BPP Human Rights Unit Student Director, Hannah Anson interviews Ruvi Mutyambizi, founder of For Her Child: From Asylum to Sanctuary.
Launched this March, For Her Child: From Asylum to Sanctuary is a crucial new organisation that will address the serious lack of visibility around the separation, forcible removal, and adoption of refugee children by host country authorities, researching and shedding light on this issue.
Ten years after being forced to leave a turmoil stricken Zimbabwe in 2002 at the age of 18 and taking refuge in the UK with her son, the organisation’s founder, Ruvi Mutyambizi, had been living in limbo, experiencing abuse and destitution while seeking to regularize her stay in the UK based on her well-founded fear of return to Zimbabwe. She was finding passion and purpose as she embraced motherhood with her whole heart, but this was quickly shattered when both her and her child were traumatised as they experienced first-hand the further disruption that occurs after intervention by social services that are not specifically tailored to the complex needs of refugee families. The organisation, dedicated as her son’s legacy, will work to minimise the potential for this trauma and separation. For Her Child aims to support refugee children and mothers by offering moments of relief, support and healthy emotional expression, and to assist professionals with understanding refugee families’ experiences better, thus offering better intervention and repositioning adoption as a last resort.
To found a new organisation like For Her Child is a phenomenal thing, and one which requires a great amount of experience. I begin by chatting with Ruvi about her background in advocacy. Having completed a degree at the University of Greenwich, Ruvi is now studying a Master’s in Human Rights and Legal Practice, as well as pursuing the GDL at the University of Law. “Pretty much as soon as I came here I tried to live normally, and I think that’s because I feared being sent home if I sought asylum”, Ruvi explains. After studying and volunteering at the Evelyn Oldfield Unit, Ruvi joined the Protection Gap Advocates at Asylum Aid, who collaborated and successfully convinced the Home Office to provide non-invasive child care for mothers with young children during their asylum interview, so they wouldn’t have to discuss traumatic matters in front of their children or worry about subsequently not being reunited with their children after the interview.
I express my shock to Ruvi that this policy didn’t exist in the first place, as it seems at best naive and at worse actively cruel to force parents to discuss these events in front of their children, and I think this reaction is emblematic of many people’s responses to the work of For Her Child, and to organisations assisting refugee families more generally, who are working to reverse policies that simply should not exist in the first place.
And the struggle to enact these changes is often an uphill battle. “Before I was exposed to opportunities to advocate for refugees, I probably wouldn’t have even realised that you could say something, and things could change”, Ruvi told me. “But it’s a patient person’s liqueur and endeavour. By the time the Protection Gap Advocates were formed by Asylum Aid, the organisation’s Policy Adviser had been working on the idea for several years. Even though it’s something that should be expected, to get to the point of there being opportunities for saying “you can change this” – and them actually doing it – takes time.”
We move on to discuss For Her Child: From Asylum to Sanctuary, the new organisation Ruvi has founded. I ask her about the organisation and her motivations for establishing it.
“For Her Child supports refugee and asylum-seeking mothers, people who are living quite precariously because of their inability to return to their home country. The starting point is looking at refugee children in the UK who have been separated from their parents, when there could have been a better way. For Her Child is about understanding the basics of humanity. The most important relationships we have are often with our mothers, and we need to protect those relationships, especially for people who are vulnerable.”
“For Her Child is about understanding the basics of humanity. The most important relationships we have are often with our mothers, and we need to protect those relationships, especially for people who are vulnerable.”
“It was an idea that developed through personal experience. It was difficult for me to get my asylum claim recognised, which created a lot of upheaval for my son, and then against my will he was removed from my care by the court. Being a refugee and finding that I was denied the right to raise my son, I was very aware that had I had different opportunities, different support and different access, he would not have had to go through that disruption.”
After speaking with ordinary people and hearing about the positive role they expect social workers to play, and talking with professionals working with other refugee mothers, Ruvi discovered a silent crisis that was leaving refugee mothers exposed to prejudicial treatment and at a greater risk of having their children taken away – and for factors that are simply beyond their control as people seeking asylum, such as not having correct legal status, or suffering from poor mental health.
“It was keeping me awake at night, and I needed to do something about it,” Ruvi explained. “The more I spoke to people about it, the more I realised I could actually make an organisation. It’s a concept that started by focusing on what I could do in my local area, but hopefully FHC will expand even beyond the UK.”
Something that Ruvi has described is the need for a “sanctuary practice approach”. I ask her what such an approach would look like. “Whether that professional is a health and social care worker, an educator, a legal practitioner – I’d like them to record that they’re dealing with a refugee family, to have an awareness of this. I would emphasise the importance of reiterating this fact throughout that this person is a refugee, and that they’re therefore unable to resolve the issues that the court is asking of them.” In her talk for BPP’s Human Rights Unit, Ruvi described an example of such an oxymoronic situation, as a refugee parent can be told that they cannot apply for housing, and in the same sentence be advised that they’ll have their child taken if they’re not housed.
