From Legal Action for Women

SAVE THE DATE...   SAVE THE DATE...

 6pm Tuesday 25 June 2013

Crossroads Women's Centre
25 Wolsey Mews, London NW5 2DX

Launch of new and updated

Legal Action for Women T: 020 7482 2496 F: 020 7267 7297
E: law@allwomencount.net

Endorsed by:
All African Women’s Group
Black Women’s Rape Action Project
Women Against Rape

Alan White details the failure of the UK Border Agency to help Margaret Nambi, and many others like her.

BY ALAN WHITE PUBLISHED 23 OCTOBER 2012 11:07 Alan White
Unreported Britain.

Yarl's Wood detention centre. Photograph: Getty Images

Margaret Nambi tells me why she left Uganda. She was at home with her husband and children when the soldiers burst in.

Margaret Nambi released from detention!

Great news and thanks to all those who wrote to support Ms Nambi. She was released from Yarl’s Wood Immigration and Removal Centre last Wednesday.

Ms Nambi suffered gang rape by soldiers in Uganda in 2001 and fled to the UK (see New Statesman for more info). Because of the stigma and discrimination faced by rape survivors, when she claimed asylum she was unable to speak about what she had suffered. She only reported being raped to the authorities after receiving support from WAR. We worked closely with Ms Nambi’s lawyer on her fresh claim ensuring that information about the rape was included and provided expert evidence to counter claims that a delay in reporting rape indicates a lack of credibility.

ACTION ALERT! ACTION ALERT! ACTION ALERT!

Margaret Nambi has been released!
Now write to the Home Office demanding that she be given refugee status and allowed to stay in the UK!

On Tuesday 9 October, Margaret Nambi was detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre despite having just made a fresh claim for asylum which includes an account of how she was gang raped by soldiers in Uganda and forced to flee to the UK. This information is new; Ms Nambi was too terrified and embarrassed to speak about being raped when she was first questioned by male immigration officials – a very common experience[1]. Her account is corroborated by specialist expert reports. Ms Nambi is also a victim of trafficking. On arrival in the UK the woman who helped her escape forced her into domestic servitude and organised for her to be raped by many men over a period of years, profiting from it.

A woman from Rwanda has been re-united with her family, ten years after she fled the country, with the help of the Crossroads Centre.

Last October, Titti Flavia saw her children for the first time in 10 years. She had lost contact with them after fleeing her home in Rwanda, where soldiers had attacked her family and taken and killed her husband, who was active in the opposition. Flavia escaped to the UK and hoped that she would find her children and be reunited once she was safe.

When 70 women went on hunger strike in Yarl’s Wood IRC on 5 February, an unprecedented level of media coverage followed. Rape survivors, mothers separated from their children, and other vulnerable women, some of whom had been detained without trial for months (one for over a year), spoke publicly to complain about the conditions they suffered, why they were driven to protest, and how they resisted official attempts to deny and subvert their action.

On 29 June, a packed meeting in the House of Commons hosted by John McDonnell MP, and chaired by Stella Mpaka, All African Women’s Group (AAWG) and Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project (BWRAP) brought together: women central to the hunger strike, legal and medical professionals, family members of women still detained and a wide range of other organisations and individuals.