Bouafle lies in the centre of Ivory Coast. Y.K.L. was born here, the only daughter of a police officer and member of the Ivorian Party of Workers. Until the army uprising in September 2002 she was a student at her local secondary school, a neat, small, pretty girl with an older brother and a contented family life. Then the violence which has recently marked West Africa reached her area.

In the wake of the uprising, government forces, rebels and militia groups all went on a looting and killing spree, attacking civilians suspected of supporting other factions. The violence was particularly severe in the west of the country, where the proximity to Liberia exacerbated the conflict; many Liberian residents of refugee camps inside the Ivory Coast (having fled their own country’s civil war) joined the fighting, mostly on the rebel side.

Africa’s rejection

Y.K.L’s story is terrible, but not unusual. The rebels reached Bouafle on the night of 19 September 2002. They charged through the town – breaking down doors, looking for government supporters and looting. That night, Y.K.L.’s father was on night shift at the police station.

“The rebels came into our house and took my brother. When my mother tried to protect him they killed her with a knife. They cut her throat and told us to drink her blood. They put knives to our throats and forced us. Then they took my brother away. The men threatened to cut my clitoris if I wouldn’t stop resisting. Then they raped me. One of them took his belt and started beating me on my face.” Y.K.L still has two scars along her cheekbone from the blows. She also has scars on her wrist and down her legs from cigarette burns.

Y.K.L was then taken with other civilians, many of them young women, to the rebels’ camp in the bush near Bouafle. She was held prisoner for four days, in a small makeshift prison built from wood. She was frequently raped and watched other women suffer the same violation. One night, in the dark, she and a number of other girls managed to escape and return to the town.

“I went straight to my father’s police station. At first it seemed empty, but when I went inside I found the bodies of the policemen lying on the floor, soaked in blood. Most of them had no heads. I recognised my father’s body by his clothes. I ran out of the police station and with some other people I knew we set out for Yamoussoukro, another town about forty kilometres away, where we had friends.” She didn’t go home, too terrified of what she might find. She had no way of finding her brother, and hoped to have news of him when she was safe.

The rebels had not yet reached Yamoussoukro. A friend gave Y.K.L. clothes and a little money and helped her travel to Abidjan. There she was in such pain that she went to the hospital before finding other friends of her father’s. They briefly took care of her before helping her contact an agent involved in trafficking people to Europe.

Y.K.L. saw no alternative to flight from her homeland. She thus joined the constant exodus from civil conflict and violence in West African countries, with waves of Liberians, Sierra Leoneans and Ivorians fleeing across some of the most permeable borders of the world into neighbouring countries and beyond. Y.K.L., knowing no one in a nearby African country, thought she would find safety in Europe.

Europe’s welcome

What happened next to Y.K.L. is also familiar. The agent got her to France, where a former colleague of her father’s lived. She settled briefly in his home, but his family was not prepared to take in an illegal immigrant for more than a couple of days. When Y.K.L. met another asylum-seeker trying to reach the UK, she joined him. She arrived at Dover on 1 November 2002 and, after a while, asked for asylum.

But she found no solace. Her application for asylum was rejected by the immigration authorities, and her solicitor refuses to administer her appeal – because of the complication that her brief stay in France should make that country the target of Y.K.L’s application. She is also disadvantaged by her failure to apply for asylum immediately when she arrived in Britain.

Y.K.L. is now in limbo. She is unlikely to be deported, since Ivory Coast is not designated a ‘safe country’ by the Home Office. But without the right to work or any entitlement to welfare payments, and with little English and an incomplete education, her condition is desperate.

She is not alone. An estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers have exhausted their legal possibilities and are now wandering the streets of Britain’s cities trying to survive from day to day. Their numbers are growing. Y.K.L.’s constant fear, like theirs, is that she will be arrested and put into a detention centre.