Refugee and Internally Displaced Women; Gender-Based Asylum Claims
auf Deutsch
Elderly Serb woman waiting to depart Prizren in a convoy of fleeing Serb civilians on June 14, 1999. © 1999 Joanne Mariner/ Human Rights Watch
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Refugee and internally displaced
women are vulnerable to abuse by governments, insurgent groups, and other
refugees as they flee conflict, persecution, or natural catastrophe in
their countries or locations of origin. They are vulnerable to violence
both as a result of the surrounding problem and because of their dependence
on outsiders for relief provisions. Internally displaced women are further
at risk because often the government that should protect them is also the
government that persecutes them. Refugees generally have limited or no
legal recourse for sexual and domestic violence, partly as a result of
their unfamiliarity with and wariness of local police and judicial authorities
and partly because of the lack of timely, systematic, and sensitive response
by relevant international and local authorities. For example, Burundian
women in Tanzania’s refugee
camps have suffered relentless domestic and sexual violence, but the women
have no realistic chance to pursue criminal cases against their attackers
in Tanzanian courts. Governments and international organizations have only
gradually begun to address the specific needs of refugee and internally
displaced women, despite the fact that a high proportion of refugees and
internally displaced persons are women. In Nepal's
refugee camps, for example, progress has been made on some fronts, but
women still suffer from domestic violence and institutionalized discrimination
in access to registration documents, shelter, and supplies.
For years, when women seeking
asylum reported being raped by police or soldiers, adjudicators rejected
their claims, treating these acts of persecution as a “private” moment.
In the early 1990s, Canada became the first country to recognize that women
suffer from gender-specific forms of persecution that should be recognized
under the 1951 Refugee Convention. Since then, women have successfully
sought protection from many gender-specific forms of persecution including
“honor” crimes, female genital mutilation, and sexual violence, particularly
in conflict situations. It has been more difficult to convince countries
of asylum to recognize that the failure of the state to provide redress
for victims of domestic violence can rise to the level of persecution.
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