Jurisprudence related to gender-based violence against women : analysis of case law from 2020-2024

Gender-based violence against women remains a pressing issue, causing women to flee their countries and seek international protection. At the same time EU+ countries continue to improve safeguards for women and girls within the asylum procedure through policy, legislative, institutional and jurisprudential developments. These key developments are available in the Asylum Report 2024. A more sensitive gender- based approach to asylum has also been advanced by the CJEU in 2024 in three landmark judgments. This report introduces the legal framework to better understand the jurisprudence on gender- based violence against women. Jurisprudence is then presented on the assessment of gender as a characteristic to identify a particular social group, specifically on violence on account of gender, women who identify with the value of equality between women and men after living in an EU Member State, state-imposed discriminatory measures, women fleeing forced marriage, divorced women, women accused of witchcraft, victims of sexual violence, women who have had an illegal abortion and women and girls fleeing FGM/C. It includes jurisprudence on the assessment of facts and circumstances by asylum authorities and the critical need to implement special procedural guarantees for vulnerable women so that they may participate effectively in the procedure.