Awareness of the existence, let alone the plight, of women refugees seems to have been catalyzed by a United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) report at the World Conference of the United Nation's Decade for Women in 1980.2 Since then, numerous international resolutions have called on states to recognize the vulnerability and the special needs of women refugees in flight and in asylum.3 [...] While this reflects the sex-role boundaries in the lives of women refugees, it also fills the gap in the literature and expands the understanding of the refugee experience. [...] Inger Agger puts forth the following argument on the gender difference in the ideology of sexual torture as it is applied to men and women: The ideology behind sexual torture of men can be said to be an abolition of political power/potency by the induction of sexual passivity, whereas the ideology behind sexual torture of women is rather the abolition of political power/potency by the activation o [...] Patriarchy, the ideology which pro- pounds the superiority of men and their exercise of power over women's fertility, labour, in the work place and in the family and society in general, adapts and reproduces itself through institutions and relationships to maintain a system of domination and inequality. [...] The likelihood of women being considered for citizenship, however, is minuscule because the level of educa- tion of African women is considerably lower than that of men.35 The major feminist criticism of the UN definition of refugee is that it does not include gender oppression and does not provide for the special protection women refugees need because of gender inequality in refugee producing and