Petition for reuniting African mums and kids seeking asylum in UK

Dear Friends,

We are writing to introduce you to The Mothers’ Campaign of the All African Women’s
Group. We are mothers who have had to flee to the UK leaving our children behind in
our home country. We left our children when we saw they would be safer without us.
(We enclose our leaflet below.)

We are launching a petition with our demands for family reunion and invite you to sign it at:

http://www.PetitionOnline.com/MumsKids/petition.html

We are gathering signatures between now and Mothers’ Day in March next year. We
would very much appreciate your support and hope you can initially help us by
circulating the petition amongst your friends, family and network.

Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you require any further information.

Yours

Jeto Flaviah

The Mothers’ Campaign of the All African Women’s Group
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Mothers & children seeking asylum

We are mothers who have had to flee to the UK leaving our children behind in our
home country. Our lives were at risk – most of us have been through rape and other
torture; some of us have seen family members killed. We left our children when we
saw they would be safer without us. We didn’t know where we were going, or how, or
if we would survive.

When we claim asylum we are not recognised as mothers who are suffering separation
from their children. Even when we win the right to stay, we still face the pain of
being prevented from reuniting our family.

"We are consumed by guilt and worry. Every meal we eat we think of whether our
children have food. But our love for them is also what keeps us going. Sometimes you
feel so hopeless, you want to end your life but knowing your children need you is
what makes you keep fighting.”

We sometimes lose contact with children back home. Or we hear of them suffering
without our protection – living on the streets after caring relatives have died;
taken by the military; or even turning to pick-pocketing and prostitution to survive
and feed the younger ones.

We have hardly enough to feed ourselves but we do all we can to send money home for
them. And if we don’t know where they are, we raise money to search for them. We do
low-paid, illegal work or even sleep with men for money for them.

But if our kids turn 18 while we wait – often for years – for an asylum claim to be
settled, we lose the right for them to join us.

This government talks so much about the importance of families and claims that
“Every child matters”, yet our children are denied their mothers’ love and
protection. None of the media stories about missing children which highlight the
parents’ distress, even mention what we and our children are going through.

We demand...

• To be recognised as mothers, with dependent children
  
• That when the government grants amnesty to families with children here – their
  right to stay without having to establish a fear of persecution – that we, together
  with our children back home, must also have a right to family amnesty. Though we
  are divided, we are a family.

When we win our right to stay we demand...

• Unconditional right to family reunion to everyone who wins the right to stay in the
  UK (whether under the refugee convention, humanitarian protection, human rights act,
  legacy process or other grounds).
  
• The right of children to join their mother even if they turned 18 before her asylum
  claim was settled.
  

We urge British embassies/high commissions in our home countries to show their
commitment to families by helping to find our missing children and reunite them with
their mothers.

"Mummy, you are the only person I have to save me from everything I’m going
through. Thomas screams every night. . . . I don’t even know what to say about
Michael but he’s a baby boy who needs his mummy right now.” (Letter from a teenage girl whose mother was forced to leave her four children behind).

For more information, including how you can help, contact:

All African Women’s Group, aawg02@googlemail.com
Crossroads Women’s Centre, 230a Kentish Town Rd
London NW5 2AB, Tel: 020 7482 2496

All African Women's Group<>