Modules Notes for Winter Course 2008
States, Partitions, Forced Migration and Issues of Citizenship
1.
Cracking and splitting of empires and
kingdoms in the pre-Partition era were not rare and were hardly associated with
population movements. It is only with partition that population movement becomes
an essential part of the process. On the one hand, such cracking and splitting
would take place along a culturally continuous space. On the other hand, the
state was regarded more as the custodian and upholder of social order than an
agent of social change and transformation.
2.
Partition gives unto each state the
nationalism unique to itself. Partitions create their own nationalisms and
contribute to state formation. It is only with partition that territorial
borders of a state are expected to coincide with the cultural borders.
3.
While partition evidently upsets and shatters
the preexisting ‘way of life’, it also gradually becomes ‘a way of life’
itself. People driven by the utopia of a new land tend to ‘select’ their
nations and states ‘naturally’. Partition thus makes ‘natural selection’
of population possible. Partition narratives are also marked by an acute desire
of reuniting with one’s own people in a new land. Many elderly people simply
considered it ‘immoral’ to continue to remain in a land where they might
have lived for generations but this, according to them, had already become an
alien land by the act of partition.
4.
The utopia of a new land stands in a rather
uneasy relationship to the nostalgic yearning for the past. The utopia and the
nostalgia also point to two very different kinds of social relationships and the
latter marks the arrival of the nation.
5.
Partition also imposes on the people the
obligation of making a choice from out of a menu of nations being partitioned or
national alternatives. Non-national alternatives are clearly ruled out. One is
obliged to belong to either of the two newly formed nations and cannot choose to
remain stateless and without any nation in the wake of partition.
6.
One partition creates and hides many other
partitions. At one level, it instead of mitigating the Hindu-Muslim divide, has
sharpened and exacerbated it. At another, it turns us away from what is called
the ‘denationalized peoples’ perspective’ – including the gender
perspective on that epochal event. Insofar as contemporary feminist writings
seek to recover women’s voices from the prevailing nationalist perspectives,
the same event of partition offers an altogether different perspective. The line
between the nationalized and the denationalized perspectives coincides with that
between men and women and keeps them apart.
7.
Now that the ethnicities and nationalities
within each nation-state have become relatively free from the control of
nation-states – thanks to the forces and processes of globalization - their
assertions too are couched in the demand for partition. The demand for partition
reenacts the territoriality of the nation-state as much as the demand also
subverts it. We define ‘sub-territoriality’ as a space situated within the
territory of a state that has been for all practical purposes rendered
ethnically homogeneous by a particular community or an organization claiming to
represent it. Sub-territoriality also contests state territoriality.
References
Etienne Balibar, in Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race,
Nation, Class – Ambiguous Identities (Verso, 1991)
B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law – A Reader (Sage Publications,
2003), section 5
Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Peace Studies I (Sage Publications, 2004),
chapters 7-8, 13-14
Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Refugees and the State (Sage Publications, 2003),
chapters 1-3, 6, 9
Ranabir Samaddar, The Marginal Nation (Sage Publications, 1999), chapters
1-4, 13
REFUGEE WATCH, “Scrutinising the Land Settlement Scheme in Bhutan”, No. 9,
March 2000
REFUGEE WATCH, “Displacing the People the Nation Marches Ahead in Sri
Lanka”, No. 15, September 2001
Web-based
1.
RW.:
Displacing the People the Nation Marches Ahead in Sri Lanka
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch15_7.htm
2.
RW.: Mohajirs
: The Refugees By Choice
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch14_5.htm
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
[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.
International, Regional, and the National Legal Regimes of Protection, Sovereignty and the Principle of Resposibility
Module C deals with
the national, regional and global legalities of refugee rights, focusing on
developing a critical understanding of the history and politics of the
international protection regime, which includes questions of citizenship, state
accountability, the transnational forced migrant subjectivity and
representation, and asylum jurisprudence.
Despite the
well-established status of refugee protection in today’s international law
regime, most refugees fleeing to safety, by crossing international borders, do
not reach the state where they will seek asylum with a ready guarantee of access
to enduring human rights. They enter as “asylum seekers” – a temporary and
increasingly disenfranchised category of non-citizen – who need to establish
their eligibility for refugee status before they can enjoy the prospect of
long-term safety and non-discriminatory treatment (Bhaba 2002: 155).
