Honour killings and honour suicides [10]
State protection in Turkey [14]Credibility [15]
Assessment of the risk of harm [17]
Treaty interpretation and guidelines [20]
Gender claims and power structures [21]Abstract definitions of “political opinion” unhelpful [22]
[1] The facts of Refugee Appeal No. 76044 [2008]
NZAR 719 (NZRSAA) were inauspicious.1 First,
it was the claimant’s second refugee application and her third
appearance before the Refugee Status Appeals Authority (RSAA). On
her first and second appearances (in support of her husband’s claim and
subsequently in support of her own claim) she had been described as a
devious and untrustworthy witness. Second, her new refugee claim
was a repetition of the first until it was amended to plead that as she
had left her husband, she could not return to Turkey. Despite
these difficulties the claimant was recognised as a refugee on the
political opinion ground because her evidence on the reformulated claim
was accepted as credible.
[2] The possible significance
of the case lies in its analysis of the political opinion ground and on
the internal protection alternative. In this short paper only the
former is addressed. It will be suggested that the facts
underline yet again the necessity for the refugee definition to be
given a gendered interpretation, a goal frequently stated but as
frequently not achieved. The decision might also illustrate the
difficulties inherent in making credibility findings.
[3] The claimant was an Alevi Kurd
from rural southeast Turkey where her father had a small farm.
The family was organised on the basis that the father held all the
power and the women (particularly the daughters) were relegated to
looking after the household and to working on the farm. The
claimant received only five years education, the view of her father
being that her time was better spent working at home. The
father’s authority within the family was absolute and it was common for
the claimant, her sisters and mother to be beaten if in his view they
were carrying out their tasks inadequately or tardily. The
daughters were forbidden from speaking to any male person outside the
family.
[4] At seventeen years of age
the claimant was told by her father that she was to marry a man from a
nearby village whose family were also farmers. Over her protests
she was taken one night to that man’s family home and left there.
When she begged her newly acquired mother-in-law to send for her
parents to take her home, her father arrived to tell her that if she
returned to his household he would kill her.
[5] From that point on the
claimant lived an unhappy life with a man for whom she had little
affection and in whose household she was subject to the control of
others, particularly her husband, his father and his mother. She
was regularly assaulted by both her husband and by her mother-in-law.
[6] Without consultation or
explanation, the husband went to the UK where he made an unsuccessful
refugee claim. After being deported back to Turkey he travelled
to New Zealand and lodged a refugee claim there. His wife and two
children were instructed to join him, which they did. The
husband’s refugee claim was based on his alleged active involvement in
the People’s Democracy Party (HADEP). The claimant herself lodged
a separate refugee claim based on the assertion that she had been
accused of supporting HADEP and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party
(PKK). After hearing the husband and the claimant giving evidence
in support of the husband’s claim, the RSAA made the following adverse
credibility findings:
[7] When the claimant’s own case
came before the RSAA a second adverse credibility finding was made
against her:
[8] Undaunted, both the husband and
the claimant lodged second refugee claims identical to the first.
Before the new claims could be heard, the husband attempted to kill the
claimant preparatory to taking his own life. Escaping the
incident, the claimant removed her wedding ring and threw it at her
husband, telling him that the marriage was over and that he was to
leave. That was the last time she saw her husband as he left New
Zealand and returned to Turkey. The day following the incident,
however, he made a telephone call accusing his wife of having a new
boyfriend and stating that it was his intention to kill her. The
following day the husband’s family in Turkey made four telephone calls
saying that they had learnt from the husband that the wife had
terminated the marriage. They said that such a thing had never
happened before in their family and was not permitted by the Kurdish
community. They told the wife that they (the husband’s family)
were required to “cleanse their dignity” as they had been shamed in
front of the entire Kurdish community. The father-in-law, who
held absolute authority within the husband’s family, stated that he
would personally ensure that the wife was killed. Similar
telephone calls were made weekly thereafter. Just before his
return to Turkey the husband telephoned his wife to advise that on her
return to Turkey he would cleanse his shame by killing her.
Subsequently the wife’s own family told her (through the couple’s
youngest son) that it was a matter of honour that on her return to
Turkey, her father or brothers would kill her.
[9] The wife’s second claim to
refugee status was amended to plead that having terminated her
relationship with an increasingly unstable, jealous and violent
husband, she was now at risk in Turkey of being killed not only by him
and his family, but also by her own family in order to maintain their
“honour”.
