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Introduction
Scotland’s response to the refugee crisis
The UK has hosted the sixth highest number of refugees across all European countries (Eurostat, 2018) and its Government plans to receive 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020 (Refugee Council, 2015). More than 32,000 people have applied for asylum in the UK each year between the start of the Arab Spring and 2015 (Refugee Council, 2016). Scotland has hosted asylum seekers and refugee (ASRs) since the latter part of the twentieth century and Glasgow has hosted the second largest number of ASRs in the UK (Home office, 2016). There were approximately 10,000 ASRs in Scotland in 2016 (Home office, 2016) and by 2018, Scotland had received 2000 Syrian refugees (UNHCR, 2017). The majority of ASRs live in Glasgow as it is currently the main Scottish city designated by the UK government for dispersal of asylum seekers although new dispersal areas have recently been established across Scotland (Scottish Government, 2018). There is little routinely collected data to determine the heath needs of UK ASR, let alone the SRH needs of Asylum Seeking and Refugee Women (ASRW) despite members of this group being more likely to have faced domestic violence, rape, sexual violence, forced marriage and female genital mutilation (National Health Service, 2019).
The vulnerability of female Asylum Seekers and Refugees
The UN Refugee Convention definition of a “refugee” was accepted in this study (UNHCR, 1951) and an asylum seeker is seen to be an individual who has applied for protection under the Convention – or Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights – pending a decision from the UK government on whether refugee status is granted or not (Scottish Government, 2018). Refugees may have had difficult experiences of fear, danger and poverty in their evacuation processes. The UK Refugee Council’s (2012) study of 54 female refugees revealed that more than 70 per cent had suffered violence either in their country of origin or UK, and 44 per cent had been sexually abused before arriving in the UK. ASRW risk sexual abuse in refugee camps and transactional sex with smugglers (Refugee Council, 2012). Asylum seeking women have also reported transactional sex with government employees where they were promised priority treatment and speedier release if they acceded to sexual demands...