The UK Government is obliged to protect, respect and fulfil women’s human rights. As the 2010 general election is coming up and a change of government is possible, all political parties must address violence against women.
On Wednesday 4 November, hundreds people asked their MP to ensure that all women in the UK are given equal access to support and protection from violence – regardless of their immigration status.
It is vital that we keep up this pressure. You can help us do this via email or on Twitter. Act now
The story so far – towards a violence against women strategy
We have been campaigning the government to uphold their obligations towards women’s rights.
- In March, we petitioned MPs about the lack of support services for women – pointing out the huge gaps in services across Britain, illustrated in the Map of Gaps reports.
- In May, the Home Office launched a public consultation to develop a ‘violence against women’ strategy. We fed into this, demanding that the strategy tackles destructive social attitudes around violence against women and that it plans services for minority ethnic women facing violence such as genital mutilation and honour crimes.
- We have campaigned constantly for women with insecure immigration status to be given access to refuges. At the moment, if these women suffer violence they have nowhere to go; this is because of the no recourse to public funds rule. This must be overturned in order to end violence against all women in Britain.
UK political parties have been listening. The Government has committed to developing a ‘Together we can end violence against women and girls’ strategy by 2010, and a proposal for dealing with the problems facing women with no recourse to public funds, who cannot access refuges.
We need to keep up the pressure to ensure they fulfil these promises effectively.
The next step – lobby your MP
We need you to ask your MP for their support and commitment to help victims of violence against women – giving all women in the UK equal access to support and protection from violence.
If you would prefer to contact your MP via email, check out your MPs contact details on writetothem.com and have a read of our suggested requests for your MP to include in your email.
If you are on Twitter and would rather tweet your MP, find out if your MP is also on Twitter by searching for them on Tweetminster – If they are, follow them (on Twitter). Then tweet your MP the message below, including the link as this will take your MP to a PDF with more detailed requests:
Make sure UK guarantees equal protection for all women in the UK facing violence http://bit.ly/2mLkH4
Spread the word
We want the government to be overwhelmed with requests for all women in the UK to have equal access to services and protection. This means that we need to get the word out – and we really need your help to do this.
Spread the message:
Lobby your MP to make sure that all women can access refuges and support services in Britain http://bit.ly/1gQTpJ
on Twitter using the hashtag #masslobby
On Facebook by updating your status, or by writing it on your friends’ walls
On your blog by posting about the lobby so that your fans find out about it. Even better, they might blog about it too, and then their readers might also blog on it and soon we will have an excellent end violence against women strategy that provides for all women, all over Britain.
Of course, this campaign has a concrete action. 
Justine Masika Bihamba and her family have been attacked because of her work as coordinator of a women’s human rights organisation in the Congo. Although they can identify the soldiers, they have still not been arrested. 
Many Iranian women want to challenge this discrimination and they have asked the international community to support them in their struggle.