Center for Gender & Refugee Studies – California

CGRS serves women, children, LGBT, and other refugees fleeing gender-based violence and other harms. These forms of persecution include forced marriage, female genital cutting, human trafficking, forced prostitution, honor killing, domestic violence, child abuse, incest, and rape. An estimated one in three women will be physically and/or sexually abused in her lifetime, a rate that is even higher in certain regions of the world. Like women, children and LGBT individuals are also subject to high rates of violence: an estimated 25-50% of the world’s children have reported being physically abused, and 78 countries worldwide have legislation criminalizing same sex acts. Tragically, gender-based persecution is often committed with impunity in refugee-producing countries, yet is not adequately recognized as a basis for asylum by the governments of many refugee-receiving countries. Claims for asylum protection by children and LGBT individuals also face particular challenges. CGRS envisions a world where no one is subject to persecution because of his or her gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, or membership in a family or other social group. We push the United States and other refugee-receiving countries to recognize gender-based persecution and to grant asylum to its survivors. At the same time, we work with our international partners to end the epidemic of gender-based violence that forces these individuals to fear for their lives to such an extent that they flee their homes, often leaving everything familiar to them behind.