A UMNS Report
By Linda Bloom*
July 21, 2009

A United Methodist-related immigration program expects its clients to benefit from the Obama administration’s openness to granting asylum to foreign women who have been severely battered.

Many of the women and children represented by the Justice For Our Neighbors Program of The United Methodist Committee on Relief “are victims of crimes,” said Danny Upton, national program attorney. Those crimes include domestic abuse, human trafficking and sexual exploitation, as well as abandonment and neglect for child victims.

Under the policy change, reported July 16 by The New York Times, women who are victims of severe domestic beatings or sexual abuse would have to demonstrate their abuse. They would also have to show that domestic abuse is widely tolerated where they lived and that they could not find protection in their own country.

The Obama administration filed a legal brief in the case of a Mexican woman who had suffered horrific abuse from her common-law husband and had filed for asylum, saying she was afraid he would kill her. The Department of Homeland Security concluded it might be possible for the woman and similar applicants to qualify for asylum, the Times reported.

Asylum for severely abused women was proposed under the Clinton administration, but the Bush administration had backtracked on the proposal, Upton told United Methodist News Service. “Now, what they’re doing is making it possible, in at least some scenarios, for (abused) women to seek asylum in the United States.”

Not all asylum seekers working with Justice For Our Neighbors -- which provides free, professional legal service through a national network of church-based, volunteer-led immigration clinics – would qualify.

“It’s going to be very fact-specific, but if it allows even a limited number of women to escape their abusers, it’s better than what we’ve had up until now,” Upton said.

‘Significant relief’

Virginia Coto, who directs the Church World Service Miami Office and has worked with battered women as an immigration attorney, applauded the precedent as “a start” for handling some specific cases.

The church calls upon United Methodists to “provide real help” for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants, said Sung-ok Lee, an executive with the Women’s Division, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. Such help also includes the resettlement of refugees through congregations and economic development programs for those who permanently resettle and those who return to their homelands.

Carol Barton, a Women’s Division executive who focuses on immigration issues, sent a letter to The New York Times in response to the article.

She pointed out that while “the policy is overly narrow,” the Obama administration’s action “recognizes what the United Nations community has long affirmed … that state protection of women from domestic and other forms of violence merits action as much as political violence and the violation of political rights. Women’s rights are human rights.”

The action, however, shows “a clear contradiction in Homeland Security policy,” Barton wrote, because the involvement of local police in immigration enforcement makes migrant women in particular less likely to report domestic abuse.

Sexual violence as a weapon

Domestic violence remains a universal concern, but women also are threatened by the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, women and girls continue to be sexually brutalized by armed men.

When the Rev. Samuel Kobia, a Methodist pastor from Kenya and top executive of the World Council of Churches, traveled there in July with a “Living Letters” delegation, the group learned that women have been brutally gang-raped and men have been forced at gunpoint to rape their own relatives. Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu, received 3,500 cases related to sexual violence in 2008.

In a July 13 speech in Kinshasa, Kobia called upon churches in the Congo to end their denial of violence against women. “This means taking it out of the private arena and placing it squarely at the altars of our churches, in the seats of our parliament and in the halls of our academies,” he said at the opening of an All Africa Conference of Churches women’s workshop on peace, healing and reconciliation.

Through its Book of Resolutions, The United Methodist Church already has committed itself to work for the eradication of domestic violence and sexual abuse, Joanne Reich, a deaconess and social worker, pointed out.

“I applaud President Obama on his efforts to include extreme cases of battered women to apply for asylum where there is evidence their own country cannot provide adequate protection,” said Reich, who is the child protection and community assistance officer for the Board of Global Ministries.

“It is my hope that we continue as a denomination to provide leadership in naming domestic violence as a sin across the globe and work towards a day when all men, women and children will be free from violence in all forms.”

Linda Bales Todd, an executive with the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, echoed the need for the United States to look beyond its borders to “address the root causes of violence against women, ensure the enforcement of anti-violence laws and ensure basic human rights for women around the globe.”

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

Related Articles

New policy permits asylum for battered women

Immigrant ministry celebrates 10 years in Texas

Commentary: Ending the silence about domestic violence

Clergywoman shares domestic violence story

Resources

Justice for Our Neighbors

Church World Service

Living Letters solidarity visit to DRC