Gendered Human Rights: The International Community’s Failed Response to the Persecution of Women

Increasingly women\u27s human rights are being violated as evidenced most recently in Afghanistan and Algeria. The persecution women face is often gender-related. The international community has repeatedly failed to acknowledge that gender-related persecution is as acute and as debilitating as other forms of persecution, i.e., ethnic, religious, political opinion. This failure to acknowledge gender-related persecution has been detrimental to female refugees and has resulted in inconsistent care and protection for them. Today there are well more than 20 million refugees, the majority of whom are female. The gender-related human rights abuses suffered by women, the failure of the international community to acknowledge this abuse, and the gendered nature of the care and protection female refugees receive, are the foci of this paper