Legal Action for Women

This year our struggle to make visible the extent and devastating impact of poverty on women and children has been helped by a UN Rapporteur whose scathing condemnation of the government’s “‘punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous’ austerity policies” was headline news. He reported that women had been targeted by the cuts and that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”. It was as if the welfare cuts had been designed by a “group of misogynists”, he said. 

AAWG members gave evidence including Trinity who was quoted in the press telling the Rapporteur that: “A lot of women are forced into poverty and into prostitution. I have been destitute and homeless from one place to another.” She added that she had survived an attempted rape from the husband of a friend she was staying with and “had boiling water poured on her when she resisted.” She and her child eat from food banks and “everything I’m wearing, apart from my hair, is from jumble sales“.

As we prepared this appeal, another member asked for her experience to be included:

“I live on £32 [asylum support payments] which I get from the Post Office each week. My asylum claim was refused but I can’t go back because I will be killed. I now live with a woman who gave me some kind words when she saw me upset at a bus stop. Her children love me and I take care of them. My room in her house is so small it only fits a bed and my bag. I only eat the most basic cornmeal; I haven’t bought clothes for myself for nearly 10 years.”

At the last AAWG meeting women commended Trinity and other women for their bravery in speaking publicly about deeply humiliating experiences and commented that the strength of AAWG was one reason that despite all she recounted Trinity was able to describe herself and others like her as “survivors”.

Each AAWG meeting reveals victories – both large and small. Women also attend work sessions and learn, firstly from each other, how to summarise their case and the injustices they have suffered. They then use that summary to find a lawyer, ask their doctor for assistance or find backing from others to pursue their claim or get it back on track. This is anti-poverty, anti-destitution work.

The loudest cheer is always when women, finally, win their status and can go on to work and/or receive welfare benefits, and/or be reunited with their children. But getting there usually takes years, and during that time many women are denied all support. They are left destitute, dependent on the compassion and indignation of others to survive and pursue their rights.

We understand that the people we are asking for money, are also struggling financially and may also be living in poverty.  We ask you to give whatever you can manage to help women get through the holiday period when they can’t come as regularly to the Women’s Centre for food, warmth and support.

Legal Action for Women works closely with the All African Women’s Group to distribute the money. We aim to ensure that women get the equivalent of one week’s mainstream benefits, including the amounts for children where applicable.  There are no administration costs. Every penny raised will go to women and children and even a little bit can make an enormous difference.

How to donate:

1.    Click here to donate to the Asylum Appeal administered on our behalf by the charity Crossroads Women – please specify “Asylum Appeal” in the message box.  All donations can be gift-aided.

2.    Money transfer to our account: Legal Action for Women, Unity Trust Bank, account number 50728361, sort code 086001. If possible, please send an email to law@allwomencount.net to let us know.

3.    By cheque, payable to Legal Action for Women – please specify that you are donating in response to the “Asylum Appeal” and send to Crossroads Women’s Centre 25 Wolsey Mews, NW5 2DX.

If you would like to donate non-perishable food, toiletries or other essential items, these would also be very much appreciated.  They can be delivered any weekday before 16 December to the Women’s Centre in Kentish Town. 

Dear Friends,

This year our struggle to make visible the extent and devastating impact of poverty on women and children has been helped by a UN Rapporteur whose scathing condemnation of the government’s “‘punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous’ austerity policies” was headline news. He reported that women had been targeted by the cuts and that levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster”. It was as if the welfare cuts had been designed by a “group of misogynists”, he said. 

AAWG members gave evidence including Trinity who was quoted in the press telling the Rapporteur that: “A lot of women are forced into poverty and into prostitution. I have been destitute and homeless from one place to another.” She added that she had survived an attempted rape from the husband of a friend she was staying with and “had boiling water poured on her when she resisted.” She and her child eat from food banks and “everything I’m wearing, apart from my hair, is from jumble sales“.

As we prepared this appeal, another member asked for her experience to be included:

“I live on £32 [asylum support payments] which I get from the Post Office each week. My asylum claim was refused but I can’t go back because I will be killed. I now live with a woman who gave me some kind words when she saw me upset at a bus stop. Her children love me and I take care of them. My room in her house is so small it only fits a bed and my bag. I only eat the most basic cornmeal; I haven’t bought clothes for myself for nearly 10 years.”

At the last AAWG meeting women commended Trinity and other women for their bravery in speaking publicly about deeply humiliating experiences and commented that the strength of AAWG was one reason that despite all she recounted Trinity was able to describe herself and others like her as “survivors”.

