Why States Need to View Their Responsibility to Protect Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Women Through the Lens of Intersectionality, Vulnerability, and Matrix of Domination to Address Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

This empirical socio-legal cross-cultural study conducted in Greece, Israel, and Uganda focuses on why the international law norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P) ought to be applied to sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) matters in the country of asylum. This is because states have a responsibility to protect those who are vulnerable, which includes avoiding the creation or reinforcing of their vulnerability to the state. R2P should be the key to identifying and addressing issues of vulnerability and provide protection to such people. The datasets from the three countries showcase the state’s failure to protect refugees. Also identified is the gender impact of various tensions and contradictions which indicate structural and systemic symptoms favourable for SGBV to flourish. Using a theoretical triangulation to combine intersectional feminism, the matrix of domination and the theory of vulnerability, this article argues that the country of asylum has the responsibility to host and to protect such people because of the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and an aggravated risk of experiencing SGBV. The study argues that countries of asylum ought to be responsible and accountable for SGBV that occurs on its territory.