Gender and the Evolving Refugee Regime

In promulgating the 1990 Policy on Refugee Women and the 1991 Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees took a universalistic position that gender-based persecution is an abuse of fundamental human rights. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees argued that when Governments are unwilling or unable to protect women from such persecution, the international community should provide asylum. This article argues that the position taken by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the early 1990s was fully consistent with the ways in which the refugee regime had evolved during the 20th century. Moreover, it has paved the way for similar approaches to be taken to new forms of displacement that necessitate protection responses. In this respect, it argues that the absence of meaningful protection by the State should be a core criterion in determining ways in which the refugee regime (meaning both laws and institutions responsible for refugees) can address the likelihood of new forms of displacement.