Each AAWG meeting reveals victories – both large and small. Women also attend work sessions and learn, firstly from each other, how to summarise their case and the injustices they have suffered. They then use that summary to find a lawyer, ask their doctor for assistance or find backing from others to pursue their claim or get it back on track. This is anti-poverty, anti-destitution work.

The loudest cheer is always when women, finally, win their status and can go on to work and/or receive welfare benefits, and/or be reunited with their children. But getting there usually takes years, and during that time many women are denied all support. They are left destitute, dependent on the compassion and indignation of others to survive and pursue their rights.

We understand that the people we are asking for money, are also struggling financially and may also be living in poverty.  We ask you to give whatever you can manage to help women get through the holiday period when they can’t come as regularly to the Women’s Centre for food, warmth and support.

Legal Action for Women works closely with the All African Women’s Group to distribute the money. We aim to ensure that women get the equivalent of one week’s mainstream benefits, including the amounts for children where applicable.  There are no administration costs. Every penny raised will go to women and children and even a little bit can make an enormous difference.

How to donate:

1.    Click here to donate to the Asylum Appeal administered on our behalf by the charity Crossroads Women – please specify “Asylum Appeal” in the message box.  All donations can be gift-aided.

2.    Money transfer to our account: Legal Action for Women, Unity Trust Bank, account number 50728361, sort code 086001. If possible, please send an email to law@allwomencount.net to let us know.

3.    By cheque, payable to Legal Action for Women – please specify that you are donating in response to the “Asylum Appeal” and send to Crossroads Women’s Centre 25 Wolsey Mews, NW5 2DX.

If you would like to donate non-perishable food, toiletries or other essential items, these would also be very much appreciated.  They can be delivered any weekday before 16 December to the Women’s Centre in Kentish Town. 

Dear friends,  

As Christmas approaches, we write to ask if you are able to make a donation to help destitute women and children in the All African Women’s Group get through the festive period, when some of the support they rely on from our Women’s Centre, isn’t available.

We know this is a time of terrible crisis when the high cost of living is making it impossible for many people to eat and keep themselves warm. There has also been a raft of cruel immigration laws which have made life even more terrifying for people seeking asylum.

However, we also see a groundswell of people like yourselves whose compassion leads them to support asylum seekers and refugees and in doing reject the heartless society which is being proposed daily.

Our work with the All African Women’s Group (AAWG) and as part of Global Women Against Deportations, has focused on exposing the particular injustices faced by mothers and rape survivors who are claiming asylum. Some coverage of it is here and here.

Asylum seekers are living on £40.85 a week for a single person and are not allowed to do waged work. Our study, Up from Destitution, found that half of AAWG membershad no income at all and that 60% are official destitute — that is living on less than £70 a week. Destitution makes it harder for women to defend themselves and loved ones from abuse and exploitation.

We’ve mentioned before that the advantage of our Christmas appeal is that all the money goes directly to women and their families. Nothing, of course, is deducted for admin. We work closely with the All African Women’s Group to distribute the money so that each woman gets a one-off payment comparable to one week’s worth of benefits. Depending on how much we raise, we sometimes have been able to cover a second week.

Last year we were able to give small amounts of one-off payments to over 55 women and 25 children.

Women are frequently overwhelmed at people’s kindness and describe what a difference it makes to be able to buy a gift for their children or practical items like shoes. Some spend the money getting healthy special food or travelling to be with friends. Women describe the relief at having a reprieve from the daily worry of survival.

Anything you can donate, no matter how small, will help and is gratefully received.

Best wishes,
Niki Adams

Legal Action for Women.

How to donate:

1.    Through Crossroads Women’s Christmas Asylum Appeal 2022. If you are a taxpayer the value of your donation is increased by 20% at no extra cost to yourself if you choose to add Gift Aid to your donation.

2.    Money transfer to Legal Action for Women, Unity Trust Bank, account number – 50728361, sort code – 086001.  If donating online or direct into our account, we would appreciate an email to let us know. 

3.    By cheque, payable to Legal Action for Women – please specify that you are donating in response to the Christmas Appeal and post the cheque to: Crossroads Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, NW5 2DX.

Thank You!

Dear Friends, Each year for nearly a decade, Legal Action for Women has organized a Christmas appeal for destitute women and children in the All African Women’s Group (AAWG) — the self-help group of women asylum seekers based with us at the Crossroads Women’s Centre.  We have been amazed at people’s generosity. People who have very little themselves dig deep to help women who have even less. We thank you for that. This year we are sending a letter from Gloria from the AAWG as she can describe directly what women need and the difference this Christmas money makes to women’s lives.

Hello, my name is Gloria,

I am the chair of the All African Women’s Group.

