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Women and Forced Migration
Related Works
Programme on Annual
Winter Course on Forced migration
The Winter Course on Forced Migration is an outcome of the
ongoing and past work by the CRG, and other collaborating
groups, institutions, scholars, and human rights and
humanitarian activists in the field of refugee studies and the
broad studies on displacement, human rights and humanitarian
work for the victims of forced displacement. Policy analysis of
laws and administrative measures in this field also inform the
course. The duration of the course is three months. A two and a
half month long distance education programme precedes the
fifteen-day Kolkata workshop.
The course is supported by the UNHCR, the Government of Finland
and the Brookings Institution. The Media segment of the
programme is supported by Panos South Asia. An advisory body
guides the programme.
The Winter Course is a certificate course. It has already
resulted into several follow up initiatives such as short
courses, public lectures, follow-up researches, informal
networks of activists and placement of participants in crucial
posts and responsibilities relevant to this field. The
programme demonstrates CRG's reputation as a top class research
and training centre. It has also strengthened its links with
several universities in South Asia and abroad.
The course is built around eight modules, five of which are
compulsory and three others optional. From the three optional
modules the participants are expected to select one for their
review assignment. Out of these five compulsory modules Module B
deals with Gender dimensions of forced migration,
vulnerabilities, and justice.
Find below the list of Modules along with the Module note on
Gender dimensions of forced migration, vulnerabilities, and
justice.
The Compulsory Modules
A. States, Partitions, and Issues of Citizenship
B. Gender dimensions of forced migration, vulnerabilities, and
justice
C. International, regional, and the national legal regimes of
protection, sovereignty and the principle of responsibility
D. Internal displacement with special reference to causes,
linkages, and responses
E. Resource politics, climate change, environmental degradation,
and displacement
The Optional Modules
F. Research methodology in Forced Migration Studies
G. Ethics of care and protection
H. Media and displacement and forced migration
The course activities besides the writings assignments, included
workshops assignments, media assignments, group discussions,
field visit, creative sessions of film screenings and a day long
media workshop and face to face interactions with resource
persons experienced in related areas.
Module Note B
Gender Dimensions of Forced Migration, Vulnerabilities, and
Justice
Over one percent of the total world populations today consist of
refugees. More than eighty percent of that number is made up of
women and their dependent children. An overwhelming majority of
these women come from the developing world. South Asia is the
fourth largest refugee-producing region in the world. Again, a
majority of these refugees are made up of women. The sheer
number of women among the refugee population portrays that it is
a gendered issue. This module is meant to portray that
undoubtedly both displacement and asylum is a gendered
experience. At least in the context of South Asia it results
from and is related to the marginalisation of women by the South
Asian states. These states at best patronise women and at worse
infantilise, disenfranchise and de-politicise them. It is in the
person of a refugee that women’s marginality reaches its
climactic height.
The nation building projects in South Asia has led to the
creation of a homogenised identity of citizenship. State
machineries seek to create a “unified” and “national” citizenry
that accepts the central role of the existing elite. This is
done through privileging majoritarian, male and monolithic
cultural values that deny the space to difference. Such a
denial has often led to the segregation of minorities, on the
basis of caste, religion and gender from the collective we. One
way of marginalising women from body politic is done by
targeting them and displacing them in times of state verses
community conflict. As a refugee a woman loses her
individuality, subjectivity, citizenship and her ability to make
political choices. As political non-subjects refugee women
emerge as the symbol of difference between us/citizens and its
other/refugees/non-citizens. By taking some select examples from
South Asia in this module we will addresses such theoretical
assumptions. Here the category of refugee women will include
women who have crossed international borders and those who are
internally displaced and are potential refugees.
The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 witnessed
probably the largest refugee movement in modern history. About
8 million Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan to resettle in India
while about 6-7 million Muslims went to Pakistan. Such transfer
of population was accompanied by horrific violence. Some 50,000
Muslim women in India and 33,000 non-Muslim women in Pakistan
were abducted, abandoned or separated from their families.[1]
Women’s experiences of migration, abduction and destitution
during partition and State’s responses to it is a pointer to the
relationship between women’s position as marginal participants
in state politics and gender subordination as perpetrated by the
State. In this context the experiences of abducted women and
their often forcible repatriation by the State assumes enormous
importance today when thousands of South Asian women are either
refugees, migrants or stateless within the subcontinent.