While statistics
collected by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) show a
decline in the number of ‘refugees’ who have crossed an international border
and who fear persecution on return to their home states, the number of
individuals in refugee-like situations (like the internally displaced or
internally ‘stuck’) has grown considerably. ‘Refugees’ constitute only a
small part of today’s estimated 50 million uprooted people, many of whom are
forced to move on account of a variety of artificial disasters, including armed
conflict, persecution, severe economic insecurity, environmental degradation, or
other grave failures of governance.
The reason for the
inability to flee persecution by crossing international borders has to do with
the difficulty faced in qualifying for refugee status as per international legal
principles of refugee determination. Further, the notion of ‘persecution’ in
international refugee law, especially the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of
Refugees (Refugees Convention) and its 167 Protocol being atavistic in nature
and the increasing reluctance of governments to grant asylum has led to the
escalation in the number of people in refugee-like situations: who are facing
persecution, have not been able to cross their national borders, and are yet
being denied basic citizenship and human rights. However, it is primarily the
recourse to refugee law that can provide an international and institutionalized
mechanism for formal protection to forced migrants.
The international
refugee law regime’s fundamental standards of determination, protection and
care are set out in the post-Cold War document of the 1951 Refugees Convention
and its 1967 Protocol, which made the standards laid down in the convention
universally applicable to refugees worldwide. Along with the Refugees
Convention, the UNHCR was also set up in 1951. The purpose of the convention was
to provide the definition of who was to be considered as a refugee and to define
his/ her legal status. The UNHCR’s mandate is to provide international
protection to refugees and seek durable solutions to their problems.
Since the
application of the human rights standards in the Refugees Convention and the
1967 Protocol operate on the basis of ‘treaty obligations’ on countries that
are parties to the convention, there have been hurdles to its universal
applicability as many states from the Global South have refused to accede to the
convention arguing that it is ‘Eurocentric’ and does not respond to the
unique nature of refugee movements in their parts of the world. The
‘Eurocentric’ argument has also been used by many states (like India and all
other South Asian countries) to evade the responsibility of protecting the
rights of refugees in their own country and region in accordance with the
standards set in the convention. However, in Africa and Latin America, the
Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the Cartagena Declaration on Refugees
respectively have built on the basic structures and legal provisions of the
Refugees Convention to create a refugee protection regime suited to their
geo-political conditions. Unfortunately, with no obligation to meet the refugee
rights standards in the Refugees Convention and without any national or regional
protection regime for South Asia, refugees in this part of the world are at the
complete mercy of the political will of states to respond to their crises.
Article 1A (2) of
the Refugees Convention, as amended by the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status
of Refugees, defines a ‘refugee’ as: “…any person who… owing to a
fell-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race,
religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or
political opinion, is outside the country of his/her nationality and is
unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself/herself of the
protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside
the country of his/her formal residence, is unable or owing to such fear, is
unwilling to return to it.” However, there exists no comprehensive definition
of concepts of ‘persecution’ and ‘well-founded fear of persecution’ in
international law. The drafters of the Refugees Convention framed an open-ended
and flexible approach to the concept of persecution in the form of a universal
framework.
When it comes to establishing ‘fell-founded fear of
persecution’ as a means to substantiate the ground for persecution, there is a
challenge to the ‘subjective’ notion of ‘well-founded fear’ as espoused
by the UNHCR. Hathaway understands the concept of ‘well-founded fear’ as
inherently objective and opines that it was intended by the Refugees Convention
to restrict the scope of protection to persons who can demonstrate a present or
prospective risk of persecution, irrespective of the extent or nature of
mistreatment or harm. He says: “Well-founded fear has nothing to do with the
state of mind of the applicant for refugee status, except insofar as the
claimant’s testimony may provide some evidence of the state of affairs in her
home country” (Hathaway 1991: 65, 74).
This understanding as pointed out by Hathaway subverts the
processes of determination, care and protection of refugees within the
international asylum and refugee protection regime. With states becoming
increasingly restrictive and stringent with their refugee and immigration
policies, the concept of ‘fell-founded’ fear which evolved from a relatively
simple inquiry within which the refugee’s subjective feelings of terror were
prominent, has now undergone a transformation informed by the politics of state
sovereignty where concepts like ‘safe state’ have increasingly become the
sole determinants of the issue of the well-founded fear (Tuitt 1996: 80).
