The African woman is the first person to have been granted asylum after she sought sanctuary in Croatia.
The Croatian Interior Ministry, that is in charge of deciding on asylum applications, has revealed neither the name nor the age or the country of origin of the first asylum seeker whose request has been granted, as the disclosure is banned by law.
The press release reads that it is a woman from an African country who sought asylum due to her persecution on the religious grounds and fear of sexual mutilation, i.e. widespread female circumcision in her homeland.
Being a Christian, she was abused and harassed by other students and teachers while she was at school.
She was told to be impure and infidel and that she should cover her face with a scarf and teachers and other pupils tried to pressurise her to convert to Islam, according to the press release.
In addition, although female circumvention is labelled by international conventions as a serious breach of human rights, young girls and women in her country are exposed to genital mutilation and operations of this kind including the surgical removal of the clitoris are often conducted forcibly.
Since 1997 when a first foreigner sought sanctuary in Croatia, about 550 persons have applied for asylum and so far the Interior Ministry has turned down all of those applications, except the request by the African woman.
According to the statistics by the Interior Ministry, a majority of asylum seekers are from India, Bangladesh, Turkey and Kosovo.