Refugee Women and the Imperative of Categories

Abstract

It is interesting to speculate about why refugee law seems more amenable than the international human rights regime to acting on the insight that states are as accountable for a failure to protect women from private violations as they are for the public violations that states themselves commit. Perhaps it is because states owe no obligations to nationals of other countries under international human rights law. There is no incentive to take an active interest in the human rights of women elsewhere and as MacKinnon points out a certain self-interest in not doing so. In the refugee context states party to the Convention are obliged to assess the conduct of other states in the course of resolving individual cases brought before their tribunals. Moreover a state hearing a refugee claim is bound under international refugee law not to return a claimant to a country where she may be persecuted. In effect states owe the claimant a legal obligation to judge the actions of the state from which she has fled. (excerpt)