviction tomorrow 23 January.

Cha has been a brave voice on behalf of refugee women in the UK. In December 2012 she  gave damning evidence about the hostel where she is living to a panel of MPs convened by the Children’s Society and Sarah Teather. She spoke to the Guardian’s journalist Zoe Williams for a powerful article, and she has shared her experiences  on a blog on this website. “This New Year,” she wrote poignantly, “I am trying to be optimistic and hope for good things.”

Chawada has worked in housing and has a first class UK social science degree, but claimed asylum because she was unable to return safely to her home country, Zimbabwe. Supporters fear that her pending eviction by the UK Border Agency may be related to her bravery in speaking out about conditions for refugees in the hostel where she lives, which is run by a private contractor for the UK Border Agency.

If you would like to support this brave mother and her baby, please write to her MP, James Wharton, on james.wharton.mp@parliament.uk, explaining that a mother and baby who are seeking protection should not be made homeless, and sign this petition to the UK Border Agency.

Blog post  by Women for Refugee Women with assistance from John Grayson. At 5.30pm on 22 January we heard that the UK Border Agency was no longer planning to evict Cha from the hostel. We thank all those who spoke out in her support.

‘I will do all I can to bring about change’

Bridget Phillipson, MP for Houghton and Sunderland South, tells how she was inspired to speak up for refugee women

Before I was elected to Parliament, I managed a refuge for women and children fleeing domestic violence. All the women who came to the refuge faced many challenges, but I gradually realised that injustices in the asylum process were creating almost insurmountable challenges for some very vulnerable women. One visit to the UK Border Agency in Croydon in 2009 was a turning point in my understanding.

I accompanied Asma, not her real name, to her initial asylum interview.  We set off on the long journey from Sunderland to Croydon, leaving the day before because of the distance. She had to take her small baby with her, who was just a few weeks old. Travelling with a new baby and the anticipation was stressful enough for Asma, but nothing would prepare her for what she would face at Lunar House. Asma’s first words to me after the interview were, ‘Why are they angry with me?’

From the moment we walked in the door to the moment we left, we felt unwelcome. It was incredibly difficult for Asma to open up to a stranger about her experiences, especially as they included sexual violence, but the blunt and often contemptuous attitudes from Border Agency staff made this even more traumatic. I came away from Lunar House shocked at what I’d seen. I had little understanding of the way the system operated until then.

I had already been selected as a Labour parliamentary candidate for the 2010 general election, and after that visit I was determined that I would do all that I could to bring about change.

Since my election to Parliament and particularly through what I have learned through serving on the Home Affairs Select Committee, I believe that it is as clear as ever that change is needed within the Home Office. There remain huge problems in the way the UK Border Agency handles women’s asylum cases. I’m not suggesting that women should receive preferential treatment, but just that they should not suffer inbuilt disadvantage and that Border Agency staff should be sensitive to the experiences and needs of women.

The quality of the first decision on the asylum claim  is crucial, and all too often that initial decision is found not to be the right one. In fact, it has recently been shown that more refusals given to women are overturned at appeal than  in men’s  cases. Women should be offered a female interviewer and interpreter, but we know that is still not always the case. The fact that lone women often have to take children to interviews with them means they can’t speak openly about their experiences, particularly of sexual abuse. If they then disclose such experiences at a later date, this is seen as an attempt to deceive.

Of course, many asylum seekers will be found not to have a case for protection under the terms of the Refugee Convention, and that includes women. But at present, we cannot be confident everyone will receive a fair hearing. We must see greater recognition of the different experiences of men and women and respond accordingly. Apart from the human cost, there are significant costs to the taxpayer of not getting decisions right first time. It’s in everyone’s interests that we see improvements.

Asma’s case still hasn’t been resolved and she and her child are in limbo. For Asma and women like her, we need change.