Campaign seeks changes to the law to protect migrant women

Laws should be changed to give migrant women suffering from domestic abuse the chance to leave their partner without endangering their right to stay in the country, the Immigrant Council said yesterday.

The organisation said it had seen “a steady flow” of women contacting their services because they were resident in Ireland only on the basis of their spouse or partner’s work permit and were suffering violence in the home.

Addressing a conference organised by the council yesterday, British-based campaigner Pragna Patel said it had taken two decades of lobbying for the government there to grant status protections to vulnerable migrant women.

Now laws in Britain allow people subjected to domestic violence within the two year probationary period of residence to leave that relationship and apply for indefinite leave to remain on that basis.

The council’s anti-trafficking campaign coordinator, Nusha Yonkova, said: “The UK model is much, much better than what we have here.”

Ms Yonkova also said the recession had not reduced the demand for prostitution, which meant women were still being trafficked into the country to be exploited in the sex industry.

The council has been at the forefront of a campaign to criminalise the buying of sex, in an effort to reduce demand and thereby the supply of prostitution services.

Ms Yonkova said an audit of online services available in Ireland last month showed that more than 1,000 women were involved in the sex trade.

However, she said meetings had taken place with the Department of Justice about the possibility of criminalising the buying of sex.

“Gradually they are becoming more and more receptive [to the proposal] — that is our impression,” she said.

Ms Patel said the views of women and non-religious migrants should be listened to, particularly when the “default setting” is religious leaders acting as de facto spokespeople when they may not be representative of all the views within that community.