In the process of
determining asylum claims questions of human rights abuse arise, generally, in
three circumstances: persecution in the state of origin (the basis of the claim
to asylum); rights violations in the course of migration (which may impinge on
the substance of the claim); and abusive host state practices at the point of
reception (which may relate to procedural questions about where a claim should
be lodged or whether the applicant is credible).
In one of her
seminal essays titled “Internationalist Gatekeepers?: The Tension Between
Asylum Advocacy and Human Rights”, Jacqueline Bhaba points out that refugee
movements today are increasingly becoming more torturous and facilitated by
commercial intermediaries and false documents. According to her in a situation
like this the bona fide of the asylum seeker raises some critical questions:
What is the nationality of the applicant? Which state should be responsible for
providing protection in cases where the applicant’s flight itinerary has
involved various safe ‘third’ states en route to the state where asylum is
being sought? Why did the applicant not present her asylum claim at the first
opportunity? (Bhaba 2002: 156, 157).
In a climate where
escalating concerns about terrorism, economic recession, and state security
heighten exclusionary and xenophobic impulses in developed states considering
asylum applications, the challenge of establishing a particular host state’s
obligation to protect is particularly great (ibid.).
A critique of the
international asylum adjudication system is therefore necessary to do a reality
check with regard to what it can exactly offer when it comes to drawing the
fundamentals of refugee rights guarantees from the basic principles of
international human rights law. While human rights guarantees are understood to
be universal and inherent across the world, when it comes to the determination
of an asylum seeker as a refugee, to establish ‘fell-founded fear’ in an
objective fashion, asylum adjudicating officers tend to “generate simplistic,
even derogatory characteristics of asylum seekers’ countries of origin, as
areas of barbarism or lack of civility in order to present a clear cut picture
of persecution” (ibid: 162). The central guiding principle of this kind a
construction of the asylum seeker as the ‘native’, who needs to be
‘civilised’ and rescued out of the clutches of a ‘barbaric’ state might
be best described as “the worse the better” – the more oppressive the home
state, the greater the chances of gaining asylum (ibid.).
The need for
Southern countries, especially those in South Asia, to develop a refugee
protection regime, over and above a human rights protection system, should
ideally be premised on countering such ‘primitive’ constructions by the
Northern countries that can extend asylum only when ‘barbarity’ marks the
state in the asylum seekers country of origin.
In the context of
the above issues, this module will use documentary films, interdisciplinary
readings, international/ regional/ national legislations and human rights
instruments, and some contemporary landmark case laws to discuss the potential
and perils of the present refugee protection regime globally, and in South Asia
particularly. The module will also draw out the distinctions between the
categories of refugee, internally displaced persons, and stateless people in the
light of the contested debates around persecution, well-founded fear and asylum
adjudication systems.
Suggested Reading list:
Compulsory
Bhaba, J. 2002.
“Internationalist Gatekeepers? The Tension between Asylum Advocacy and Human
Rights.” 15 Harvard Human Rights Journal: 155
Castro-Magluff, J.M. 2001. "The Inadequacies of International Regime for
the Protection of Refugees." In Sanjay K. Roy, ed., Refugees and Human
Rights: Social and Political Dynamics of Refugee Problem in Eastern and
North-Eastern India, pp. 355. New Delhi: Rawat.
Chimni, B.S. 2003. "Status of Refugees in India: Strategic Ambiguity."
In R. Samaddar, ed., Refugees and the State, pp. 443. New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
Kamala Visweswaran. 2004. Gendered States: Rethinking Culture as a Site of South Asian Human Rights
Work, Human Rights Quarterly - Volume 26,
Number 2
Jacqueline Bhaba. 2005. Embodied Rights: Gender Persecution, State Sovereignty
and Refugees, in Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner (Eds.), Women, Citizenship
and Difference, Zubaan
Kristen Hill Maher. 2002. Who has a Right to Rights? Citizenship’s Exclusions
in an Age of Migration, in Alison Brysk (Ed.), Globalization and Human Rights,
University of California Press
Susan M. Akram. 2000. Orientalism Revisited in Asylum and Refugee Claims,
International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol 12, No 1, p. 7
Recommended
Aleinikoff, T.A.
1991. “The meaning of ‘Persecution’ in U.S. Asylum Law.” In H. Adelman,
ed., Refugee Policy: Canada and the United States, pp. 296. Toronto: York Lanes
Press.
