Women and Girls fleeing conflict (UNHCR)
This paper: "Women and and Girls fleeing conflict: Gender and the interpretation and application of the 1951 refugee convention" was commissioned in te context of a project on Developing Guidelines for the protection of people fleeing violence and conflict accross borders.
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About this publication:
Women and girls fleeing conflict clearly face a number of obstacles to presenting a succesful claim for refugee status. Part 2 of this paper examines the character and effects of conflict on women and girls, demonstrating that, while individual experiences will vary, there are common threads.
The study answers the following questions:
- 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) and on what legal basis?
- Could a women or girl fleeing conflict meet the definiton of refugee?
- 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?
Author: Valerie Oosterveld, University of Western Ontario Faculty of Law, Canada.
the publication is only available in English.