This is the joint website of  Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

 

 

 

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In the Media

Legal challenge over Yarl's Wood women

In the Media

Centre breaching human rights, say lawyers
Treatment of inmates is 'cruel and degrading'

Matthew Taylor
The Guardian, Monday 1 March 2010

Lawyers are due to launch a legal challenge today on behalf of four women held at Yarl's Wood detention centre, claiming their incarceration amounts to "cruel, inhumane and degrading" treatment that breaches their human rights.

The lawyers, who say they will submit the application at the high court in London, are applying for a judicial review of the government's detention policy, claiming it breaches articles 3, 5 and 8 of the European convention on human rights.

"This disgraceful policy will now be the subject of legal challenge," said Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, which is bringing the action. "It is unlawful and we are calling, on behalf of our clients, for the policy to be struck down and for there to be an independent investigation."

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Why I am on hunger strike at Yarl's Wood

In the Media

Denise McNeil, one of the detainees at Yarl's Wood, explains why she has been on hunger strike for the last two weeks

The Guardian, Monday 22 February 2010

Twenty women at Yarl's Wood ­detention centre in Bedford have been on hunger strike for two and a half weeks in protest at their treatment by the immigration ­authorities. Here, one of them, Denise McNeil, tells her story:

I have been on hunger strike for more than a fortnight. I feel weak and get terrible headaches. A ­doctor says I should eat, but I am still refusing food. I can't sleep because I am woken every hour of the night when the light goes on and somebody here checks on me.

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Immigration bosses to be quizzed after asylum seekers were 'beaten' by guards

In the Media

MPs to investigate claims that women in Yarl's Wood detention centre were physically abused by officers during hunger strike

Mark Townsend, home affairs editor
The Observer, Sunday 28 February 2010

Senior Home Office officials will be questioned this week over allegations that women inside Yarl's Wood immigration detention centre were assaulted by staff using riot shields.

The Observer has gathered a series of testimonies from detainees inside the Bedfordshire centre who claimed they had witnessed women being beaten and injured during a disturbance this month.

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Yarl's Wood women on hunger strike 'locked up and denied treatment'

In the Media

Hunger strikers at immigration centre tell of squalid conditions

'We are not criminals; we are ordinary people who are being locked up and threatened', says hunger striker at Yarl's Wood
 

Afua Hirsch and Matthew Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 12 February 2010

Pressure is mounting for an inquiry after female hunger strikers at Yarl's Wood described squalid conditions and made an allegation of racism at the immigration detention centre.

As the Home Office admitted improvements were needed at the Bedfordshire centre, it emerged that four "ringleaders" had been transferred to prison.

About 70 women were detained in an airless corridor without water or toilet facilities on Monday, three days after the start of the hunger strike.

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Yarl's Wood women remain on hunger strike

In the Media

c4-logo.gifYarl's Wood women remain on hunger strike
Channel 4 News - watch report here

Updated on 09 February 2010
By Jane Deith

A group of women being held at Yarl's Wood immigration centre are refusing food for a fifth day in protest over the length of detention and being separated from children.

Yarl's Wood immigration centre near Bedford is the UK's main removal centre for women and families. It can hold 405 people in four wings.

A hunger strike that started on Friday quickly spread. Some women, angry at being separated from their children, refused food.

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Taxi rapes case lays police failures bare

In the Media

John Worboys's victims were let down by a careless and prejudiced police investigation. It's an all too familiar story

Lisa Longstaff
Comment is Free guardian.co.uk Wednesday 20 January 2010

DSC04318LisaGDN.JPGThe young victim of convicted rapist John Worboys said it all: "If something like this had happened in a private business, people would have been sacked. I just do not see how these people can carry on in the police."

The report from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) on what went wrong with the Worboys police investigation is once again a catalogue of carelessness and prejudice: evidence not gathered, witnesses not interviewed and, most importantly, bias against victims.

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