Attachments
Introduction
Gender-based violence against women remains a pressing issue, causing women to flee their countries and seek international protection.
At the same time EU+ countries continue to improve safeguards for women and girls within the asylum procedure through policy, legislative, institutional and jurisprudential developments. These key developments are available in the Asylum Report 2024. A more sensitive genderbased approach to asylum has also been advanced by the CJEU in 2024 in three landmark judgments.
Jurisprudence at national and European-level demonstrates a clear shift toward the recognition of gender as a ground for persecution, allowing women who have been victims or are at risk of gender-based violence to be granted refugee status, most often on the 1951 Geneva Convention ground of membership of a particular social group. While recognising that gender-based violence can amount to serious harm, other national courts grant subsidiary protection.
This report introduces the legal framework to better understand the jurisprudence on genderbased violence against women. Jurisprudence is then presented on the assessment of gender as a characteristic to identify a particular social group, specifically on violence on account of gender, women who identify with the value of equality between women and men after living in an EU Member State, state-imposed discriminatory measures, women fleeing forced marriage, divorced women, women accused of witchcraft, victims of sexual violence, women who have had an illegal abortion and women and girls fleeing FGM/C. It includes jurisprudence on the assessment of facts and circumstances by asylum authorities and the critical need to implement special procedural guarantees for vulnerable women so that they may participate effectively in the procedure.
The case law included in this report covers the period of 1 January 2020–4 October 2024 and is by no means exhaustive. Case law related to women who are victims of human trafficking is not addressed as the topic is covered extensively in the EUAA Situational Update No 21 on Victims of Human Trafficking in Asylum and Reception (August 2024). Also, for more information on operational standards and indicators addressing issues related to applicants in a situation of vulnerability in asylum and reception, including on women victims of genderbased violence, see EUAA’s Guidance on Vulnerability in Asylum and Reception - Operational Standards and Indicators (May 2024). The EUAA has also developed useful tools for the identification of vulnerable applicants, including the Identification of Persons with Special Needs (IPSN) tool and the Special Needs and Vulnerability Assessment (SNVA) tool.