[Radical_childcare] Sign the mothers & children reunion petition

[feministchildrearing at riseup.net]

Please consider helping to reunite seperated families with this petition.
Thanks for your time, Faith Kenrick

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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. Â 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
n





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.”  
n
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 at gogglemail.net.
Crossroads Women’s Centre, 230a Kentish Town Rd
London NW5 2AB, Tel: 020 7482 2496


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