Submitted by: Social & Employment Issues Special Committee 

NCW in Conference assembled, concerned about the welfare of women asylum seekers and the particular problems they face because of their sex, urges HMG to ensure: (a) that women asylum seekers should enjoy privacy during their initial interrogation by immigration officers; (b) that there should be adequate services by registered interpreters, who should preferably be women, at all stages of the immigration process; (c) that any required medical investigation should be carried out by women medical personnel aware of the physical and mental symptoms to be expected in women who may have been the victims of torture and/or sexual assault;  (d) that these women should be made aware at the earliest opportunity of their rights to legal representation.   

Reaffirmed 2000, 2002