We are a group of African women who formed a group which also welcomed women from other continents. We are asylum seekers and refugees. Most of us are mothers and some of us have our children with us and others had to escape from their country without them. The majority of women in our group are destitute and our situation has been made worse by this pandemic.

Last year after the Christmas appeal, we decided to survey our members because it seemed that many women had very little money. What we found shocked us so we published the results in a report called Up from Destitution. Nearly half of the women in our group had no income at all. Where women had access to some money it wasn’t enough to live on let alone feed their children. This poverty isn’t women’s fault. Our group is made up of very resilient women who have survived many horrors. But when they arrived in the UK they were treated cruelly. Even when women had suffered rape and other torture they were often disbelieved and turned down without a fair hearing.

This is the reason we are appealing for help so that in the upcoming season of Christmas and the school holidays, women especially mothers, will have some money in their hands so that they can warm their house and buy food and other essential needed items. We hear frequently of women who have to opt out of eating so they can feed their family. It is tragic that in this country a woman has to choose between feeding herself, feeding her child or buying essentials like sanitary towels.

Women are anxious to keep in touch with family and friends but don’t have money to travel, don’t have credit to call or even to get online. This human support is especially important given that we are not able to be together at the Women’s Centre because of the pandemic restrictions.

One example of how women and their children are affected by destitution is a mother in our group who was evicted from her housing in the middle of last winter by her local authority. Council workers tried to justify it but could not escape the accusation of terrible inhumanity. It was fortunate that a sister from our group stepped forward to help. That lady didn’t hesitate or worry about how small her own house was, how little food she and her children had, she just couldn’t bear the thought of a mother and young children being out on the streets.

This collective mutual aid means that our appeal is different from some of those run by big charities. We work together to distribute the money raised and Legal Action for Women takes nothing.

Finally, I would like to end on a high note. By donating to our group and helping ensure that women survive, you are also contributing to the mutual support we provide for each other. We work collectively to help ourselves and each other with our legal cases. We have had a number of successes. For example, one woman who escaped terrible homophobia in Uganda, saw her partner killed and her family threatened, just won her asylum claim. She can now begin to breathe again and live her life in safety.

It is for all this that we ask you to give as generously as you are able.

Sending you all warm wishes,
Gloria

How to donate:

1.     Through Crossroads Women’s Christmas Asylum Appeal 2021. If you are a taxpayer the value of your donation is increased by 20% at no extra cost to yourself if you choose to add Gift Aid to your donation.

2.     Money transfer to Legal Action for Women, Unity Trust Bank, account number – 50728361, sort code – 60-83-01.  If donating online or direct into our account, we would appreciate an email to law@allwomencount.net to let us know. 

3.     By cheque, payable to Legal Action for Women – please specify that you are donating in response to the Christmas Appeal and post the cheque to: Crossroads Women’s Centre, 25 Wolsey Mews, NW5 2DX.

For the most vulnerable people arriving on Britain’s shores, Boris’ Brexit Bill is just the latest in a long line of legal hurdles…

For refugees and asylum seekers searching for support to remain in Britain, the idea that the House of Lords could provide hope might seem, at best, unlikely. An unelected chamber, seen by many as the personification of Britain’s at times archaic class structures, the Lords is rarely viewed as the most obvious place in which to fight the toughest fights of the most country’s most vulnerable.

And yet, this is where the struggle of families separated during the migration process has been thrown under a fresh spotlight. Today, Boris Johnson is under pressure to drop his opposition to measures which would protect the rights of child refugees to be reunited with their families in the UK, after the bill was defeated for a fourth time by the Lords.

Instead, members back an amendment, introduced by Labour peer Lord Dubs, which would protect the family reunion rights of unaccompanied minors. Lord Dubs, himself a former child refugee who was taken in by Britain when he fled the Nazis, has called on MPs to “show what they are made of” in backing his proposed protections.

But while campaigners, as well as charities including Safe Passage and the British Red Cross, have urged the PM not to strike out the amendment, they’ve also warned far more needs to be done to ensure that families are being given the legal assistance necessary to assist them in the reunification process.

While the amendment, they say, is a necessary step, it deals with just one of a host of issues plaguing families seeking a safer haven on British shores, where government cuts to legal aid and exploitation by ruthless immigration solicitors have left asylum seekers with nowhere to turn for legal help, putting their lives at risk.

Legal struggles

The process of claiming asylum is already lengthy and traumatic. The Home Office’s immigration policy ensures interviews with officials are deliberately brutal to make it as hard as possible for someone’s claim to be successful. That’s why having a good solicitor makes the difference between deportation and being granted the right to stay.