All that For Her Child is asking for is an equalisation of opportunities, a recognition that because of these factors that are inherently out of their control because of their refugee status, families should be treated with more understanding and care, and given the chance to actually resolve their circumstances instead of the courts enforcing adoption.
“If it were possible for a parent to have a genuine opportunity to resolve the issues with their family circumstances, the child wouldn’t even have to know that the mother has been struggling. The child would lead a normal life. I think keeping that in mind is important – for professionals to be thinking about how they can help this child to lead a normal, ordinary life now, rather than thinking “in the future they’ll be adopted and they’ll be fine” – it’s about dealing with the present day.” This approach of helping refugee families in the present is an absolutely crucial one.
But Ruvi also describes the difficulties of trying to improve the system when you’ve been forcibly displaced. “It’s very difficult as a refugee to talk about wanting more. You should be grateful for what you have – and of course I am. But for the professionals that have helped me, and that I’ve seen helping other people, they’ve been able to help more when they’ve treated them with an open mind, not being closed to believing their story.”
Ruvi and I move on to discussing language. She has previously spoken about how FHC wants to create a shift away from a clinical language to a more accepting terminology. I feel that so much of the discourse around people seeking asylum, especially during the Brexit debate and under Priti Patel’s Home Office, has deliberately worked to dehumanise the people involved, in an attempt to remove the human element from an inherently human issue. I ask Ruvi how important language is; if we had a more human vocabulary when we spoke about refugee families, would this help shift the way people think about their rights and experiences and encourage them to be more empathetic? “Immediately, the UN convention of refugees comes to mind”, Ruvi responds. “It doesn’t talk about asylum seekers. For them, a person is a refugee from the point of needing to flee their country or being unable to return. We use the term “asylum seeker” to facilitate a process, and outside of that process there’s the human being.”
“In terms of the language shifting – when you meet someone who’s different from you, they become a human being. When they’re just a word in a book it’s very difficult. And I think the wonderful thing is that our generation is very open to difference, and to actually making difference not be difference.”
“Our generation is very open to difference, and to actually making difference not be difference.”
This process doesn’t have to be immediate, however; “sometimes that process of helping people to change their very fixed views can take a long time to happen”, Ruvi explains. “So I guess it’s about the everyday shift that we can make, in the way we look at things, and that’s how we start to be a bit more human with one another.” And it’s absolutely crucial to remember that integration is a two-way street. “Have you ever considered what a refugee thinks about you?”, Ruvi asks me. “It’s important to ask yourself questions. What are they thinking? What do they care about?” As a UK born citizen I think it’s is absolutely essential that we are doing our part in this conversation, and once we start asking these questions, “you might find out that they care about the same things”. “And as we start to be neighbours, rather than people at a distance, we get there’”, Ruvi observes.
We speak about how crucial it is that women have been increasingly at the forefront of changemaking, in leading these conversations and initiatives, and Ruvi firmly agrees that this is essential. She also reminds me that her son will one day be a man whose character she hopes will be positively shaped by the correction of systematic silencing of underrepresented groups. Additionally, she appreciates all the men who are raising awareness: “the idea behind calling the organisation For Her Child is to be inclusive, that it’s something that can belong to everybody – everyone can care. Men are in a position to influence how things are considered as well, so I don’t want to alienate or exempt them from my call to action. Then thinking quite sincerely, in the spirit of the best interest of the accompanied refugee child, I need to further develop my much smaller project of an outreach plan for refugee fathers when they are the primary care giver and attentive to the needs of her child”, she reflects.
The entire ethos of For Her Child is one of collaboration, of working alongside those in positions of power to effect change from within, an approach which is so admirable. Indeed, if everyone had just a fraction of Ruvi’s strength and empathy, I feel the world would be a far better place.
Having launched in March, the next few months will be spent doing vital work. The organisation will be researching what families are experiencing, the legal framework around adoption and family law, and identifying new data to illustrate why it is crucial that this issue is given more attention. There will also be opportunities to help children access expression packs.
You can support the absolutely essential work of For Her Child via:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/for.her.child/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forherchild
Donations: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/forherchild
Image credit: Ruvi Mutyambizi ‘For Her Child: From Asylum to Sanctuary’
Disclaimer: The BPP Human Rights blog, and all pieces posted on the blog, are written and edited exclusively by the student body. No publication or opinion contained within is representative of the values or beliefs held by BPP University or the Apollo Education Group. The views expressed are solely that of the author and are in no way supported or endorsed by BPP University, The Apollo Education Group or any members of staff.
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