[En]gendering international refugee protection: are we there yet?

This chapter takes stock of transnational developments in law and practice relating to gender asylum claims over the past twenty years in order to review the role of international human rights law (IHRL) in ‘gendering’ international refugee law (IRL) and the associated protection available to women asylum seekers. It has been argued that IRL has undergone an important transformation, catalysed by attention to women's issues in general, and particularly the development of what have been called new ‘gender asylum doctrines and procedures’. Proponents of this view identify three main areas of human rights abuse against women as illustrative of the ways in which IHRL has been successfully brought to bear in gender asylum claims, namely, rape and other forms of sexual violence, female genital mutilation (FGM) and family violence.