IKWRO is a registered charity which provides advice and support to Middle Eastern, North African and Afghan women and girls living in the UK, who have experienced, or are at risk of all forms of “honour” based abuse, including; forced marriage, child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), or domestic abuse.
We work with women and girls of all ages, including lesbian women, bisexual women and trans women. We offer services in Kurdish, Farsi, Arabic, Dari, Pashto, Turkish and English.
IKWRO offers free advice, advocacy and counselling services and operates a refuge which provides safe accommodation and specialist support to single women at risk of “honour” based abuse, forced marriage and domestic abuse.
IKWRO also provides training for women and girls to help them understand their rights in the UK. In partnership with other organisations, we assist survivors of abuse with accessing English language classes and education, training and employment opportunities.
As well as supporting women and girls directly, we offer advice and training for professionals from the statutory and voluntary sectors, to better understand the needs of the women and girls we represent, the types of abuse they experience and to provide best practice prevention and support services.
We campaign to increase awareness and improve laws and policies to tackle all forms of “honour” based abuse and harmful practices including; forced marriage, child marriage, marital captivity, female genital mutilation, virginity testing and hymenoplasty, discrimination by sharia courts and to push for better laws and policies to protect women’s and girl’s rights.
Our mission is to protect Middle Eastern and North African women’s and girls’ rights and equality, to combat discrimination and violence against women and girls and to empower women to access their rights and entitlements in the UK. We are not affiliated with any religion or political party and we support women of all backgrounds.
IKWRO was established in 2002 by our Executive Director Diana Nammi, in collaboration with other refugee women from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan. We developed into a formally constituted organisation in August 2002 and became a registered charity in July 2004, focusing on Iranian and Kurdish women living in the UK. We have since extended our services to meet the needs of Arab, Afghan and Turkish women, and our staff speak Farsi, Kurdish, Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Turkish and English.
Each year, the demand for IKWRO’s services continues to grow and last year we helped over 2200 women and girls with advice, advocacy, emotional support and referrals to other services such as housing associations and for legal advice.
See our most recent annual report here: