This book is designed as an academic treatise on refugee law, though its clear prose makes it accessible for general readers with an interest in law, immigration, or social justice. The author is a postdoctoral researcher on asylum in the EU (Law, University of Turku, Finland). She points out that existing refugee law considers the persecution of individuals by state governments, but many governments have broken down and persecution is performed by non-state entities: militias, political and religious factions, profiteering businesses, gangs. This book seeks to define the human rights obligations of non-state entities, to aid refugees, asylum seekers, and the legal personnel dealing with them. It also addresses where the current system isn't working for those fleeing non-state persecution, and how laws and policies can be adjusted to better represent the actual situation of these refugees in the EU. The author focuses strongly on Western feminist analysis, with mixed results. She points out the inequity of a "gender-blind" asylum system when men and women are terrorized differently in their home countries but the refugee system defines only what men experience as political violence. However, in advocating for a gendered approach that defines human trafficking, for instance, as specifically a situation of women, she suggests a system that would create the same problems for trafficked boys and men. Similarly, she points out systematic rape and male-on-female domestic violence is often a tool for sociopolitical control. But with no distinction between any male-on-female domestic violence survivor from a non-Western country and an asylum-eligible refugee from organized persecution, this idea legally implies that all non-Western males are terrorists dangerous to women. The book addresses a huge gap in international law that also compromises women's rights, but it seems unaware of the long history of "protecting women" as the rubric for institutionalizing racial prejudice in Northern Europe and the U.S. Martinus Nijhoff is an imprint of Brill. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)