Rodi Alvarado is a Guatemalan woman who survived brutal domestic violence at the hands of her husband for over a decade, receiving no protection from the police and courts when she repeatedly asked for help. Ms. Alvarado fled to the United States seeking safety.

Attorney General John Ashcroft made the decision not to deny Ms. Alvarado’s landmark asylum case, instead sending the case back to the administrative Board of Immigration Appeals. The order, issued on January 19, 2005, was announced on January 21. In February 2004, the Department of Homeland Security recommended that the Attorney General grant Ms. Alvarado asylum after he had “re-certified” the case early in 2003. A diverse coalition of organizations and a bi-partisan group of over 100 Members of Congress feared that a denial of Ms. Alvarado’s asylum claim would limit the ability of women who flee from domestic violence, honor killings and other gender-based violence to receive asylum in the United States.

The fate of Ms. Alvarado now rests with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, which are expected to issue rules to cover such claims.

More»

Read Attorney General Ashcroft’s Decision (PDF-40KB)

Human Rights First Press Statement on the Landmark Gender
Asylum Case

Human Rights First 10/04 Commentary on Case in the
Washington Post

Timeline: Asylum from Gender Persecution (PDF-10KB)

Women and Asylum

Around the world women often suffer persecution just because they are female, and experience persecution differently because they are women. Women who are beaten by their husbands, raped with impunity, forcibly sterilized, ritually mutilated, sold into sexual slavery and targeted for death by relatives in the name of family honor can become refugees when their governments fail to protect them. Some of them flee to the United States in search of safety.

The United States has for many years had a proud tradition of protecting refugees, and has set an example for other countries in protecting women from gender-related violence. But the ability of refugee women to gain asylum in the U.S. was significantly undermined by a 1996 immigration law called the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.” That law created new barriers for asylum seekers which have affected thousands of refugee women. A woman from the Dominican Republic who fled severe domestic violence was ordered deported under the Act’s summary expedited removal process. A rape survivor from Albania was deported to her country of persecution under the same process. Women who have fled forced marriage, rape, forced sterilization, domestic violence, and other gender-related violence have been detained in jails – sometimes for lengthy periods of time, without the opportunity to challenge their detention before a judge. Other women who sought asylum based on fears of “honor killings” and genital mutilation have had their asylum claims rejected based on the one-year filing deadline.

Human Rights First continues to call upon the U.S. government to restore fairness to the asylum process so that vulnerable women refugees who have already endured severe persecution are not unfairly denied a safe haven in this country.

Human Rights First report "Refugee Women at Risk" tells the stories of refugee women seeking asylum in the U.S. Click here to read the full report.