“Coercion and Control:
The treatment of women seeking asylum in hotel accommodation”
This is new research from the campaign group Women for Refugee Women which you can read on their website www.refugeewomen.co.uk How safe are women and girl refugees who have fled gender-based violence. Are they believed? What effects on them do detention, poor accommodation and poverty have?
The shocking findings include that women in hotels are:
- Routinely monitored and surveilled
- Subjected to humiliating, degrading and dehumanising behaviour by hotel staff, including sexual harassment, room intrusions and voyeurism
- Punished and threatened with eviction
- Isolated from social networks and sources of support
Women for Refugee Women tell us
- The treatment of women in hotels can be likened to putting a bird in a cage. The bird is deprived of flying wherever it wants and living the life that it chooses.
- Hotel accommodation has a lasting impact on women’s self-esteem and mental health. It tells women they are not worthy of dignity and respect and prevents them from recovering from their previous trauma.
As it enmeshes women in layers of controlling, restrictive and threatening practices, hotel accommodation perpetuates the patterns of coercion and domination that women seeking asylum thought they had escaped. Consequently, women who come to the UK in search of safety are not being supported to heal and rebuild their lives; instead, they are being further harmed and retraumatised.
Andrea Vukovic, Deputy Director of Women for Refugee Women, says:
- The new Government has inherited a crumbling asylum system which is actively putting women at risk. Nearly half of the women we spoke to said that hotel accommodation made them suicidal.
Let us pray
Lord, we lift up refugee women and girls who face unimaginable risks and gender-based violence on their journey to safety. You see their struggles, their courage and their longing for refuge.
We pray that they will be protected from harm and treated with dignity. May they have access to essential needs – sanitary pads, food, shelter and medical care.
We ask that governments and agencies respond with compassion and justice, granting them asylum and a place to rebuild their lives in peace. May it be so AMEN
(The Baptist Missionary Society World Mission)
See the website for ways in which you can get involved.
