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Protection gap advocates

The Protection Gap Advocates are a group of refugee women campaigners.

The group plans and executes activities to improve the gender sensitivity of the UK asylum system. 

As women who have been through the asylum system, the Protection Gap Advocates are best-placed to understand the impacts of barriers to protection experienced by women refugees.

Women and girls who have fled the world’s most brutal wars and repressive countries or trafficked fall through a protection gap in the UK asylum system. Many of them have been raped or have experienced domestic violence, but they are not given the basic protections that we take for granted when it comes to any other woman in this situation.

We believe that no woman seeking asylum should have to tell her story:

  • In front of her children
  • To a male interviewer or interpreter if she is not comfortable with this
  • To someone who doesn’t understand how trauma affects memory
  • Without being offered counselling if she needs it
  • Without being offered information about her rights as a woman in the asylum system
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Protection Gap Advocates

Hear from the Protection Gap Advocates