Kasinga case
The Kasinga case was a court case concerning Fauziya Kassindja , a woman from Togo who sought asylum in the USA at the age of seventeen in order to avoid the threatened forced marriage and the circumcision of her genitals .
Fauziya Kassindja's parents refused to have girls circumcised and sent their daughters to school. But when the father died, his sister took control of the family, took Kassindja out of school and promised a man over 40 to marry her. She was supposed to be circumcised the day after the wedding, but then she and her sister fled across the border to Ghana . She got herself a passport , received $ 3,000 from her sister, and got on the next available plane that took her to Germany. From there she flew on to Newark and asked for asylum.
Process of the asylum procedure
The Board of Immigration Appeals granted her asylum in 1996 after a first instance judge rejected it. The case sets a precedent in US immigration law, because from now on people can apply for asylum for “gender-based persecution” , whereas until then asylum was often only granted for religious or political persecution.
Consequences of the judgment
Layli Miller-Muro , the student who represented Ms. Kassindja before the immigration judge, set up the Tahirih Justice Center after the trial to provide legal and medical assistance to immigrants fleeing gender-based violence and persecution. Karen Musalo, who led the litigation, founded the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS), a national organization based at Hastings College of Law at the University of California that defends women fleeing gender-based persecution. Fauziya Kassindja is a member of the advisory staff there .
The Kasinga case started a wave of media coverage in the USA on the subject of female circumcision, which until then had hardly been dealt with in the public eye.
literature
- Fauzija Kassindja: Nobody sees you when you cry . Blessing, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-89667-080-8
swell
- ^ Wade, L. (2011). Journalism, advocacy and the social construction of consensus. Media, Culture & Society, 33 (8), 1166-1184. doi : 10.1177 / 0163443711418273