Abducted women were not considered as legal entities with
political and constitutional rights. All choices were denied to
them and while the state patronised them verbally by portraying
their “need” for protection it also infantilised them by giving
decision making power to their guardians who were defined by the
male pronoun “he”. By insisting that the abducted women could
not represent themselves and had to be represented, the State
marginalised them from the decision making process and made them
non-participants. Even today the refugee women do not represent
themselves. Officials represent them. For the abducted women
it was their sexuality that threatened their security and the
honour of the nation. Thus, their vulnerability was focused on
their body. This made all women susceptible to such threats and
so had to be protected/controlled. By denying agency to the
abducted women the State made it conceivable to deny agency to
all women. Readings taken from Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin’s
Borders and Boundaries portray the trauma faced by these women
who could never be considered as full citizens.
Refugee women from other parts of South Asia reflect trauma
faced by women belonging to communities considered as disorderly
by the state. Ethnic tensions between the Tamil minority and
Sinhala majority leading to armed conflict since 1980s have led
to several waves of refugees from Sri Lanka. They are victims
of a failed nationalizing project. By 1989 there were about
160,000 refugees from Sri Lanka to India, again largely Tamil
women with their dependents. Initially the State Government
provided these refugees with shelter and rations, but still many
of them preferred to live outside the camps. They were
registered and issued with refugee certificates. In terms of
education and health both registered and unregistered refugees
enjoy the same rights as the nationals. Nevertheless in absence
of specific legislation their legal status remained ambiguous.
The precarious nature of their status became clearer in the
aftermath of Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. All sympathy for
these women disappeared after Gandhi’s assassination and in the
Indian state perception they were tarnished by a collective
guilt and so became expendable.
After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination the politicians began to shun
the refugees. As most of these were women they were initially
considered harmless but with the number of female suicide
bombers swelling there was a marked change in GOI’s attitude to
women refugees. Soon the government turned a blind eye when
touts came to recruit young women from the refugee camps in
Tamil Nadu to work as “maids” in countries of Middle East. Most
of these women were then smuggled out of India and sent to the
Gulf countries. Often they were badly abused. By April 1993
refugee camps were reduced from 237 to 132 in Tamil Nadu and 1
in Orissa. In Indian camps refugee families are given a dole of
Rs.150 a month, which is often stopped arbitrarily. Women are
discouraged from taking up employment outside the camps. During
multiple displacements women who have never coped with such
situations before are often at a loss for necessary papers.
When separated from male members of their family they are
vulnerable to sexual abuse. The camps are not conducive for the
personal safety of women, as they enjoy no privacy. But what is
more worrying is that without any institutional support women
become particularly vulnerable to human traffickers. These
people aided by network of criminals force women into
prostitution. Millions of rupees change hands in this trade and
more lives get wrecked every day. Asha Han’s paper in Refugees
and the State portrays the predicaments faced by refugee women
in South Asia.
Many displaced women who are unable to cross international
border swell the ranks of the internally displaced. Paula
Banerjee’s paper in Internal Displacement in South Asia portrays
the trauma faced by IDP women. Even in IDP camps women are
responsible for holding together fragmented families. Today
roughly one-third of all households in Sri Lanka are headed by
women and the numbers increase many fold in the camps for
internally displaced. Although 89 percent women in Sri Lanka
are literate, due to two decades of armed conflict women from
North and East have lower levels of education with one in every
four being illiterate. A report based on a research carried
out at Mannar district portray that among 190,000 IDPs women
often find it impossible to generate enough income for buying
food for the whole family. In Illupakkadavai, all 36 heads of
female headed households stated that they rely on dry rations
for approximately 90 percent for their nutritional needs and
that the children of women headed households are most vulnerable
to exploitation. In Sri Lanka suicide rates for women have
doubled in the last two decades.[2]
None of the South Asian states are signatories to the 1951
Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or the 1967
Protocol. As India is the largest South Asian state it should
be interesting to see how women refugees are dealt with here.
