All African Women's Group: Open letter to the UK government to demand that the Namibia country of origin report be revised . . .
At a series of meetings last year, which Women Against Rape helped facilitate, women who had fled rape and other violence including Domestic Violence spoke about being refused protection by the police and government in Namibia.
Many who had claimed asylum expecting safety and protection in Britain were being refused by the Home Office and threatened with deportation who claim that Namibia is a safe country using a biased and inaccurate Country Policy Information report.
The letter [extract below] was written to the authorities in June 2025. Their full detailed letter with women's credible testimony can be read here on AAWG's blogsite.
Their fight to get the report revised continues.
TO: UK Visas and Immigration’s (UKVI)
Country Policy Information Team (CPIT)
Open letter to the UK government to demand that the Namibia country of origin report be revised to eliminate sexism and other discrimination and accurately reflect the experience of women who have had to flee from persecution in Namibia and are claiming asylum in the UK.
We write to demand that the UK government scrap its: “Country Policy and Information Note Namibia: Women fearing gender based violence” (CPIN) and issue a new report that is accurate and in line with Namibian women’s real-life experience.i
The current report says that Namibia is a safe country and that women who have experienced violence can get protection from the authorities. It says that laws such as the Combating of Rape Act 8 (2000) and the Combating of Domestic Violence Act (2003) afford protection to women and girls from “gender-based violence”. Our experience demonstrates that this is not true and is confirmed by evidence that “ineffective implementation and inconsistent criminal enforcement remain significant barriers to protecting Namibian women from all forms of GBV [gender-based violence)”.
We are a group of 18 Namibian women who are part of the All African Women’s Group; some of us have had our asylum claims refused by the Home Office on the grounds that Namibia is a safe country for women victims of violence, some of us are still waiting for our asylum claim to be considered. We held a series of workshops to scrutinize the CPIN report and document where it contradicts our own experience.
Firstly, we must note that the violence inflicted on us is life threatening. We charge the government with misogyny because it systematically belittles the seriousness of this violence . . . READ MORE