Beyond Country Conditions: A Relational Framework for Individualized Risk Assessment in Female Genital Mutilation Asylum Claims

Abstract

Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a serious human rights violation, and the threat of it can support a claim for asylum. But it is often hard to tell whether one particular woman or girl actually faces that risk. Country reports can show how common FGM is, how it varies by region, whether it is illegal, whether the law is enforced, and whether attitudes are shifting. What they usually cannot show is why one woman faces real pressure to be cut while another woman from the same country, region, or even the same extended family does not. Two applicants can share a passport, a hometown, and a set of statistics, and still face entirely different futures. This paper tries to close that gap. Country conditions only become meaningful for a specific person, however, once we look at the relationships around her: her family's authority structure, who she depends on, her marriage prospects, community expectations, religious and traditional pressure, who might protect her, and whether the state can actually reach her. The paper works through several factors that push individual risk up or down: how concentrated authority is, how dependent she is on people who support cutting, how tightly a community can monitor and enforce compliance, whether real sanctions exist, whether she has other networks to fall back on, whether any protective relationships have real teeth, and whether formal institutions can actually help her. None of this is meant to be tallied like a checklist. These factors interact, and a single strong ally can matter more than several weak threats combined. The paper turns them into a practical matrix for individual case assessment. Although it is built around FGM, the same logic applies to other harms carried out through informal social power, including forced marriage, honor-based violence, apostasy, and domestic violence. A short example applies the matrix to a forced-marriage claim to show how it carries over.