Women
Refugees under International Law
Patricia
La Salle
The purpose of
this study is to examine refugees under international law, in particular the
unique situation of women refugees. For this purpose, the thesis examines the
role of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), with particular attention to whether
it is fulfilling its mandate in regards to recognizing and protecting women
refugees. There has been more attention given to women in the last decade but
there are implications that exist for each sovereign government imposing its
own refugee laws.
The thesis
intends to prove that the Refugee Convention needs to be re-evaluated and
re-written to explicitly include gender-based claims, particularly in regards
to women. Also, the Refugee Convention
serves as an example of acceptable refugee law to individual countries and as
long as the Convention fails to explicitly implement gender-related issues, so
will the majority of signees to the Convention.