ABSTRACT
If refugees are confined to their body in the global refugee regime, then this study is centrally concerned with the efforts of the United Nations (UN) to differentiate refugees by sex, and to develop and implement appropriate policy responses to promote “gender equality” in refugee and returnee settings. In the 1990s, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the principal agency for the forcibly displaced, identified “refugee women” as a policy priority. This accomplishment can be attributed in large part to the persistent lobbying of the UN by transnational advocates for refugee women over the UN Decade for Women (1975-85). Yet despite over two decades of advocacy and resultant UN policy change, implementation continues to be slow and ad hoc. Distressingly, the plight of many refugees today is far more perilous than when the lobby for gender equality in the refugee regime first began.
