For decades, various international reports and journal articles have been trying to draw attention towards gender-based violence happening to female asylum seekers and refugees. Evidence implies that the gender-based violence is occurring in their country of origin, on their way to and in Europe. The Council of Europe Istanbul Convention and the EU directives exist in order to protect women and girls from gender-based violence and ensure that states offer them appropriate services. Gender-based violence can be also a form of persecution and a basis for international protection.

Information on access to services of female asylum-seekers is scarce in the European Union as well as in Finland, once recognised as victims of gender-based violence. The purpose of my thesis was to fill the missing gap concerning services in Finland. Through the qualitative research and semi-structured interviews, the aim was to find out what kind of services are provided in practice, as well as to bring out the professionals’ practical experiences in providing these services, and their hopes for improvement. Ten professionals were interviewed working in five different municipalities, seven of them working in the reception centres and three others in NGOs.

There are no previous thesis done on this topic, so I hope this master’s thesis would offer more knowledge on the subject to both professionals and students in the social welfare or health care field.

The key findings imply that various approaches to guidance and counselling exist in practice. This is due to many reasons: Unstructured work in the reception centres limits guidance and counselling possibilities. Decreased access to legal help and accelerated asylum procedures make it more difficult to offer guidance and counselling in time. There is a lack of knowledge about gender-based violence among professionals. Challenges also exist with lack of multilingual materials and cooperation with other service providers.

In order to tackle these challenges suggestions include improving working conditions in the reception centres, ensuring the access to legal help in time, provision of quality training on gender-based violence with more tools for working life, availability of multilingual materials and improving the cooperation between reception centres and other service providers. Finally, the need for monitoring of the services and assuring that they are provided to asylum-seekers according to the Istanbul Convention and EU regulations.