In India Articles 14, 21 and 25 under Fundamental Rights
guarantee the Right to Equality, Right to Life and Liberty and
Freedom of Religion of citizens and aliens alike. Like the
other South Asian states India had ratified the 1979 Convention
on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women
in 1993. Although there is no incorporation of international
treaty obligations in the Municipal laws still rights accruing
to the refugees in India under Articles 14, 21 and 25 can be
enforced in the Supreme Court under Article 32 and in the High
Court under Article 226. The other guiding principles for
refugees are the executive orders that have been passed under
the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Passport Act of 1967. The
National Human Rights Commission has also taken up questions
regarding the protection of refugees. It approached the Supreme
Court under Article 32 of the Constitution and stopped the
Expulsion of Chakma refugees from Northeast India.[3] Yet all
these orders are adhoc in nature and the legal position remains
nebulous. This is true not just of India but all of South
Asia.
Pakistan also operated under the 1946 Foreigners Act. According
to the provisions of this Act no foreigner could enter Pakistan
without a valid passport or visa. Such an act can be
detrimental for all persons fleeing for their lives and
especially for women who are unused to handling documentation
proving citizenship. When six to seven million persons entered
Pakistan after partition this Act proved useless and had to be
supplemented by the Registration of Claims Act of 1956 and the
Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act 1958.
Such Acts did not establish a legal regime for refugees in
Pakistan, only the claims of a group of refugees. The ad hoc
nature of Pakistani refugee regime continued. As for Sri Lanka,
it is not a refugee receiving country but a refugee generating
country. There are two Acts, which are especially detested by
displaced people, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and Emergency
Regulations. Sri Lanka does not have any special acts that help
or privilege internally displaced women who are vulnerable to
abuse because of their gender. As for other state laws in South
Asia, Nepal has an Immigration Act of 1992, which provide that
no foreigner is allowed to enter or stay in Nepal without a
visa. His Majesty’s Government has full authority to expel any
foreigner committing immigration offences. Most South Asian
states have punitive measures for immigration offences but
hardly any measures for helping displaced people. Further, none
of these States have made any special stipulations for women
refugees although a majority of all South Asian refugees are
women.
As for international actors UNHCR is acquiring some importance
in the region for their efforts regarding refugees and
internally displaced. There are around 20,000 refugees who are
protected by UNHCR in India, of whom a majority are Afghans.
The UNHCR has a guideline for the protection of women refugees
but it is left to the discretion of countries to follow these
recommendations. In patriarchal states where policies are
weighted against women, if these guidelines are left to the
discretion of the government then it does not succeed in its
purpose. Further, the programmes of these institutions such as
UNHCR are built on certain practices. Similar to state
practices the practices of international organisations such as
the UNHCR also delegate woman to the status of victim, which is
a disenfranchising phenomenon. The women have little or no say
on policies that govern their lives and bodies even in camps run
by the UNHCR. Albeit the UNHCR concern itself with the
protection of these women but they do not work towards their
agency. This is not to suspect intention of UNHCR but many of
their policies such as the policy of repatriation can work
against women who have acquired agency over their own person.
Decisions regarding their relocation also assume that
refugees/women cannot have any say in it. Even international
agencies such as the UN Gender Mission can contribute to
depoliticising women. A case in point is Angela King’s mission
to Peshawar and Islamabad. When Afghan women requested the UN
through Ms. King that they should try to mobilise educated
Afghan women in peace-making, Ms. King reportedly asked them to
apply for UN jobs instead. After the meeting the women felt
“confused, insulted, hurt, angry and substantially ignored.”
But they noted bitterly “this is not an unusual situation –
neither within our societies, nor within the UN agencies”.[4]
Thus the gender bias found in state policies regarding women’s
dislocation might also be reflected in the attitude taken by
international agencies.
