The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) has hit back at UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman’s highly controversial comments on the international asylum system. Braverman faced heavy backlash this week when she publicly criticised the 1951 refugee convention, claiming it was no longer fit for purpose. Elsewhere in her speech, given at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC, Braverman claimed that being discriminated against for being LGBTQ+ or a woman is not enough of a reason to qualify for asylum. “Let me be clear, there are vast swathes of the world where it is extremely difficult to be gay, or to be a woman,” Braverman said in her speech on Tuesday (26 September).