Gender and the 'membership in a particular social group' category of the 1951 Refugee Convention

This article examines the prevalence of gender-related persecution and the challenges for women in securing refugee status under the social group ground of the Refugee Convention. The author begins with an overview of the Refugee Convention and notes how the specific drafting of the Convention excludes women. The article proceeds to examine developments in case law at both the international and domestic level including cases from the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. The author concludes with the necessity to focus on improvements to the application of the existing refugee law framework in order to account for gender-related persecution in refugee claims. [Descriptors: Migration - Refugees and Immigration, International]