Yet, in 2013, the government introduced sweeping cuts to legal aid in England and Wales which have meant free legal advice is no longer available to many people who need it. The result, according to the charity Refugee Action, is that half of all legal aid providers have been lost, leading to large areas being left as ‘legal advice deserts’. Meanwhile, the government’s policy to disperse asylum seekers on the basis of where housing is cheapest, as opposed to where they can access support services or legal aid provision, forces many to travel long distances to seek advice, incurring costs that aren’t always reimbursed. “It’s just a lottery” says Lora Evans, Early Action Charter project manager for Refugee Action.

Changes to the way legal aid solicitors can charge – a flat rate over hourly fees – means it’s very poorly paid, which “makes it more beneficial for them to take quite easy cases, than to spend the time with people who have really complex cases”, such as those involving trafficking, illegal working or expired visas, Lora adds. “It just doesn’t make it worthwhile for solicitors to take these on, and it gets harder and harder if they’ve already been refused by another legal aid provider.”

Niki Adams from Legal Action for Women (LAW) has helped many women who’ve experienced this. “The worst lawyers don’t give women an opportunity to speak about things they would find difficult, like rape, domestic violence and other sexual torture. Their experiences can be downplayed or dismissed. The lawyer may even advise them not to talk about rape because they won’t be believed.”

But when these abuses are the reason a woman is seeking asylum, this advice is entirely counterproductive. “My lawyer put in an application on compassionate grounds. I found out later that the Home Office immediately turned me down” one woman told us. “He probably thought I would be deported before I realised and could complain.”

The impact on families

LAW works closely with the All African Women’s Group (AAWG), a self-help group for women seeking asylum based in north London. At a recent meeting, eight women came forward to say they’d had bad experiences with solicitors.

One woman said she wasn’t told by her solicitor that if she accepted a limited stay under amnesty, she would forfeit the right to reunite with her family. She has since spent three years trying to be reunited with her children, who she was forced to leave behind when she fled to the UK.

The majority of women we met described difficulties getting hold of their solicitors, or being treated them like a nuisance when following up on their cases. Many say their layers wouldn’t explain properly what they were doing and how much it would cost, or just kept asking for more money they had no means to pay, forcing them to rely on friends and family who often went to enormous lengths to help, despite being on a low income themselves. Worst of all, two women said they’d had no alternative but to go into prostitution to be able to pay their legal fees.

Niki has also encountered cases where solicitors have made glaring errors that result in claims being rejected. One woman’s lawyer had missed an important deadline. Another put in an application saying she was from Uganda when she was from Cameroon. “It’s a litany of absolutely outrageous carelessness and neglect,” she sighs.

We spoke to another woman, whose solicitor had supplied incorrect information which led to her claim being refused, who told us about the impact this had on her mental health. “Finding that you have put forward the wrong application…that really deflates you. It catapults you back to the days when you arrived and didn’t know who to turn to, who is telling the truth and who is showing you the right way.”

For Niki, the vulnerability of these women is clear. “Everybody wants to believe that a lawyer is a professional, so they put their faith in them. People seeking asylum have so little power. It’s very difficult for them to complain and have an impact.” Because of this, it’s hard to quantify the size of the problem, but consensus in the sector is that it is widespread. If that is the case, why hasn’t it been widely reported?

The risk of speaking up

“When we were fighting the legal aid cuts, it was a lawyer-led campaign” Niki says. “They did some very good work, and really exposed the injustice of what would happen under the cuts. But they made a political decision not to put immigration work at the forefront, because it wasn’t seen as the most sympathetic case.”

Meanwhile, with a system that’s stacked against them, fighting for their own rights becomes almost impossible for many refugees. “There’s real genuine fear among people seeking asylum to speak up about their concerns” says Rachel Ward-Newton, a project manager at Refugee Action.

Rachel manages the Asylum Guides National Programme, which promotes legal literacy for people seeking asylum. Asylum Guides take a role similar to that of a coach, informing people of their rights and what their solicitor should do, with the aim of helping them to navigate the complex asylum process themselves. A booklet by LAW called A Self-Help Guide Against Detention & Deportation is distributed to women held in detention, and weekly meetings and workshops at the All African Women’s Group also focus on empowering people to help them understand and strengthen their case.

For those on the frontline however, the impacts of the “hostile environment” already faced by those seeking asylum are real and far-reaching, from day-to-day discrimination to a lack of access to justice, that most basic tenet of democracy. Until this wrong is corrected, they say, it is the individuals themselves who must be given the tools to fill the gap left by legal aid cuts and arm themselves against corrupt law firms. Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement, meanwhile, is yet another lengthy piece of paperwork to add to the pile blocking their path to a safe and secure life.

LEILA HAWKINS JANUARY 22, 2020