Tuitt, P. 1996. False Images: Law’s Construction of the Refugee. London: Pluto
Press.
GORLICK, B. 1998. "Refugees and Human Rights." Seminar 463: 27
Abrar, C.R. "Legal Protection of Refugees in South Asia." Forced
Migration Review 10:21.
Rajaram, P.K. 2002. “Humanitarianism and Representations of the Refugee” 15
Journal of Refugee Studies 3: 24
Internal Displacement with Special Reference to Causes, Linkages, and Responses
“The look of pure
terror on the face of the little Korku tribal girl child said it all as the
elephant razed her house in the pouring rain. Her parents pleaded with the
Forest officials saying that they were living and cultivating the lands there
for the past three decades. However, the officials said they had no
alternative, since they had been instructed to evict all encroachers as ordered
by the Supreme Court.”[i]
The eviction of indigenous people from their land is a recurrent
theme in South Asia. Be it Ranigaon, Golai, Motakeda, Somthana, Ahmedabad,
Bandarban, or Trincomalee, thousands of families are being evicted from their
homes either in the name of conflict or in the name of modernization. They are
being forced to stay in the open, in pouring rain with a number of them
suffering from malnutrition and starvation and they are fearful for their lives
at most times. The last two
decades have witnessed an enormous increase in the number of internally
displaced people in South Asia. Their situation is particularly vulnerable
because unlike the refugees they are unable to move away from the site of
conflict and have to remain within a state in which they were displaced in the
first place. These unfortunate people who have been
displaced once are often displaced multiple times by the hands of the powers
that be. Yet as displaced they do not have the capacity to cross
international borders but seek rehabilitation from the powers that are
responsible for their displacement in the first place.
Besides being ‘potential refugees’ who might cross
international borders, most of the IDPs living in these countries share ethnic
continuities with the people of the neighbouring countries. The Pashtuns of
northwest Pakistan for example, seem to harbour an active interest in the
affairs of their ethnic cousins living in Afghanistan and vice versa. Similarly,
much of what happens inside today’s Myanmar has its implications for the
minorities of northeastern India and Bangladesh. Massive displacement and the
resulting plight of the predominantly tribal populations such as, the Nagas of
Myanmar continue to be one of the key running themes of the Naga rebel discourse
across the borders and the ethnic cousins of Myanmar are described by it as,
‘the Eastern Nagas’. Insofar as the creation of national borders could not
make many of these pre-existing ethnic spaces completely obsolescent, South
Asia’s living linkages with West or South East Asia can hardly be exaggerated.
Also national specificities notwithstanding South Asian IDPs are connected by
their ethnicities, minority status and situations of extreme marginalisation.
This portrays the reality that in so far as in South Asia IDPs cannot be
regarded as a national category. It is essential to think of them as
regional categories.
The situation of IDPs seems particularly
vulnerable when one considers that there are hardly any legal mechanisms that
guide their rehabilitation and care in South Asia. Since the early 1990s
the need for a separate legal mechanism for IDPs in South Asia has increasingly
been felt. This is not only to compile new laws but also to bring together
the existing laws within a single legal instrument and to plug the loopholes
detected in them over the years. Only recently the international community has
developed such a mechanism that is popularly known as the UN Guiding Principles
on internal displacement. This has given us a framework within which
rehabilitation and care of internally displaced people in South Asia can be
organised. Keeping that in mind it becomes imperative for scholars working on
issues of forced migration in South Asia to consider whether South Asian states
have taken the Guiding Principles into account while organising programmes for
rehabilitation and care for the internally displaced persons (IDPs).
The Guiding Principles on Internally
Displaced Persons set out the rights of internally displaced persons relevant to
the needs they encounter in different stages of displacement. The Guiding
Principles provide a handy schematic of how to design a national policy or law
on internal displacement that is focused on the individuals concerned and
responsive to the requirements of international law. Similarly,
governments (and particularly national human rights institutions where they
exist), advocates, and displaced persons can use the Guiding Principles as a
means to measure the compliance of existing laws and policies with international
standards. Finally, their simplicity allows the Guiding Principles to
effectively inform the internally displaced themselves of their rights. The
Guiding Principles are thus part of a growing number of “soft law”
instruments that have come to characterize norm-making in the human rights field
as well as other areas of international law, in particular environmental, labor
and finance.
