We are outraged by Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s announcement today introducing a sweeping roll-back of the rights of asylum-seekers and refugees seeking safety in the UK. These measures, described by the Home Secretary as ‘the most significant changes to our asylum system in modern times’, will have devastating and life-threatening consequences for women and children, particularly those trapped in cycles of abuse. They will further restrict women’s already limited ability to escape violence and exploitation.
These policies disregard the daily realities we as specialist ending violence against women and girls organisations witness firsthand on the frontline. We see, with painful clarity, that insecure immigration status is one of the strongest predictors of continued abuse, exploitation, and homelessness. When the state strips away human-rights protections, restricts family-life claims, renders refugees’ settlement temporary, and closes off safe routes to safety, the consequences fall most brutally on women and children who are already marginalised and least able to defend themselves.
The hostile environment, now intensified by these regressive reforms, is fuelling an already-burning fire. Women who have fled violence must now navigate not only abuse and precarity but also an increasingly punitive and unsafe public climate. Against this backdrop, the government’s reshaping of the immigration framework, including the erosion of Article 8 protections enshrined in the European Convention of Human Rights, the removal of the statutory duty to support people seeking asylum, and the creation of ‘talent-based’ routes to safety, rings alarm bells for migrant victim-survivors and their children. These proposals should alarm anyone with any stake in women’s rights and human rights.
Refugee and migrant rights are women’s rights. We stand united in condemning these reforms and call on the government to immediately reverse course and adopt a genuine human-rights based approach to overhauling the UK’s immigration and asylum systems.
Southall Black Sisters
Hibiscus
End Violence Against Women Coalition
Latin American Women’s Rights Service
