Women and Asylum
SAFE HAVENS
THE ISSUE
Do some women face persecution on the basis of their gender? How are the types of persecution women face different from those faced by men? Most of the violence faced by women is domestic or community-based in nature (bride burning, for example, or forced female genital mutilation). Does the international community have a place in recognizing these forms of violence? In condemning them? In eradicating them?
FACTS AND STATS:
QUOTES FROM THE SHOW:
"I think people's tendency has been to
see sexually-based cases as strictly personal.
The law has pointed out that sex-based
discrimination is not necessarily just
personal and that it can rise to the level
of political persecution." -- Phyllis
Coven, Director, Office of International
Affairs, INS
"Female genital mutilation is violation of basic human rights....And maybe it's not our responsibility to go into homes or go into countries and impose our cultural norms or our values on women, but it is certainly our place to grant women who have decided for themselves that they have rejected these norms and want protection, that protection." -- Layli Miller Bashir, International Human Rights Clinic American University
"[Female genital mutilation] is already a category for asylum. The problem is, how does a woman prove it?" -- Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Lt. Governor of Maryland
"I have two concerns about the INS guidelines. One is, it includes not only genital mutilation, but also humiliating dress, the lack of economic opportunity, spousal abuse. These are categories that do not deal with official government persecution, typically" -- Josette Shiner, The Washington Times
"I want to let [Fauziya Kasinga] in, and I want to make sure that the first point of entry, when she encounters that INS guard at the airport, that that person does not have so much power and so little judgment that they can not comprehend the seriousness of what this person is talking about." -- Anita Perez Ferguson, National Women's Political Caucus
RESOURCES:
International Human Rights Clinic, American
University, Washington College of Law,
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington,
DC 20016-8135. (202) 274-4147.
Immigration and Naturalization Service, 425 Eye Street NW Washington, DC 20536. (202) 514-5231.
Equality Now, 226 West 58th Street #4, New York, NY 10019. (212) 586-0906. E-mail: equalitynow@igc.apc.org
Amnesty International, 322 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10001. (212) 807-8400.
Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children, c/o Economic Commission for Africa, ATRCW, P.O. Box 3001, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
