On August 17, 2024, Aaron Bao, a junior at the Harker School in San Jose, California, will host “Soaring in Concert” to support the Tahirih Justice Center. This year’s event aims to raise $30,000 to aid immigrant survivors of gender-based violence

HB1105, a threat to immigrant survivors, mandates that local law enforcement in Georgia coordinate with federal immigration officials.

The Biden administration has presented the first-ever U.S. National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence: Strategies for Action, a long-awaited, comprehensive, whole-of-government plan that aims to address and prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in this country.  

The Tahirih Justice Center celebrates this milestone which represents a promise to protect human rights and support safety and justice for survivors of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, stalking, child and forced marriage, and other forms of gender-based violence. This plan is the result of years of work by administration officials and stakeholders like Tahirih who convened listening sessions with the White House Gender Policy Council to share our collective knowledge informed by years of providing direct legal and social services to survivors.  

Tahirih’s policy work is rooted in our core values and in our promise theory of change. We work to advance policies and laws that enable immigrant survivors of gender-based violence to purse legal immigration status, live in safety, and fore their own paths.

The Tahirih Justice Center is prioritizing the following policy goals to immediately improve protections for immigrant survivors with simultaneously seeking long-term, systemic change.

A recent report from our two organizations reveals shocking levels of gender-based violence at the US/Mexico border, and exposes how the deterrence-based asylum policy of the US is fueling it.

Everyone deserves to live a life free from violence. That’s why at Tahirih, we believe that people seeking safety in the U.S. should be met with an asylum system that understands the trauma they have endured, instead of exposing them to more harm.

Unfortunately, that is not the case for survivors of gender-based violence who arrive at the southern border seeking protection here in the United States.

A new report by the Tahirih Justice Center and Oxfam America reveals how common it is for people seeking asylum to experience gender-based violence in Mexico while waiting to access the asylum process in the U.S.

After several years of efforts, Alaska has taken action to protect children by limiting child marriage in the state. House Bill 62 does not ban child marriage but is an important first step to ending child marriage in the state. Until this year, Alaska had the lowest minimum marriage age set by law at just 14 and allowed older minors to marry with nothing more than parental permission.  

The new law, which passed both House and Senate with strong bipartisan majorities, raises the state’s minimum marriage age to 16. It also ensures that all minors will go before a judge before marrying, and mandates that minors may not marry a partner more than three years older.