Asylum Aid has long held concerns about the treatment of women seeking asylum in the UK. This research was conducted to examine in detail one specific part of this process: the quality of the initial decisions made by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) when women claim asylum. The resulting report is the first in-depth study of decision-making for women seeking asylum since the introduction of the New Asylum Model in 2007. This Model was introduced partly to improve the way decisions were made, and this report tests how effective these reforms have proved.
Womenâs asylum claims regularly present issues that are different from those presented by men, and can be highly complex and challenging. The findings in this report have deepened our concern that the UKBA is badly failing to meet this challenge, and that women seeking asylum are frequently let down by an extremely poor standard of decision-making. Continue reading “Unsustainable: the quality of initial decision-making in womenâs asylum claims”