The UK government’s recently-announced plan to overhaul the asylum system rests on the idea that protection for refugees should be temporary and subject to regular review.
Currently, refugees are usually granted five years’ permission to stay, after which they can apply for settlement (indefinite leave to remain). Under the new proposals, recognised refugees would first receive “core protection” – 30 months’ leave, renewable after review. The government is also proposing a system that would make some people wait 20 years for settlement.
Like in Norway and Denmark, the UK is proposing allowing refugee status to be revoked and people deported if their country of origin is deemed to have become “safe”. In 2021, Denmark judged parts of Syria safe to return to and revoked or refused renewals for hundreds of Syrians, even as charities warned that returnees still faced serious risk.
For LGBTQ+ people, these plans present particular risks that could undermine their safety and ability to live openly.
Home Office data shows that, in 2023, 1,377 asylum claims (2% of the total) included sexual orientation as part of the basis for asylum. Equivalent gender identity statistics are not available.
For these asylum seekers, “safety” does not switch on when their countries’ laws change or a conflict stops. States can look stable on paper while people remain unsafe in their family homes, neighbourhoods, workplaces and at police stations.
The Home Office uses its official guidance about countries to evaluate whether it would be “safe” to return someone. It also might refer to relevant case law from the Upper Tribunal, a UK court that deals with immigration and asylum cases.
Some nationalities are treated as coming from “designated” safe states under British law, which can affect how asylum claims are processed. LGBTQ+ asylum charities have argued that countries are sometimes deemed safe even when they are dangerous for LGBTQ+ people.
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In my research, I have encountered such examples. For example, I have met LGBTQ+ Namibians whose asylum claims were rejected after Namibia’s supreme court recognised foreign same-sex marriages (though same-sex marriage is still not legal in the country), despite evidence of well-founded fear of persecution and a lack of state protection.
My research interlocutors from countries labelled “safe” emphasised the differences between official “safety” and everyday threats. An Indian lesbian woman explained: “Being who I am in India, I wouldn’t be safe there, that’s why I left after my family started to threaten me.”
A lesbian woman speaking from Brazil, where she was deported from the UK after initially fleeing due to violent threats, said: “People think Brazil is safe, but it’s not, and you’re lucky to be alive if you’re LGBT here … It’s not about it being legal or illegal, you need to look at real life, what’s going on with people around you, churches, your boss.”
Both global and local non-profit organisations that support LGBTQ+ people have recorded high levels of violent deaths of LGBTQ+ people in Brazil, including the most killings of trans people in any country for 18 consecutive years.
The UN refugee agency has warned that misusing “safe country” concepts risks breaching the principle of non-refoulement: the duty not to return someone to persecution.
Under the UK’s asylum proposals, once a country is declared safe, refugees seeking to remain in the UK would have to prove that it would be dangerous for them to return.
If the possibility of being deported remains for 20 years, many will plan for life back under secrecy and return to the “closet” to stay safe. This may complicate their asylum applications, as the Home Office expects that claimants live “openly” as LGBTQ+ when assessing their applications.
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Increased precarity
LGBTQ+ claimants tend to have thin safety nets. Family support is often absent because relatives are part of their persecution. While other claimants lean on organisations linked to their ethnic communities, I have found in my work that many LGBTQ+ people avoid them due to fear of stigma or violence.
A lesbian Nigerian woman told me that staff at a community organisation described same-sex relationships as something to “cast out”. Another said: “Not all people are going to accept you as you are”. This does not mean the UK is not welcoming or safe. Many asylum seekers have found support in LGBTQ+ organisations, inclusive churches and wider community spaces.
Additionally, the government’s plans to remove its obligation to provide accommodation and support for asylum seekers could make their situations more precarious – leading to homelessness, exploitative “sofa surfing” and risky survival strategies.
A fair asylum system should not declare whether a country is “safe” but, instead, assess whether an asylum seeker would be safe if returned there. That is the basic logic of refugee protection under the refugee convention, which says that states must not “expel … a refugee” to a place “where his life or freedom would be threatened”. In the UK, “safe country” lists are a modern policy tool introduced in the late 20th century as part of domestic law.
If Labour’s reforms turn refugee protection into a renewable status, the predictable result is more wrongful returns. This risks establishing a misleading picture of “real” refugees as only those fleeing wars, dismissing queer claimants facing targeted persecution.
