The European Campaign on Women Asylum Seekers was officially launched on 6 December 2000 in cooperation with the Heinrich Böll foundationand the European Commission Daphne programme as well as with the support of European Commissioner Vitorino . The main objective of the campaign, which ran throughout 2001, was to draw attention to and call for the recognition of gender-based persecution as a legitimate cause for the granting of asylum to women in all of the EU Member States.

The material of the Campaign consisted of post cards (PDF) in four languages: English, German, Spanish and French and a web site containing information and an electronic petition (link to “impact of the campaign).
The four post cards illustrated examples of the type of persecution women experience in their countries of origin for which protection of their State is not forthcoming. The examples chosen included: rape as a weapon of war ; practices that are carried out in the name of “culture”, such as: female genital mutilation (FGM); forced marriages, honour killings , stoning to death for presumed adultery ; and “guilty by association”, depicting situations in which women and children are used as a tool of oppression to reach the more active members of the family, who they themselves may be tortured, detained or in hiding.

The messages contained on the back of each card were formulated as a petition and focused on the need to include gender mainstreaming into all EU polices on asylum as well as calling for a European policy on asylum. The petition also recalled that all EU Member States had ratified the 1951 Geneva Convention on the Status of Refugees and therefore, had a duty not only to provide protection but also to ensure a gender interpretation of this Convention even if it is not stipulated as such in the text. The focus of the campaign was on the criteria for granting asylum as gender persecution can be defined as acts that occur in situations where a woman, actively or passively, resists what she experiences as oppressive norms, customs or laws prescribed or imposed by the regime or the socio-cultural environment in which she lives. In opposing these norms, customs and laws, women are in fact carrying out a political act and are persecuted as a consequence.

The European Campaign on Women Asylum Seekers is a follow-up to a European conference, which took place in 1998 on "The need for a Gender-Sensitive Asylum Policy in Europe", at which a number of recommendations emerged. This conference was organised by the National Council of Women in Belgium, Dutch speaking, (NVR), the Netherlands Humanist Committee on Human Rights (HOM), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the European Women’s Lobby, with the co-operation of the Henrich Böll Foundation.