One of the most important contributions
of the Guiding Principles is to develop an acceptable definition/description of
those who can fit within the category of internally displaced persons.
They are defined as “persons or groups of persons who have been forced or
obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in
particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict,
situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or
human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized
state border.” The Guiding Principles also reflect on the rights of displaced
people, the obligations of their states’ towards them and also the obligations
of international community towards these people. This booklet is an effort
to make such rights accessible to
vulnerable people of South Asia who are already displaced or live in fear of
displacement.
What Types of Displacement are Prohibited
by the Guiding Principles?
Principle 6 affirms that “[e]very human
being shall have the right to be protected against being arbitrarily displaced
from his or her home or place of habitual residence.” Support for this
proposition can be found in humanitarian law and also in the right to movement,
guaranteed by a number of human rights instruments, which can be reasonably
expected to have as its corollary the “right not to move.”
It is important to note that the Guiding
Principles do not claim that displacement is always prohibited. In both
humanitarian and human rights law, exceptions to the general rule are available.
Rather it is arbitrary displacement” that must be avoided and Principle 7
provides a sort of roadmap for avoiding arbitrariness. First, all feasible
alternatives to displacement must be explored. In situations of armed
conflict, this means that a determination must be made either that the security
of the population or “imperative military reasons” require displacement
before it can be carried out.
Where displacement is to occur outside
the context of armed conflict, Principle 7 provides a list of procedural
protections that must be guaranteed, including decision- making and enforcement
by appropriate authorities, involvement of and consultation with those to be
affected and the provision of an effective remedy for those wishing to challenge
their displacement. These provisions are, of course, of particular
interest to those facing displacement for development projects.
Moreover, in either context, “all
measures” must be taken to minimize the effects and duration of the
displacement and the responsible authorities are required to ensure “to the
greatest practicable extent” that the basic needs of those displaced (e.g.,
shelter, safety, nutrition, health, and hygiene) are met. It should also be
noted that Principal 9 articulates a “special obligation” to protection
against displacement of a number of groups whose special attachment to territory
has been recognized in international law, including indigenous persons,
minorities, peasants, and pastoralists.
What Rights do Persons have Once
Displaced?
Displaced persons enjoy the full range of
rights enjoyed by civilians in humanitarian law and by every human being in
human rights law. These include the rights to life, integrity and dignity
of the person (e.g., freedom from rape and torture), non-discrimination,
recognition as a person before the law, freedom from arbitrary detention,
liberty of movement, respect for family life, an adequate standard of living
(including to access to basic humanitarian needs), medical care, access to legal
remedies, possession of property, freedom of expression, freedom of religion,
participation in public life, and education, as set out in Principles 10-23.
In several instances, the Guiding
Principles specify how generally expressed rights apply in situations of
displacement. These should be of particular interest to those designing
and assessing domestic policies on internal displacement. For example,
Principle 12 provides that, to give effect to the right of liberty from
arbitrary detention, internally displaced persons “shall not be interned in or
confined in a camp” absent “exceptional circumstances” and that they shall
not be subject to discriminatory arrest “as a result of their displacement.”
Likewise Principle 20 provides that the right to “recognition everywhere as a
person before the law” should be given effect for displaced persons by
authorities facilitating the issuance of “all documents necessary for the
enjoyment and exercise of their legal rights, such as passports, personal
identification documents, birth certificates and marriage certificates.”
The Guiding Principles provide for
special consideration of the needs of women and children (including “positive
discrimination” or affirmative activities on behalf of governments to model
assistance and protection to their particular needs, consultation and
involvement in decisions regarding their displacement and return or
resettlement, protection against recruitment of minors and free and compulsory
education), as well as for other especially vulnerable groups, such as the
elderly and disabled.
What Rights and Obligations do
Humanitarian Organizations Have?
The Guiding Principles also lay out a
number of rights and obligations of humanitarian organizations in Principles
24-27. This section again stresses the point that “[t]he primary duty
and responsibility for providing humanitarian assistance to internally displaced
persons lies with national authorities” (Principle 25(1)). In carrying
out this duty, national authorities must not “arbitrarily withhold” consent
to international humanitarian organizations’ offer of services to the
internally displaced, and must “grant and facilitate” their free passage to
areas where assistance is needed. Humanitarian personnel, materiel, and
supplies are not to be attacked or diverted for other purposes. For their
part, humanitarian organizations must carry out their operations “in
accordance with the principles of humanity and impartiality and without
discrimination” and should “give due regard to the protection needs and
human rights of internally displaced persons” and not just their needs for
assistance.
