Women's Views on News |
| Give asylum seekers five basic rights too Posted: 16 Dec 2014 04:08 AM PST
This week sees the start of a campaign for the Women's Asylum Charter. You may remember in London this summer seeing an unlikely couple – Angelina Jolie and William Hague – on the news together. As Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and Foreign Secretary respectively, they co-chaired the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. At the end of this huge event, they signed off an international protocol. This protocol was to promote ‘best practice‘ for collecting evidence and investigating abuses while protecting the rights of survivors of sexual violence in conflict. This international protocol says that a woman raped by soldiers during a civil war who goes through an investigation process now has the right: to a female interviewer and interpreter if she prefers; for the interviewer and interpreter to be trained on trauma issues; not to speak in front of her children; to counselling for the trauma she has experienced; and to information about the process. But if the same woman fled the conflict and reached the UK, the asylum system she would face would not guarantee her these same measures. This means a woman can ask for a female interviewer and interpreter but won't be guaranteed one. In addition to the sensitivities about disclosing sexual violence, women seeking asylum may come from countries where they are not even allowed to speak to a man who is not a family member. If the woman has children, being newly arrived means she is unlikely to know anyone to leave her children with during her asylum interview. She then faces a postcode lottery as to whether her local asylum office provides childcare – some do, some don't – and may have to relate details about what happened to her in front of her children. Psychologists tell us that experiencing traumatic events severely affects our memory. But if a woman's story of rape is inconsistent or there are gaps, experience at Asylum Aid and research by Asylum Aid, by Amnesty International UK and by UNHCR shows that this patchiness will be held against her. Women who arrive in the UK have often been through the most horrific human rights abuses in their countries of origin, and the majority having experienced sexual violence. Yet on arrival here there is no automatic referral to counselling services or psychosocial help. And although the Home Office provides information about claiming asylum this has limited focus on women's rights. So a woman may know that political activity against her government is relevant to her claim but not know that domestic violence or the threat of so-called honour crimes with no protection from your state is also relevant to a claim. Become part of the new campaign to get the Home Office to provide the measures listed above to women seeking asylum. The Charter has 350 supporters including the TUC, ASLEF Women's Committee, GMB, NAPO, NASUWT, NUT, PCS Women's Forum and Unison. In supporting this Charter, the TUC and its member unions and the other supporters are standing up for the rights of women who come to the UK seeking protection from human rights abuses abroad. If you believe that women seeking asylum should have equivalent rights to women abroad facing human rights abuses please take action to close the Protection Gap today. For more information about the Women’s Asylum Charter, click here.  |
| Have your say about how to vote Posted: 16 Dec 2014 01:09 AM PST
The UK government’s Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has launched a survey asking the public for their views on how voting arrangements should be reformed. The proposals the committee is asking for views on include: Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year olds; Letting voters cast their vote online; Making voting compulsory; Including the option to vote for "none of the above" on the ballot paper; Being able to register to vote up to and on Election Day; and Holding elections at the weekend, or making Election Day a public holiday. The committee plans to produce a final report on voter engagement in the New Year, informed by the results of this survey. The survey will close on 9 January 2015. Speaking at the launch of the survey, Graham Allen MP, chair of the committee, said: "Our democracy is facing a crisis if we do not take urgent action to make elections more accessible to the public and convince them that it is worth voting. "Turnout for the last general election was only 65 per cent – almost 16 million voters chose not to participate – and millions of people are not even registered to vote. "This is not an acceptable state of affairs for a modern democracy. "The fact that almost 85 per cent of people turned out for the recent referendum on Scottish independence shows that people will turn out if they care about an issue and believe they can make a difference. This lesson needs to be learnt and applied to all other elections. "Our interim report on voter engagement – which we published last month – considers some radical changes, like compulsory voting, online voting, and extending the franchise to younger people, because we believe a serious problem needs serious answers. "We are launching this survey to find out what the public thinks about the proposals we are looking at, so we can put forward the best recommendations possible in a final report ahead of the 2015 general election." The committee welcomes written submissions on any or all of the conclusions and recommendations set out in its report on pages 82 to 94. The committee would particularly welcome submissions from organisations that have sought the views of their members. The deadline for written submissions is Friday 9 January 2015. Written evidence on the proposals on voter engagement should be submitted online: click here to submit evidence on the Proposals on voter engagement. If you are considering making a submission please read the following guidelines. If you intend to make a submission and require further time, please email the committee. If you have difficulty making a submission online, wish to submit evidence in an alternative format such as an audio file, or would like to make a submission after the formal deadline for evidence, please contact the committee staff. You could also use #VoterReform to tweet your views and contribute to the debate online.  |
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