Asylum Campaign

Four postcards illustrating examples of the type of persecution women experience have been produced for wide circulation throughout the EU Member State countries and beyond through multiplier dissemination outlets. The postcards are available in English, French, Spanish and German and can be ordered from the EWL. Each postcard can be detached separately, signed and returned to the EWL, who will centralise the collection and submit the cards to the Belgian Minister of the Interior, acting on behalf of the EU, during the Belgian Presidency in the latter part of 2001.

The outline of a woman has been integrated into the background of the cards, which, when detached demonstrates the symbolic denial of her as a full human being in her own right. The back of the cards contains a message addressed to the EU, reminding the Member States and the European institutions that:

All of the EU Member States have ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the follow-up Protocol of 1967, which provide the legal basis for granting asylum.
However, 50 years later, the five reasons for persecution enumerated in the Convention are not evaluated to assess women’s experience of persecution to include gender-specific acts. The issues raised in these cards are examples of the type of gender-related forms of persecution experienced by women.

mainstream gender into all asylum policies at all levels,
recognise the specific forms of gender persecution as legitimate grounds for granting asylum in all of the EU Member States, and
work towards a European Policy on Asylum.