What Help Should Displaced Persons Expect
with Return, Reintegration and Resettlement?
In their final section, the Guiding
Principles provide that competent authorities have “the primary duty and
responsibility” to assist displaced persons by providing the means as well as
by establishing conditions for return to their places of origin, or for
resettlement in another part of the country (Principle 28). Any return or
resettlement must be voluntary and carried out in conditions of safety and
dignity for those involved.
As a corollary to the right to free
movement, therefore, displaced persons have the right to return to their homes.
Although the right to return or resettle is not expressly stated in any
particular human rights instrument, this interpretation of the right of free
movement is strongly supported by resolutions of the Security Council, decisions
of treaty monitoring bodies, and other sources of authority.
Moreover, although the displaced have the
right to return, Principle 28 carefully specifies that they must not be forced
to do so, particularly (but not only) when their safety would be imperiled.
The issue of the voluntariness of return or resettlement is recurrent in
protracted displacement situations around the world. In many places,
governments and insurgent groups have ceded to the temptation to use the return
or resettlement of displaced persons as a political tool.
Principle 29 provides that authorities
also have “the duty and responsibility” to assist displaced persons to
recover “to the extent possible” their property and possessions, and where
restitution is not possible to provide or assist the displaced persons to obtain
appropriate compensation. Like the preceding principle, this one
relies on general precepts of the right to property, the right to remedy for
violations of international law, as well as a growing adherence in Security
Council resolutions, treaties, national law and other sources of authority.
Are their Any Special Provisions for
Women?
In the guiding principles a concerted
attempt was made to prioritise gender issues. For example, while
discussing groups that needed special attention in Principle 4 it was stated
that expectant mothers, mothers with young children and female heads of
households, among others, are people who may need special attention. In
Principle 7 it was stated that when displacement occurred due to reasons other
than armed conflict authorities should involve women who are affected, in the
planning and management of their relocation. Principle 9 upheld that IDPs
should be protected in particular against “Rape, mutilation, torture, cruel,
inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and other outrages upon personal
dignity, such as acts of gender-specific violence, forced prostitution and any
other form of indecent assault.” Special protection was also sought against
sexual exploitation. Principle 18 stated that special efforts should be
made to include women in planning and distribution of supplies. Principle19
stated that attention should be given to the health needs of women and Principle
20 stated that both men and women had equal rights to obtain government
documents in their own names.
Apart from the Guiding Principles there
are other international mechanisms that displaced women can access. They
include the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against Women (hereafter CEDAW) and the 1999 Optional Protocol sets out specific
steps for states to become proactive in their efforts to eliminate
discrimination against displaced women. Article 2 of CEDAW clearly states
that public authorities, individuals, organisations and enterprises should
refrain from discrimination against women. Article 3 reiterated women’s
right to get protection from sexual violence. Article 6 spoke against
trafficking and sexual exploitation of women. Since most displaced women
are particularly vulnerable to traffickers this article is of some importance to
them. It must be noted that all the countries of South Asia are
signatories to CEDAW with some reservations but not of the proportion that it
negates the overarching principles and therefore the onus of being gender
sensitive in their attitude and programmes is on them. Apart from these there
are other international provisions that protect women’s human rights.
Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 calls for the halt of
weapons against the civilian population and to protect all civilians, including
children, women and persons belonging to ethnic and religious minorities from
violations of humanitarian law. Article 29 of ILO 1930 Convention
concerning forced or compulsory labour also impacts the situation of women.
It calls for the end of violations of the human rights of women, in particular
forced labour, abuse and torture of labourers including women.
Are the Guiding Principles Legally
Binding?
Although the UN Guiding Principles on
Internal Displacement is not a legally binding treaty it is formed of principles
that are based on established legal mechanisms for aiding the human rights of
the displaced people. Many of these Principles may gradually attain the status
of customary international law. But as Francis Deng reminds us, “for the time
being they serve as a morally binding statement.”[ii] A statement of this nature that promises
to be ‘morally binding’ on a wide spectrum of primarily national
governments and secondarily, other relevant international and non-governmental
agencies must cut across the well-known divisions of the prevailing ethical and
moral systems and elaborate itself in a way that it does not remain captive to
any particular modality of moral reasoning. Plurality of such systems and
modalities is helpful in building the much-needed ‘moral consensus’ around
these principles.
