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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
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.