Why is it a problem?
In 2024, we released a joint report with Imkaan, Not Safe Here, on the systemic failures to protect women and children from sexual violence and abuse in asylum accommodation.
Women For Refugee Women, also released their report, 'Coercion and Control: The treatment of women seeking asylum in hotel accommodation.'
These reports found that:
- Women and children are expected to share communal areas, in close proximity to unrelated adult men.
- Women had faced further sexual violence, sexual exploitation and threats of a sexual nature while living in hotel accommodation.
- Hotel accommodation is exacerbating existing trauma and preventing survivors from beginning to process and recover from the trauma they have experienced.
- Women are forced to live for months, or even years, in cramped hotel rooms. Some are forced to survive with their young children in rooms without a window.
- Hotel accommodation is destroying the mental health of women seeking safety in the UK.
- Instead of being supported to heal and thrive, women seeking safety in the UK are left languishing in unsuitable and harmful hotel accommodation.
What we want to change
We believe that women seeking safety should be housed in long-term, community-based accommodation that is clean and safe, rather than hotel accommodation.
Until this is possible, we want to see women and family-only spaces in hotel accommodation.
Join our campaign and demand #SafeAsylumNow.
