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31 Int'l J. Refugee L. 1 (2019)

handle is hein.journals/intjrl31 and id is 1 raw text is: International Journal of Refugee Law, 2019, Vol 31, No 1, 1-29 doi:10.1093/ijrl/eez01S ARTICLES Excluding Women Catherine Dauvergne* and Hannah Lindyt ABSTRACT This article reviews 16 years of Canadian case law applying the Refugee Convention's exclusion provisions to women. Despite a quarter of a century of strong scholarly and policy-making work asserting the need for attention to gender in refugee law, this dataset shows that, in questions of exclusion, gendered analysis is almost entirely absent. By con- trast, in seeking explanations for the factual basis of exclusion in these cases, gender is almost always an explanatory factor. This stark observation leads us to conclude that sig- nificant additional work - both scholarly and policy-focused - is required. The article also considers whether a more robust application of existing Supreme Court jurisprudence can address the problems we have identified and reaches a mixed conclusion. Overall, the article points out an important gap in current understandings of gender in refugee law, and maps a way forward for future work in the area. 1. INTRODUCTION This article looks at Canadian case law excluding women from refugee protection. Its empirical core is a group of cases from the past two decades where the argument was raised, often successfully, that a woman ought not to be considered a refugee because of a criminal or otherwise heinous act. Our objective in this analysis is to bring together insights about the place of gender in refugee law with recent work on the jurisprudence of exclusion. The results are nothing short of bizarre. In the contemporary political context, the rules surrounding refugee exclusions have become a focus ofintense interest. The idea that some people simply do not deserve refugee protection has slipped into popular discourse, repeated regularly in news broadcasts con- cerning the flood ofhumanity making its way to Europe's southern shores and the array of national leaders erecting walls in one form or another. The political importance of refugee exclusions began even before the Arab Spring, which altered the landscape of global refugee movements in the second decade of this century. Indeed, following the 9/11 attacks in the United States (US) in 2001, the idea that refugee populations were a likely camouflage for terrorists quickly became alarmingly popular. The uptick in refugee flows * Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, Canada. + Barrister and solicitor, Waldman and Associates, Toronto, Canada. © The Author(s) (2019). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions please email: journals.permissionspoup.com . 1

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