Honour killings and honour suicides
[10] The country information
on so-called “honour” killings in Turkey is substantial, much of it
written by Turkish scholars. The evidence shows that violence
against women, including honour killings and rape are a widespread
problem in Turkey. Many of the murders occur in the Kurdish
provinces where there is a deeply entrenched patriarchal and feudal
system. But honour crimes are not a uniquely Kurdish phenomenon
nor are they properly associated with any particular society or
religion.
[11] The United States
Department of State, Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices for 2007: Turkey (March 2008)
highlighted the connection between honour killings and what have come
to be called “honour suicides”. It records that after the
government increased penalties for honour killings in 2005, family
members increasingly pressured girls to kill themselves in order to
preserve the family’s honour with the result that whereas the
government reported that there were thirty-seven victims of honour
killings during 2007 and 1,806 honour killings between 2001 to 2006,
during the same period, 5,375 women committed suicide. Helena
Smith in “Hundreds Die in Turkey as Honour Suicides Replace Killings”, The Guardian Weekly, 31 August
2007, 3 reported that in Batman, a city of 250,000 situated in the
southeast of Turkey, more than 300 women had attempted suicide since
2001. Seven died in one month alone. Smith reported that
similar death rates were seen all over the southeast:
[12] So alarming is the phenomenon
of honour suicides that in May 2006 Dr Yakin Ertürk, the UN
Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, its Causes and
Consequences and herself a citizen of Turkey, went on “mission” to
investigate the suicides of women in eastern and southeastern Turkey
and the claims that the deaths of these women may be instances of
murder or forced suicide. Her conclusions are to be found in the Report of the Special Rapporteur on
Violence Against Women, Its Causes and Consequences: Mission to Turkey (22-31
May 2006) (A/HRC/4/34/Add.2 (5 January 2007)) (the Ertürk
report). The summary to the report records that the suicides
occurring in the southeastern/eastern region of Turkey are “intimately
linked to violence emanating from the understandings of honour and
customary law”:
[13] Addressing the underlying
reasons for the suicides Dr Ertürk concluded at para [47] of the
body of the report that:
State protection in Turkey
[14] The country information
reviewed in Refugee Appeal No. 76044
showed that violence against women was widely tolerated, and even
endorsed by community leaders and at the highest levels of the
government and judiciary. The authorities rarely carried out
thorough investigations into women’s complaints about violent attacks
or murders or apparent suicides of women.
Credibility
[15] The Authority at para [37]
observed that any refugee claimant whose credibility as a witness has
been comprehensively rejected by two successive panels of the RSAA
faced an almost insurmountable hurdle in establishing her credibility
on her third appearance before a new panel of the Authority.
However, the panel went on to find at para [39] that when giving
evidence about her own life experiences and freed of the need to
support the false claim to refugee status by her husband, the claimant
was a credible and persuasive witness. This favourable assessment
of her credibility had been assisted by independent evidence
corroborating the account of the attack by the husband and of domestic
violence experienced within the family.
[16] The following central
elements of her claim were accepted:
(a) That consequent upon the claimant terminating the
marital relationship, the husband believed that he was duty bound to
cleanse both his “honour” and that of his family by killing the
claimant.
(b) That the husband’s family would ensure that
either the husband or someone else in the family killed the claimant.
(c) That the claimant’s own father as well as a
brother who lived in Istanbul felt equally bound by duty to kill the
claimant to restore the “honour” of their family.
Assessment of the risk of harm
[17] The RSAA concluded at para
[58] that it was satisfied that there was a real chance of the claimant
being killed or otherwise seriously harmed by her husband or by family
members.
[18] The Authority concluded that
on the facts two Convention grounds were relevant to the case, namely
political opinion and membership of a particular social group. In
the context of the case, the two grounds were not mutually exclusive
and comfortably overlapped. At para [69] the Authority observed
that the social group ground did have the advantage of enjoying support
from recent developments in refugee jurisprudence. See for
example R v Immigration Appeal
Tribunal; Ex parte Shah [1999] 2 AC 629 (HL); Refugee Appeal No. 71427/99 [2000]
NZAR 545; [2000] INLR 608 (NZRSAA); Minister
for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v Khawar (2002) 210
CLR 1 (HCA) and Fornah v Secretary
of State for the Home Department [2007] 1 AC 412 (HL).
