Matter of Kasinga

The case Kasinga was a lawsuit concerning Fauziya Kassindja, a woman from Togo who sought asylum in the United States at the age of seventeen years, in order to escape her impending forced marriage and circumcision of their genitals.

Parents Fauziya Kassindjas rejected the circumcision of girls and sent their daughters to school. But when the father died, his sister took the upper hand over the family Kassindja took out of the school and promised them a 40 - year-old man to marry. The day after the wedding, they should be circumcised, but then she fled with her sister across the border to Ghana. You got himself a passport, received by the sister $ 3000 and got into the next available plane that took them to Germany. From there they flew to Newark and asked for asylum.

The end of the asylum process

The Board of Immigration Appeals granted her asylum in 1996 after a judge at first instance had initially rejected it. The case is precedent in the immigration laws of the United States, because from now on, people can apply for asylum because of " gender-based persecution ", while until then was often granted only for religious or political persecution asylum.

Consequences of the judgment

Layli Miller - Muro, the student, the woman Kassindja represented before the immigration judge, founded after the process, the Tahirih Justice Center to provide immigrant women fleeing gender-based violence and persecution, legal and medical assistance. Karen Musalo that led to the lawsuit, founded the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies ( CGRS ), a national organization which is based at the Hastings College of Law at the University of California and defends women fleeing gender-based persecution. Fauziya Kassindja is a member of its advisory staff.

The case Kasinga founded in the United States, a wave of media coverage on the issue of female circumcision, which was not previously treated in the public eye almost.