On September 30, 2009, the Tahirih Justice Center held a Congressional Briefing to call attention to challenges faced by women and girls fleeing persecution and seeking protection in the United States. Tahirih’s Director of Public Policy presented a new report that Tahirih has prepared, and was joined on the speakers’ panel by colleagues from our [...]
Read more...Tahirih helps many clients who are survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, human trafficking, and other violent crimes under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) and related federal legislation. Congress must periodically renew VAWA. It was last reauthorized in 2006 (VAWA III) and is up for reauthorization again in 2011 (VAWA IV). Discussions [...]
Read more...The Tahirih Justice Center and the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance (VSDVAA) partnered again this year with VA General Assembly Senator Janet Howell in support of a statewide bill (SB 1436) that would prevent law enforcement from asking victims and cooperating witnesses of crimes about their immigration status. This critical legislation would help [...]
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A Look Forward to 2009: Recent Decisions Could Affect Women and Girls Fleeing Female Genital Mutilation and Domestic Violence
Over the course of four days in September, the US Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, has opened the door for the Board of Immigration Appeals to fundamentally alter a woman’s ability to claim asylum in the United [...]
Violence against women is a worldwide pandemic—at least one out of every three women worldwide is beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. You can join Tahirih and take part in this international campaign against gender violence by urging your Representative in Congress to cosponsor the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) [...]
Read more...The International Marriage Broker Regulation Act (IMBRA) is a groundbreaking federal law that was enacted in January 2006 as part of the reauthorized Violence Against Women Act. IMBRA regulates the fast-growing international marriage broker (IMB) industry (commonly referred to as “mail-order bride” agencies), provides critical information to foreign fiancé(e)s and spouses of US citizens about [...]
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Mariama Barry endured the practice of female genital mutilation in Guinea as a child. Today, she has a US citizen daughter and has to make an impossible decision, if forced to return to Guinea—leaving her daughter in the United States to be raised by strangers or taking her home and witnessing her certain torture.
Mariama was [...]
In September 2007, the nation’s highest immigration court, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), issued a disturbing decision (Matter of A-T-) denying the request for asylum of a young woman who was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) as a child and who fears a forced marriage if she is returned to Mali. The BIA’s [...]
Read more...We often share news of the many Tahirih Justice Center achievements on behalf of immigrant women and girls fleeing violence. Today, however, we reflect on an accomplishment that did not, in the end, result in the achievement we had hoped for. It reflects the long road we face in attaining justice for the courageous women [...]
Read more...In September 2007, the highest immigration appellate court, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), issued two precedent-setting decisions that advocates fear will limit the ability of a woman to receive refugee status because of female genital cutting.
In Matter of A-K-, the BIA denied protection to a Senegalese father who feared returning to Senegal because [...]
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