Micro Rainbow is a charity that supports LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers in the UK, providing them with safe places to stay and support during and after being granted resident status.
The social climate in the UK has grown increasingly hostile towards the LGBTQI+ community, and towards people seeking asylum here. In bold defiance of this slide backwards is Micro Rainbow, an organisation that provides LGBTQI+ people seeking safety in the UK with accommodation and support adapting to life here, both as they navigate the asylum system and after they are granted status here. I spoke with Moud Goba about the work that Micro Rainbow does and her own experiences as someone who came to the UK as a queer asylum seeker. Moud has been recognised internationally for her dedication to making the process of rebuilding a life easier and safer for the people she works with. She was awarded BET’s Global Good Award in 2023.
In our conversation we discussed the misconceptions that surround people seeking asylum on the grounds of sexuality and gender identity. The BBC recently reported on false claims of being gay to try and game the asylum system, this report exacerbated an already extremely unsafe climate for people seeking safety in the UK and gave further fuel to the far right as they attack individuals seeking asylum. Micro Rainbow proudly stands to humanise and support LGBTQI+ individuals as they navigate the broken system. If you want to support Micro Rainbow with the vital work that it does you can find more information at the end of the interview.
Can you tell me about Micro Rainbow and the work you do?
Micro Rainbow is an organisation that supports LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum, refugees, and migrants. Our work takes a holistic approach; we work on providing safe housing. We also do a lot of social inclusion work as well, and moving on and employability work. More recently, we do a lot of advocacy and policy work too. There’s no space for LGBTQI+ people sometimes within the refugee community or within their religious or their cultural communities. That’s where we come in: when people are homeless and face abuse, we provide them with safe housing within Micro Rainbow safe housing.
We have about 30 safe houses at the moment, and that’s where we’re able to provide them with places to stay. In terms of social inclusion work, we try to tackle the isolation that people face. When they leave their country, they’re sometimes ostracised by family members; they’re ostracised by their community, and for most of us who are religious, sometimes the space is not welcoming, so you face extreme isolation. There’s that space as well where people are able to get that well-being support, psychosocial support, peer support.
We have a specific group called Sista Sista for women. We also have a specific trans group for people going through the transitioning process. They’ll be able to support each other and understand what people are going through. Another part of our work that I really, really love is our moving-on work, employability work; I love it because it humanises us in recognising that people have got ambition.
When people get status, we’re able to support them with CV writing workshops, interview training techniques, getting to know how the UK labour market works, For those who want sort of skills training, we also support them or already if they have some qualifications that they have, then we’re able to support them with their qualification conversion so they’re able to move on with their life.
The work that you do makes a real difference in the lives of the people you work with, what is the biggest challenge you face as a charity?
I think the biggest challenge that we face is quite a lot is homelessness; people who are in accommodation often experience abuse from other refugees, and they need safe accommodation. That is a challenge that people face. Say, for example, if a trans woman, sometimes there are issues if the ID that they have is not changed yet, they might be mistakenly put in a male household because the Home Office space is gendered. That already creates a problem for a few days while they’re trying to move them or before they realise it. Or sometimes, if people are in Home Office housing and they’re facing abuse from other refugees. Sometimes lesbians who are travelling by themselves face a lot of sexual harassment or a lot of questions. Why are you on your own? What’s happening? Why did you claim asylum?
In addition to that, there’s also a challenge of getting the right legal support to go through the system. I’m sure you would be aware of the challenges around legal aid. There isn’t enough legal support when people are going through their cases. So sometimes people go through these cases without any support. But yes, housing is the most pressing issue usually.
As someone who came to the UK as a queer asylum seeker yourself, what was your experience like?
Seeking asylum was difficult because when I sought asylum, we didn’t have people like Micro Rainbow to provide you with the accommodation or the additional support that is there. The process took longer. It was more than two years, close to three years. That was really a challenging time. It is a space where it can be inhumane when you’re going through the process. You also have to prove yourself. You go through the process in poverty. I know at the moment you’re not allowed to work. At the moment, people get nearly 50 pounds a week to sustain themselves; that’s not a lot. Back then it was less, a lot less.
So I was going through this process, living in poverty, also not having the adequate support or the legal support that would support me as I was going through. I feel like I was lucky because I was an activist before, and I was already involved with groups such as UK Black Pride, so I had evidence of my sexuality. We have this high burden of proof where you have to provide evidence to prove your case. I had a lot of evidence and support, support letters, but other people don’t have that because you’ve grown up in this space hiding.
It was quite challenging those few years, and also the fact that you wait without any knowledge of when this will be resolved. First, you don’t know when you’re going to get your interview. When you get it, you have to be ready with your evidence, which might be believed or might not be believed. Your own story might not be believed. That was a real challenge. After that, you also have to wait. You don’t know when a decision will come. In that time, you can’t work, and your mental health is not great. It was a really tough time for me to go through that process. So much that when the process finished, I really wanted to work with other LGBTQI+ people seeking asylum. My profession was a teacher of the deaf before, but when I went through this process, it was so hard and traumatising that I wanted to do something.
Can you tell me more about what life was like in Zimbabwe?
At the time Robert Mugabe was our president, and he made it very clear that people who were LGBTQI+ were Western pigs and dogs. I was not free to be myself. I couldn’t live the life that I certainly live now that I live in the UK. I couldn’t have lived with my partner. I couldn’t have children as a queer woman or any of that. It was a really difficult space to be. It was a space of fear, fear of being found, fear of what might happen. While there might not be any sort of imprisonment, there’s still fear of the community. When people find out that you’re different, it can be a really tough experience.
