Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/216528

Title

Marginal women, marginal rights: impediments to gender-based persecution claims by asylum-seeking women in Australia

Author(s)

McPherson, Melinda;  Horowitz, Leah S.;  Lusher, Dean;  Di Giglio, Sarah;  Greenacre, Lucy E.;  Saalmann, Yuri B.

Abstract

Women's experiences of violence often remain invisible or discounted in asylum law and practice. Gender is absent as an overt ground for protection under the Refugee Convention and readings of the Convention have commonly excluded it. Although Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) has acknowledged women's special protection needs with instruments such as the Guidelines on Gender Issues for Decision Makers (DIAC 1996, 2010), the article investigates whether these are translating into practice. It examines ways in which women's claims for asylum because of gender-based persecution (GBP) may be impeded in Australia. Drawing on feedback from major stakeholder groups, including asylum advocates, asylum seeking women, and DIAC, we suggest that at the time of our fieldwork (2005/2006) appropriate consideration of claims of GBP was generally still not evident within DIAC. We identify barriers to both the emergence and consideration of claims and suggest ways DIAC might improve gender sensitivity in the processing of asylum claims.

Publication type

Journal article

Source

Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 24, no. 2 (Jun 2011), pp. 323-347

Publication year

2011

FOR Code(s)

1303 Specialist Studies in Education;  1606 Political Science;  1608 Sociology

Keyword(s)

Asylum law;  Asylum seeker;  Asylum-seeker processing;  Australia;  Gender guidelines;  Gender issue;  Human rights;  Immigration policy;  Policy instruments;  Refugee;  Refugee convention;  Violence;  Violence against women;  Womens status

Publisher

Oxford University Press

ISSN

0951-6328

Publisher URL

http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fer002

Copyright

Copyright © 2011 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Peer reviewed