Persecutions based on Sexual Orientation: A 'New' Ground to Grant Refugee Status in Belgium

Belgium is one of the few European countries where the authorities responsible for asylum – the Immigration Office, the Commissioner General for Refugees and Stateless Persons (CGRS) and Fedasil – have made available for their civil servants the tools needed to deal with cases of asylum seekers persecuted because of their sexual orientation. Among the Member States of the European Union, Belgium is the only one which releases annual statistics on LGBTI asylum seekers, the only one which has a gender section whose function is to train protection officers to issues related to sexual orientation within its administration in charge of processing asylum applications, as well as the only one where there is a reference person specialized in gender-related issues within each geographic section of the CGRS. The aim of this Paper is twofold. First, it aims at explaining how the Immigration Office, CGRS and Fedasil deal with asylum seekers persecuted for their sexual orientation. Thus, looking at these three authorities, I first wish to determine what resources are available to protection officers in order to process the application of asylum seekers persecuted for their sexual orientation. Secondly, I wish to explain why Belgium is the only European country that has implemented specific measures to deal with asylum seekers persecuted for their sexual orientation. Hence, through a historical analysis of the last two decades, the paper seeks to determine the origin of the emergence of issues related to sexual orientation within the Belgian asylum authorities.