Recently there has been a lot of discourse about people seeking asylum in the UK on the grounds of being LGBTQ+, with a lot of misinformation; can you give us a realistic picture of how many people are seeking asylum through these routes?
One of the first things I always want people to know is that it’s not as easy as it is portrayed in the media or the perspectives that people are given. It’s very much thought that if somebody goes and claims a queer identity, it is believed and off they go; you actually have to have a lot of proof. I think it’s more proof required than any other group of people who will be claiming asylum. However, in terms of actual numbers, the Home Office’s latest statistics, which were accurate up to 2023 when they stopped tracking this data, show that around 1,500 to 2,000 people would come to the UK every year to claim asylum on the basis of being LGBTQI+.
That number only represents between two and five percent of the total number of people seeking asylum. So we’re not talking about tens of thousands of people who are coming and claiming queer identities. Micro Rainbow supports about 1,000 people claiming asylum every year. It’s really difficult in terms of the misinformation. Even in 2023, the Home Office were forced to admit that our former Home Secretary Suella Braverman had no basis for her claim that many people pretended to be gay to abuse the system.
In the current political and social climate there is a worrying tide of hatred against asylum seekers, and LGBTQ+ people, how is this impacting the work you do and the lives of service users?
It’s really difficult. Remember the anti-asylum riots started in 2024, and then we’ve got the far-right marches. It’s really difficult for the people that we work with. There’s also the political way everything changes: when a different government comes in, they change policies around migration and seeking asylum. I feel people are scapegoated for a lot of the challenges the country is experiencing. We have all this happening, and you’re trying to claim asylum, going through this difficult, inhumane system where you already are disempowered, and then you’re essentially told every day that you’re not welcome. This has really impacted the mental health of our beneficiaries and how we work. We’ve experienced hate from some far-right journalists as well who have written about our organisation.
We’ve had to take some safeguarding measures not only for our beneficiaries but for staff members too. We’ve had to make a lot of changes. The worrying thing is that it does affect people who have experienced trauma, who have left their country to seek safety, and they continue to experience challenges when they arrive in the UK. It impacts them in terms of mental well-being, how people are moving on, even when they’re granted status. Sometimes there’s that uncertainty of security and a lack of sense of belonging.
What do you wish more people understood about the experience of queer people seeking asylum in the UK?
I wish people understood that people are not pretending to be queer. It’s a very difficult thing to pretend to be. People hide when they’re back home for safety. Coming to the UK after having claimed asylum, they’re definitely not pretending that is who they are. People just want to be safe and to be free to love. To, without any persecution, be free to be who they are, free to have their identity. Whether they’re trans, gay, non-binary, just to be themselves without fear of persecution. There are not thousands of people who are pretending to be queer. There are people who are genuine and trying to seek safety and trying to live freely.
The second thing is that people are not coming to take a lot of money from the government because the misconception is that people are coming and then staying on benefits or going on benefits. Theres a misconception that in the asylum system they get this lot of money, maybe because of how they are accommodated. For example, those in hotels, it just looks like people are living this plush life. That’s not the reality. People are not working; they are not allowed to work. Those who are in hotels, they don’t get money. People do want to integrate and become part of the community and contribute positively to their new homes. It’s not people wanting to come and take over and take jobs or just take benefits. Mostly it’s about benefits, right? Not even jobs. There is no such thing. People actually live in poverty while they’re going through the system.
Can you tell me about some of the success stories Micro Rainbow has?
We had a trans woman who was from a country where she was persecuted. She came in the UK, and she couldn’t work during that time. She was a doctor, a cancer doctor in her home country. She spent her time in the house doing a qualification conversion test because of a programme that we had. We were able to provide her with a laptop, with Wi-Fi in the house, where she was able to do her course. Through that, when she got her status, she quickly was able to move on. I think she’s working for the NHS.
We have so many good stories of people who’ve moved on and are integrated as part of the community. In our houses in Essex, we’ve had people who have become carers, and they’re working just down the road from where they used to live. One of the people who used to live near our house is actually a local GP now. We’ve had someone who, unfortunately, when he came to us, he was very young, he left when he was 19, but his status was resolved when he was 24. He always used to love watching the renovations around the house and used to ask all the contractors if they could teach him one day. Some of them did. He’s a bricklayer now, people do move on. We have so many good stories. It’s not always doom and gloom. We have the good stories of people who win in the end.
What can people do to help the work that you do?
I always think that people think that they can’t do a lot to help. The first thing is to remain educated about the issues that people face. Then there are people; we all have lots of different skills. People can reach out to us and let us know how they can support. I talked earlier about we have social inclusion and moving on work. A lot of that work is supported by volunteers: people who come and do a yoga workshop with others, singing for well-being or singing for mental health, dance sessions. All those things are supported by volunteers, helping people to write CVs, to know about the UK workplace.
People can volunteer their skills. We struggle with the challenge of translations. There are lots of languages that we may need help with. We have a lot of community members who’ve got different languages. We also keep a wish list on our website where, when we have a house opening, people can send us things like pillows, cutlery, little things like plates that can help us to create a home for new people. There are many different ways in which people can help us. They can just reach out and ask. We’ve had someone who used to take people around London, going to museums, educating them about a little history of the area and things like that. There are many ways people can get involved in supporting us. You can just contact us!
To find out more about how to support Micro Rainbow in the work they do, look here.
