Evaluating Canada's Approach to Gender-Related Persecution – Revisiting and Re-Embracing ‘Refugee Women and the Imperative of Categories'
Efrat Arbel, Catherine Dauvergne, and Jenni Milbank eds., Gender in Refugee Law: From the Margins to the Centre (London: Routledge, 2014).
Posted: 18 Jul 2016
Date Written: 2014
Abstract
In 1993, Canada was the first state to acknowledge the unique position of women in refugee law, establishing the Guidelines on Women Refugee Claimants Fearing Gender-related Persecution for the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB). More than two decades later, this chapter seeks to re-examine the situation for women claiming refugee status in Canada. It draws on the central points of Audrey Macklin’s seminal analysis of “Refugee Women and the Imperative of Categories”; first by considering current public discourses about women refugees; second, by looking at how the Guidelines are currently being used; and third, by evaluating doctrinal developments based on Macklin’s analysis of developments on the horizon and considering how those have been taken up by scholars and advocates. The apparent tension between Federal Court of Canada and IRB decisions in gender-related persecution cases reveals the troubling failure of the IRB to adequately consult and follow its own guidelines over time. While decision-makers have moved away from a narrow conception of gender as a ‘particular social group’ to a broader interpretation, this has not succeeded in capturing the nuances of gender-based persecution and the politics underpinning refugee status decisions. This chapter concludes that public interest in women refugees and gender-based persecution has waned, and the ‘imperative of categories’ remains largely unaddressed in Canadian jurisprudence with no certain change in sight.
Keywords: gender, law, refugee, Canada, persecution, refugee status determination, administrative law, human rights, women
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