The overwhelming presence of women among the refugee populations
is not an accident of history. It is a way by which states have
made women political non-subjects. By making women permanent
refugee, living a savage life in camps, it is easy to homogenise
them, ignore their identity, individuality and subjectivity. By
reducing refugee women to the status of mere victims in our own
narratives we accept the homogenisation of women and their
depoliticisation. We legitimise a space where states can make
certain groups of people political non-subjects. In this module
we intend to discuss the causes of such depoliticisation that
often results in displacements. We will also discuss the
situation of displaced women in South Asia and consider policy
alternatives that might help in their rehabilitation and care.
References
Paula Banerjee, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury and Samir Das,
Internal Displacement in South Asia, chapter 9.
B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law – A Reader (Sage
Publications, 2003), section 1
Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, chapter 3.
Joshva Raja, Refugees and their Right to Communicate, chapter 8.
Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Refugees and the State (Sage
Publications, 2003), chapter 9.
Ranabir Samaddar, The Marginal Nation (Sage Publications, 1999),
chapter 12.
Refugee Watch, Nos. 10-11
Web-based
1. UNHCR Policy on Refugee Women
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_92.htm
2. Select UNICEF Policy Recommendation on the Gender Dimensions
of Internal Displacement
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_92.htm
3. CEDAW : http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/econvention.htm
4. RW.: Dislocated Subjects : The Story of Refugee Women
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_8.htm
5. RW.: War and Its Impact on Women in Sri Lanka
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_4.htm
6. RW : Afghan Women In Iran
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_6.htm
7. RW.: Refugee Women of Bhutan
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_5.htm
8. RW.: Rohingya Women – Stateless and Oppressed in Burma
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_5.htm
9. RW.: Dislocating the Women and Making the Nation
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch17_1.htm
http://www.unifemantitrafficking.org/main.html
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[1] For a scholarly account of gender in the politics of
partition refer to Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and
Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition (Delhi: 1998) and Urvashi
Bhutalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition
of India (Delhi: 1998).
[2] Paula Banerjee, “Agonies and Ironies of War,” Refugee Watch,
No. 2 (April, 1998) p. 21.
[3] See National Human Rights Commission vs. Union of India
(1996: 1 SCC 295); Also Khudiram Chakma vs. Union of India
(1994: Supplementary 1 SCC 614).
[4] Cassandra Balchin, “United Against the UN: The UN Gender
Mission Attitude Towards Afghan Women Refugees Within its Own
Rank is Glaringly Hypocritical,” Newsline (April, 1998) p. 95.
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Research Output
Book
Women in Peace Politics,
Edited by Paula Banerjee
Women in Peace
Politics explore the role of women as agents and visionaries of
peace in South Asia. Peace is redefined to include in its fold
the attempt by women to be a part of the peace making process,
reworking the structural inequalities faced by them and their
struggle against all forms of oppression. This volume, the third
in the series of the South Asia Peace Studies, deals with the
myriad dimensions of peace as practiced by South Asian women
over a period of time. It chronicles the live of “ordinary “
women- their transformative role in peace and an attempt to
create a space of their own. Their peace activism is examined in
the historical context of their participation in national
liberation movements since the early 20th century.
The articles in the collection adopt a new approach to
understanding peace- as a desire to end repression that cuts
across caste, class, race and gender and an effort on the part
of women to transform their position in society.
This complication would interest a wide readership, beside s
students and scholars of human rights, peace and security
studies, politics and international relations.
To procure the book, please contact Sage Publication which has
published it on behalf of CRG. / Edited by Paula Banerjee
Research
Papers
Policies and Practices 10
Women and Forced Migration.Compiled and edited by Paula Banerjee
This collection highlights the range of women’s experiences
as of displacement appearing in different issues of Refugee
Watch in form of articles, notes, reports and researches.
These articles challenge the notion that refugee women are mere
victims. These writings try to portray the different roles that
women play to cope with displacement. The collection points out
that refugee women are first to address the question of income
generation and many other coping mechanisms precisely because it
is their responsibility to put food in the mouths of their
family and fight for their survival. Yet rehabilitation and care
is hardly ever built on a premise of gender sensitivity.
For the whole text please click
http://www.mcrg.ac.in/pp10.pdf
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