Violenza contro le donne e appartenenza a “un determinato gruppo sociale” nella determinazione dello status di rifugiato. Riflessioni a margine della sentenza WS (C-621/21) della Corte di giustizia.

Applications for international protection by women fleeing gender-based violence are mostly traced back to persecution for ‘membership of a particular social group’. This persecution ground is, however, caged in rigid criteria that lend themselves to arbitrary interpretations, which the Court of Justice in its WS judgment (C-621/21) has in fact ended up confirming. However, at the same time, by qualifying the Istanbul Convention as an interpretative instrument of the common European policy on asylum and subsidiary protection, the Court has imposed a more gender-sensitive reading of the European Union's rules, which should lead to a better identification of the situations in which migrant women victims of violence must find protection.