However, the Authority was also of the view that the political opinion
ground was too often overlooked in cases involving gender-related
persecution. It found that the political opinion ground was, on
the facts, the preferable of the two available grounds.
[19] The political opinion ground
in the context of gender-based refugee claims was analysed by the
Authority in the following terms:
1. In refugee claims based on sex and gender there is
a danger that the political opinion ground can be obscured by the
social group ground. Unthinking application of the seminal
decision in Shah that gender
may be the defining characteristic of a particular social group can
lead to the unintended result that all cases involving gender-related
persecution are conceived as “particular social group” cases and that
if the female refugee claimant cannot bring herself within this
Convention ground, the refugee claim must fail. While it is
possible for Convention grounds to overlap, it is best to identify the
principal or strongest ground (or grounds) in relation to which the
“for reasons” inquiry is to be conducted (see paras [72] and [73]).
R v Immigration Appeal Tribunal; Ex
parte Shah [1999] 2 AC 629 (HL) and Refugee Appeal No. 71427/99 [2000]
NZAR 545; [2000] INLR 608 (NZRSAA) referred to.
2. While neither the refugee definition nor the
Convention in general refers to sex or gender, this omission is without
consequence. The ordinary meaning of Article 1A(2) in its context
and in the light of the object and purpose of the Convention requires
the conclusion that the Convention protects both women and men and that
it must therefore be given a gender-inclusive and gender-sensitive
interpretation. Account must also be taken of the power
structures in the country of origin and in particular the civil,
political, social, and economic position of the refugee claimant.
Gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power (see paras
[70] and [71]).
3. Identification of the most appropriate Convention
ground or grounds requires the decision-maker to go beyond the
information relevant to risk. “Culture” and “tradition” are not
apolitical, nor are they detached from the prevailing power relations
and the economic and social circumstances in which they operate.
Every deployment of tradition has its effects in terms of the
distribution of power; honour crimes stand at the intersection of
multiple political and social dynamics. “Honour” is a form of
rigid control of women by men. It is about policing community
norms and codes of behaviour, collective decisions and acts of
punishment. Ultimately, it is about the rigid patriarchal
oppression of women. On the facts, the observance of honour was a
societal concern and reflected the gendered inequality of power (see
paras [74], [86] and [80]).
4. What is a political opinion is not a matter of
definition but depends on the context of the case. Account must
be taken of how power is distributed and exercised in the particular
society. The political opinion ground must be oriented to reflect
the reality of women’s experiences and the way in which gender is
constructed in the specific geographical, historical, political and
socio-cultural context of the country of origin. In the
particular context, a woman’s actual or implied assertion of her right
to autonomy and the right to control her own life may be seen as a
challenge to the unequal distribution of power in her society and the
structures which underpin that inequality. Such situation is
properly characterised as “political” (see paras [83], [84] and [87]).
5. In orienting the “political opinion” ground to
reflect the reality of women’s experiences, care must be taken to avoid
the inadvertent favouring of the articulate claimant who is able to
identify and explain the political nature of her opinion, actual or
imputed and where relevant, the political nature of her
activities. A woman from the same country who has undergone the
same experiences but who is not articulate and who may herself be
unaware of the political context or construction of her views and
actions must not be disadvantaged by her lack of awareness insight or
want of fluency. While the obligation to establish the refugee
claim rests on the claimant, the inquiry is a shared one. It may
become the responsibility of the decision-maker to identify that which
in many gender-related cases is the unarticulated premise for the
predicament of the claimant’s exposure to the risk of serious harm (see
para [86]).
6. In the specific context the appellant’s assertion
of her right to life and of her right to control her life was a
challenge to the collective morality, values, behaviours and codes of
the two families and beyond them, of the greater community of which
they are a part. This challenge to inequality and the structures
of power which support it is plainly “political” as that term is used
in the Refugee Convention. The appellant’s wish to be liberated
from those structures was in this context a political opinion (see para
[90]).
Treaty interpretation and guidelines
[20] Unlike several countries,
including Canada, the USA, Australia, the UK and Sweden, New Zealand
has not adopted Guidelines for
gender-based refugee claims, preferring to apply the principles of
treaty interpretation in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties,
1969, particularly Article 31(1):
See Refugee Appeal No. 71427/99
[2000] NZAR 545; [2000] INLR 608 at paras [43] & [44] and Refugee Appeal No. 74665/03 [2005]
NZAR 60; [2005] INLR 68 at paras [43] to [49] (NZRSAA).
