This book contributes to the growing literature on the gendering of human rights in global politics through a case study of women asylum seekers and their allies and how they pressed the Canadian government for recognition of gender-based violence as the basis for refugee status in the 1990s. Focusing on domestic and sexual violence and various forms of gender-based persecution, the movement of refugee women and their allies in nongovernmental organizations were able to press for the recognition of gender-based violence as a specific legal basis for refugee claims. In turn, the success of these claims widened the ambit of protection for refugee women seeking entry to Canada, enabling them to qualify for residence where they had not been able to before. Once this form of gender-based persecution was explicitly recognized by Canada in the refugee determination process, Lisa S. Alfredson argues, recognition of gender-based persecution increased at the international level.
As such, the work challenges the conventional picture of human rights as a global template that is used to bring about changes in state behavior, or as a set of policies only taken up by states under pressure from global civil society or transnational activist networks. Rather, Alfredson demonstrates the continuing importance of the state in human rights protection, the relative independence of the state from global pressure in certain cases, and, perhaps most strikingly, the potentially innovative role of what she terms a “strong sovereign state” in enlarging the sphere of human rights protection for women at the international level (p. 238).
Alfredson explores the role of the movement of asylum seekers who, in the early 1990s, began a public campaign to secure recognition of gender-based violence in the official refugee determination guidelines in Canada. The movement was led by noncitizens whose claims had been rejected by the existing refugee determination process of the time. She shows how these claims stirred national and international attention and argues convincingly that this campaign pressured the Canadian government into adopting a new set of guidelines that extensively recognized the role played by gender in persecution and violence, and that required the refugee determination process to take into consideration the specific condition of women in the country from which the claimant was fleeing. The Canadian government then presented the new guidelines at the United Nations and argued for their inclusion in guidelines to be issued by the UN high commissioner for refugees. Subsequently, the newly inclusive gender provisions have been adopted by the UN and by states. Thus, Alfredson argues, Canadian action served as a trigger for a wider set of changes at the international level.
Creating Human Rights presents extensive in-depth research on the movement's campaign, including the canvassing of media sources, government documents, and interviews with the movement's leaders, Canadian NGOs, lawyers, and other experts involved in the campaign. Alfredson also draws upon the case history of specific asylum seekers, a survey of women's shelters, and an analysis of the jurisprudence of tribunal and court cases. She explains how these campaigns relied upon the courage of the individual refugee women who came forward to tell their stories to the media. This rich empirical discussion of the political process through which a new set of political claims emerged around gender and persecution in the asylum-seeking process is the book's greatest strength.
The author draws on social movement studies and, in particular, political process theory to explore the role of rights, resources, and opportunities in relation to the asylum seekers' campaigns, pointing to the role of domestic factors in creating an opportunity structure that provided access for noncitizens. She also argues that domestic rights provided a pathway for both framing processes (the ways in which refugee women and their allies framed their demands) and the mobilizing structures (organizations and networks) through which they worked. Critically, over this period, a constitutional revamping had given Canada a new bill of rights, which was used by refugee advocates to secure the right of noncitizens to a hearing, as well as the right to appeal the initial determination of their status. These new rights for noncitizens were mobilized successfully by noncitizen asylum seekers and their allies.
While one might quibble with some of Alfredson's characterizations of domestic Canadian politics, her main point is certainly convincing: a domestic political change provided a political opportunity for the mobilization of a social movement of noncitizens and citizens, which, together, served to change the law to the advantage of noncitizens. Alfredson does not seek to explain Canada's constitutionalization of human rights in the 1980s, the increased recognition of human rights in global politics in the postwar period was a key aspect of Canadian domestic thinking on human rights. Therefore, her analysis nicely illustrates the entwining of domestic and international factors in developing these policies and graphically demonstrates the porousness of state boundaries that now mobilize noncitizens and their political claims in the political process of the state.
Alfredson concludes the study by discussing its implications for theories of global politics, transnational advocacy, citizenship, and social movements. She points out that research on human rights in wealthy democracies is understudied. I would say that public law and human rights are extensively studied in wealthy democracies (although the terms “civil rights” or “equalities” policies may be used in place of the term “human rights” in some of these sites), but that this discussion is sometimes disconnected from the scholarship in the field of global politics on human rights. Her work provides a bridge between those who study “domestic” human rights and those who study human rights in global politics. Indeed, it is noteworthy that women's movements have succeeded in gendering the human rights discussion in global politics at the same time that women's rights have been weakened under neoliberalism in many wealthy democracies, including Canada, over the 1990s and 2000s. This paradox might provide fodder for further research.
This book will certainly interest those who specialize in gender and human rights in global politics, as well as those who are interested in social movements and transnational advocacy. It would be a suitable text for a graduate course, although its dense research and extensive theoretical discussion would put it out of reach of most undergraduates.
