CEDAW/C/GC/32 10. The provisions of the Convention reinforce and complement the international legal protection regime for refugees and stateless women and girls, especially because explicit gender equality provisions are absent from relevant international agreements, notably the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol thereto, the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. 6 11. Given that the Convention applies at every stage of the displacement cycle, it serves to prohibit sex- and gender-based discrimination at every stage: during the refugee status determination procedure, throughout the return or resettlement process and throughout the integration process for women who have been granted asylum. It also applies to processes of statelessness determination and to processes relating to women acquiring, retaining or changing their nationality or conferring their nationality on their children and spouses. IV. Application of non-discrimination and gender equality to international refugee law A. General comments 12. While noting that the definition of a refugee under the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees provides criteria for the determination of refugee status in relation to persons who are explicitly covered under the Convention, the Committee notes that the present general recommendation covers all women in need of international protection under the Convention and seeks to apply the protection of the Convention to all women in the context of refugee status and asylum. However, the criteria provided by the definition of the word “refugee” in the 1951 Convention are important for the identification of women in need of international protection. At the same time, the Committee notes that regional refugee instruments and national laws have accepted and also expanded upon the definition given in the 1951 Convention to cover a range of persons in need of international protection for reasons of, variously, international or internal/non-international armed conflict and occupation, events seriously disturbing public order, serious human rights violations or generalized violence. 7 __________________ 6 7 4/21 See UNHCR, “Guidelines on statelessness No. 4: ensuring every child’s right to acquire a nationality through articles 1-4 of the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness” (HCR/GS/12/04), paras. 13-15. Available from www.refworld.org/docid/50d460c72.html. See Organization of African Unity Convention governing the specific aspects of refugee problems in Africa of 1969, article I (2), which states: “The term ‘refugee’ shall also apply to every person who, owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part of the whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality”. The Cartagena Declaration on Refugees, adopted by the Colloquium on the International Protection of Refugees in Central America, Mexico and Panama, held in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, from 19 to 22 November 1984, states in section III (3) that “the definition or concept of a refugee to be recommended for use in the region is one which, in addition to containing the elements of the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol, includes among refugees persons who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have 14-64766