Non-refoulement cases before the ECtHR and CAT : A case study on women alleging gender-based violence at the hands of private actors

Abstract: This study aims to analyze if the assessment of the European Court of Human Rights and Committee Against Torture in cases concerning women alleging violation of the principle of non-refoulement takes gender into consideration. Therefore, this study compares four cases from the Court and the other four cases from the Committee with feminist legal theory analysis. The method chosen for this study is a comparative legal method and textual analysis to investigate the research problem. The findings of this study are that the Committee's evaluation is more in line with the intersectionality perspective than the Court's. Further, the Court showed stereotypes and gender discrimination with their assessments. Although the Committee is also lacking in considering gender as far as the observed cases the Committee is more advanced with the intersectionality lens. The Court frequently depends on the "male or social network," which is another distinction between the two monitoring organizations. Because the Court does not mention "male network" to European women alleging domestic violence, this contributes to the already discriminations refugee and asylum seeker women experience. The thesis concludes that women seeking asylum or refugee cases experience the most discrimination before the Court, though occasionally before the Committee as well. The refugee law still has a long way to go before it can assist women who claim that private actors have abused them.