UNHCR Protection Manual - Related sources

This paper aims to bring some preliminary focus to a sub‐set of female refugee claimants, by asking three interrelated questions. 1) can violence directed against women and girls during conflict ever be described as indiscriminate (and therefore not persecutory for the purposes of the Refugee Convention)? 2) on what legal basis, if any, could a woman or girl fleeing conflict meet the definition of ‘refugee’? 3) what problems do women and girls fleeing conflict face when making refugee claims, and are these problems different from those faced by female claimants fleeing peacetime ill‐ treatment?

The question whether persecuted women can be refugees seems uncontroversial and now well-settled as a matter of international refugee law. Yet, closer scrutiny of case law suggests that there are multiple impediments to the recognition of women’s asylum claims. In this paper, the author presents three emerging trends in the jurisprudence of a number of countries, which have an impact on the recognition of gender-related asylum claims. The author calls these trends – distinction, discretion and discrimination – the “new frontiers” to gender-related claims.

This paper centres on two main substantive parts: one on displacement and gender equality, the other on the right to a nationality, questions of statelessness and gender equality. These parts explain the many facets of the gender dimensions of and influences on displacement and statelessness, drawing out the impact of gender inequality on women’s access to and enjoyment of their human rights in these contexts and identifying relevant CEDAW provisions at issue and how they apply.

female genital mutilation; gender-related persecution; particular social group.