The following account was shared with the City of Sanctuary Sheffield Communications team by Melinda Momartinez, Advocacy and Systems Change Coordinator. It has been written to protect the identities of those involved.
Earlier this year, I attended the funeral of a young woman who had taken her own life in asylum accommodation.
I was the only person there.
She received a Muslim burial, although we do not know for certain whether she was a person of faith.
Despite the best efforts of the coroner, her family in her home country could not be traced. Her parents may never know what happened to their daughter. If she had brothers or sisters, they may always wonder why their sister never came home.
It was only through a chance conversation that I found myself in that room at all.
Several months ago, I had been approached by a young woman who told me what happened. She had lived in shared accommodation with the young woman and was the person to discover her body.
She was left deeply traumatised by what happened. She cannot sleep. She is too frightened of being alone to even take a shower. She now struggles to study or imagine a future.
If she had not spoken to me that day, would anyone outside that building know what had happened?
In Sheffield alone, we know of at least three people who have taken their own lives in asylum accommodation in less than a year.
There are likely others we do not know about.
And that is precisely the problem.
“If she had not spoken to me that day, would anyone outside that building know what had happened?”
This young woman’s death is not an isolated tragedy. It is part of a growing crisis unfolding in asylum accommodation across the country.
These are not inevitable deaths. They are deaths of despair.
They are the result of a system that leaves people trapped between past trauma and an uncertain future, often isolated, unable to work, living in poverty and waiting months or years for decisions that will determine the course of their lives.
I often speak about the “triple trauma” experienced by people seeking asylum.
First, the trauma that forced them to flee whether it is war, persecution, violence, or abuse.
Second, the trauma of the journey itself, made more dangerous by the absence of safe routes to protection.
And third, the trauma of navigating an asylum system that too often feels hostile, isolating and dehumanising.
Research consistently shows that people seeking asylum experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder than the general population.
Yet the conditions many face in the UK from unsuitable accommodation and uncertainty to poverty and barriers to healthcare, only deepen these struggles.
People are expected to survive while living in limbo. For some, the long wait in poverty becomes too much.
It is a source of public shame that there is not a national database recording deaths or suicides among people seeking asylum.
How can we prevent deaths if we do not count them? How can we learn lessons if there is no transparency?
We urgently need national and local databases recording deaths and suicides among people seeking asylum.
We need stronger safeguarding procedures and better access to mental health support in asylum accommodation.
“These are not inevitable deaths. They are deaths of despair.”
We need meaningful collaboration between councils, health services, accommodation providers, the Home Office, and community organisations to ensure that people seeking sanctuary are safe and supported.
And above all, we need an asylum system rooted in dignity, safety, and human rights.
Sheffield was the first City of Sanctuary in the UK. We are proud of that history. But being a City of Sanctuary cannot simply be a badge we wear.
It must mean refusing to look away when people in our city are suffering, demanding accountability when systems fail, and insisting that nobody seeking safety is left isolated, invisible, or abandoned.
No one seeking sanctuary should die unnoticed.
Nobody should only have one person attending their funeral.
Related work
City of Sanctuary Sheffield and South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) jointly contributed evidence to the UK Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee inquiry into asylum accommodation, drawing on the experiences of people living in asylum accommodation in Sheffield.
The submission highlighted concerns including poor housing conditions, room-sharing, lack of an independent complaints procedure, and the impact of accommodation policies on people’s health and wellbeing.
Read the evidence submitted to the Home Affairs Committee here.