
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 27, 1995                   TAG: 9505300074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: C5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Medium

MORE WOMEN MAY GET ASYLUM IN U.S.

The Clinton administration issued new guidelines Friday to help immigration officials identify women who should be granted asylum in this country because sexual violence has been used for political persecution in their homeland.

By issuing the guidelines, the United States joined the United Nations and Canada in recognizing that gender-based discrimination in some cases rises to the level necessary for refugee status, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said.

The new guidelines ``educate asylum officers about gender-based discrimination and provide them with procedures and methods for evaluating whether individual claims meet the refugee standard,'' said Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner.

``These new guidelines do not change the standard that must be met by women seeking refugee status.''

U.S. law says asylum or refugee status can be granted only to those who show a well-founded fear that returning home would subject them to persecution on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or their political opinions.

Harvard Law School instructor Nancy Kelly, who coordinates the school's Women Refugees Project, hailed the guidelines, along with a recent decision by the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, as ``a major breakthrough for the recognition of asylum claims for women.''

The immigration service said the guidelines were based on a proposed set submitted by Kelly's project last year and on those issued by Canada in 1993 and by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

The guidelines ``recognize the need for more sensitive and thorough interviews of women asylum applicants, many of whom suffer psychological and physical trauma from their experiences of rape and other forms of sexual violence,'' Kelly's project said in a statement.

Kelly also praised a decision last week by the Board of Immigration Appeals to designate as a binding precedent a case last year in which a Haitian woman was granted asylum because she had been raped in retaliation for her political activism and religious beliefs. The board overturned an immigration judge's refusal to grant asylum in the case.

by CNB