WiRL is a global network that challenges and informs law, policy and practice relating to the protection of refugee women. It provides a forum to share knowledge, expertise and ideas and collaborate in activities that advance refugee women’s rights at international, regional and national levels. WiRL builds capacity within the asylum sector to support and implement gender-sensitivity throughout the asylum process whilst ensuring experts by experience are involved in conversations and decisions that affect them.
Women in Refugee Law (WiRL) was set up in 2021 to bring together asylum claiming and refugee women, senior and early career scholars, practitioners, judges, policymakers and activists working in this field around the globe.
WiRL’s values are:
- Diversity – we are a diverse membership in respect to gender, sector, discipline and region
- Collaboration – we work collaboratively to advance the network’s objectives
- Knowledge – the network has knowledge production and sharing at its centre
The objectives of the network are:
- Refocusing attention on the needs and experiences of refugee women in all their diversity.
- Providing a platform for refugee and asylum-claiming women to contribute to refugee policy and law.
- Ensuring that women’s voices and interests are included in academic and policy discourse relating to refugee protection.
- Reviewing the state of protection in domestic jurisdictions, regionally and internationally.
- Identifying unrecognised setbacks to adequate protection.
- Creating new knowledge to improve the quality of protection for refugee women.
- Highlighting gender diversity in refugee protection and incorporating the views of women and men.
- Creating opportunities for collaborative work to address new and persistent challenges.
- Supporting the development of young and early career scholars and practitioners, especially women
- Building an open and inclusive global network to take forward all of the above objectives.
You can see our most recent annual report here.
