Nearly three in four Britons would ban asylum seekers from countries where women are not safe or treated equally, a poll has found.
Seven in ten (73 percent) respondents said they would vote against allowing men into Britain from countries where rape, child abuse and domestic violence are ‘widespread’, and also where women are not treated equally.
Only 13 percent said they would not vote against allowing men from such countries to seek asylum.
Meanwhile, two-thirds (66 percent) said they believe in immigration from countries
where women have fewer legal or social rights has led to an increase in the number of reported sexual offences.
It comes after a series of brutal attacks by migrants on women in Britain.
In April, two asylum seekers – Ibrahim Alshafe, 25, from Egypt, and Abdulla Ahmadi, 26, from Iran – were found guilty of repeatedly raping a woman on Brighton beach.
They arrived in a small boat in June last year and raped the woman, who they found ‘staggering in the street’ in the early hours after a night out in October.
Afghan asylum seeker Ahmad Mulakhil kidnapped, raped and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton
Meanwhile, Afghan asylum seeker Ahmad Mulakhil, 23, was found guilty in February kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton.
He was found guilty of rape, kidnap, assault and making an indecent video of the girl after taking her to a quiet cul-de-sac on July 22 last year.
Mulakhil arrived from France in a small boat in March 2025.
The poll, conducted by Whitestone Insight on behalf of the Women’s Policy Center, found older voters were more likely to support a ban.
More than eight in ten (85 percent) of people over 65 say they ‘probably’ or ‘certainly’ support it.
But a majority of younger voters said they would, too; 58 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds and 25-to-34-year-olds said they did.
Of the two-thirds who said they believed immigration had fueled sex attacks in Britain, 40 percent of those who said there was ‘a lot’.
Concern about this was greatest among older voters, from 58 percent among those aged 18 to 24 to 77 percent among those aged 65 and over.
The survey did not single out specific countries, but most respondents may have had countries like Iran, Afghanistan and Egypt in mind.
Paola Diana, founder and executive chair of the Women’s Policy Centre, said: ‘These results are unequivocal.
‘More than seven in ten British adults are simply unwilling to open our borders to men from countries where rape, child abuse and domestic violence are endemic, and where women are treated as second-class citizens.
“These are not prejudices, they are common sense, rooted in the lived reality of what unequal treatment of women looks like.”
Whitestone Insight surveyed 2,093 British adults online between August 21 and 23, 2026.