Gender claims and power structures
[21] The RSAA has consistently
emphasised the relevance and importance of power structures to
gender-based claims:
Abstract definitions of “political opinion”
unhelpful
[22] The Authority found
unhelpful academic commentary which suggests that “political opinion”
should be understood “in the broad sense, to incorporate, within
substantive limitations now developing generally in the field of human
rights, any opinion on any matter in which the machinery of State,
government, and policy may be engaged”: Guy S Goodwin-Gill and Jane
McAdam, The Refugee in International
Law, 3rd ed (2007, Oxford) at p 87.
[23] This approach was
altogether too abstract. Rather the Authority (para [83]) was of
the view that what is a political opinion is not a matter of definition
but depends on the context of the case. That context includes how
power is distributed and exercised in the particular society. The
political opinion ground must be oriented to reflect the reality of
women’s experiences and the way in which gender is constructed in the
specific geographical, historical, political and socio-cultural context
of the country of origin. Thus, in the particular context, a
woman’s actual or implied assertion of her right to autonomy and the
right to control her own life may be seen as a challenge to the unequal
distribution of power in her society and the structures which underpin
that inequality.
The importance of the principle of
non-discrimination
[24] It is a sad irony that the
Refugee Convention, a human rights treaty based on the principle of
non-discrimination, is so commonly applied to exclude the legitimate
claims to refugee status by women. Why this should be so is
difficult to fathom. The first recital of the Preamble to the
Refugee Convention emphasises the principle that human beings shall
enjoy fundamental rights and freedoms without discrimination.2 Those rights can be denied to men, women and
children in different ways and the impact of that denial will be
determined by such factors as the person’s sex, gender, age and state
of health.3 It is in inescapable that the
inquiry into refugee status must take into account the claimant’s sex
and issues of gender. Economic, political and social structures
in many societies discriminate against women and it is common in some
countries to find that women are excluded from primary education,
condemning them to a life of illiteracy and economic deprivation.
The feminisation of poverty has been identified as a major contributor
to trafficking.4
The importance of mainstreaming
refugee claims by women
[25] For too long women’s
experiences have been seen as problematical, lying beyond the “true”
scope of the Refugee Convention and requiring special interpretive
“rules” or guidelines. This view is fundamentally
misconceived. On accepted principles of treaty interpretation,
sex and gender have always been at the heart of the refugee
definition. Difficulties arise only because of misinformed
decision-making. The refugee definition requires the adoption of
an integrative perspective of human rights generally and this includes
women’s rights. By interpreting forms of human rights violations
against women within mainstream human rights norms it is possible to
avoid marginalising women’s rights in refugee law.5
*
The author is Deputy-Chair of the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals
Authority and Adjunct Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Auckland.
Any opinions expressed in this paper are the personal views of the
author.
1. As can be seen, this decision is reported in the New Zealand Administrative Reports (LexisNexis). The decision (without headnote) can also be found on the website of the New Zealand Refugee Status Appeals Authority, namely www.nzrefugeeappeals.govt.nz . It is also available on the New Zealand Refugee Law website at www.refugee.org.nz.
On accepted principles
of treaty interpretation this preambular statement is an integral part
of the text of the Convention and must be taken into account if the
Convention is to be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the
ordinary meaning to be given to its terms in their context and in the
light of the object and purpose of the Convention. These
principles of treaty interpretation as mandated by customary
international law are now codified in Article 31 of the Vienna
Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1969.
3. Gender refers to
the relationship between women and men based on socially or culturally
constructed and defined identities, status, roles and responsibilities
that are assigned to one sex or another, while sex is a biological
determination. Gender is not static or innate but acquires
socially and culturally constructed meaning over time: UNHCR Guidelines on International Protection:
Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1A(2) of the
1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of
Refugees, para 3.
4. Jenna Shearer
Demir, “The Trafficking of Women for Sexual Exploitation: A
Gender-Based and Well-Founded Fear of Persecution?” UNHCR New Issues in
Refugee Research, Working Paper No. 80 (March 2003).
5. See generally Deborah E Anker, “Refugee Law, Gender, and the Human Rights Paradigm” (2002) 15 Harvard Human Rights Journal 133.