Contribution from the European Women’s Lobby to the European Commission’s Green Paper on the future Common Asylum System COM(2007) 301 final
The European Women’s Lobby (EWL), is the largest alliance of women’s nongovernmental organisations in the European Union with more than 4000 member organisations. EWL currently comprises 26 national co-ordinations in EU Member States and accession countries and 19 European-wide member organisations. EWL’s mission is to work to achieve equality between women and men, to promote women’s empowerment in all spheres of public and private life and to eliminate all forms of violence against women. EWL has been following the issue of women asylum seekers since 2000 when it ran an one-year campaign to draw attention to and lobby for the recognition of women’s particular experience of persecution which can be different to that of men and on that basis to ensure that women have equal access to the whole of the asylum system, in particular the determination process. In this context, EWL submitted contributions in the pre-drafting phase of the Qualifications and Procedures Directives, and welcomes that in the final text adopted, acts of sexual violence and of a gender-specific nature constitute acts of persecution1. Therefore, EWL welcomes the Commission’s Green Paper on the future Common European Asylum System and is submitting this contribution to the debate from women’s and a gender equality perspective. Due to its broader framework of women’s rights and gender equality, as opposed to a specialised women’s asylum organisation, EWL will not comment on all of the questions posed in the Green Paper. EWL is responding to questions: 1-5 (together), 15 and 16.
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