While the Guiding Principles have already
gained an impressive degree of recognition at the international, regional, and
national level, more remains to be done to foster their use, particularly in
South Asia, where many states with large displacement problems lack
comprehensive policies or effective remedies for those. It is to be hoped
that this booklet will itself encourage that process. South Asia has seen
millions of people displaced both across borders and within borders – again
both by conflict and by developmental projects, and in some cases by natural
calamities. This booklet is intended to make a survey of how far the
Guiding Principles on IDPs is relevant to each state of the region and how far
they have been implemented and what remains to be done.
Whose Responsibility is it Anyway?
If the state-centric nationalistic
approach has meant the exclusion of minorities and has produced large number of
refugees in the post-colonial states in Asia and Africa, state-centric national
security perspective and development paradigm have not done any better. The
people displaced against this backdrop may have got some relief if they have
been able to cross international boundaries. Crossing the international boundary
may entitle them to “refugee” status, thus providing them at least a fig
leaf of relief and rehabilitation in an alien land. But wretched are those who
remain internally displaced. They remain at the mercy of the same state and
administration whose policy might have sent them on the run. According to all
estimates, the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) is rising compared
to the refugees seeking shelter in another country. South Asia is no exception
to this. But, so far, no systematic and comprehensive study was carried out.
Only a few brief, and sometimes sketchy, reports and articles are available on
the plight of the IDPs in South Asia. This booklet hopefully will fill that
awesome and disturbing vacuum. The booklet is meant to explore the nature and
the extent of displacement in respective countries of South Asia and provide
recommendations to minimize the insecurity of the displaced by discussing
mechanisms for rehabilitation and care. As for who takes responsibility for the
displaced? The answer is primarily the state, although there are attempts
on its part to abdicate its responsibility in this regard. None of the states of
South Asia recognizes right against forced displacement as a non-negotiable
right. We have to note that it is the policies of the state and the model of
development and nation building that it has pursued since its birth that have
caused and continue to cause displacement in largest numbers. It is primarily a
failure of the state system. The booklet is meant to explore how far South Asian
states are sensitive to the needs of the IDPs, how they can be made sensitive to
these needs and whether the UN Guiding Principle are being adhered to, to any
extent.
What is the way Ahead?
In their few years of existence, the
Guiding Principles have in fact obtained a high level of recognition. When
they were first presented in 1998, the Commission on Human Rights merely
“noted” them and the intention of the Representative to use them in his
dialogue with states. Over time, however, the language of regular
resolutions in the Commission, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and the
General Assembly has grown increasingly warmer. In 2003, for instance,
both the Commission and the General Assembly “welcome[d] the fact that an
increasing number of States, United Nations agencies and regional and
non-governmental organizations are applying them as a standard, and encourages
all relevant actors to make use of the Guiding Principles when dealing with
situations of internal displacement[.]” They have also been
acknowledged at the level of the Security Council, at international conferences,
and adopted by the U.N. and wider humanitarian community as their standard.
The Guiding Principles have been well
received by multi-lateral organizations at the regional level. They have
been welcomed in resolutions, declarations and statements by organs of the
Organization of African Unity (OAU) (now known as the African Union), Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Inter-Governmental Authority on
Development (IGAD), Organization of American States (OAS), Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe (CoE) and the Commonwealth.
Among states in South Asia, Sri Lanka has
similarly relied upon the Guiding Principles in the formulation of its National
Framework for Relief, Rehabilitation and Reconciliation.
Likewise, civil society institutions have made increasing use of the Guiding
Principles to assess domestic policy and practice concerning displaced persons.
It is hoped that in the near future more states in South Asia will accept, adopt
and adhere to the Guiding Principles regarding the internally displaced. To
understand the relevance of the Guiding Principles a close study of the
mechanism is imperative. This booklet is meant to be such a study.
Its primary objective is to publicize the mechanisms available for the
rehabilitation and care of IDPs in South Asia so that they can access rights and
justice that are due to them
[i]Pradip Prabhu, “Tribals Face Genocide,” Combat
Law: The Human Rights Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 4 (October-November 2002) p.
73.
[ii] Francis Deng’s ‘Preface’ to
Walter Kalin, Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement: Annotations
(Washington DC: American Society of International Law, and the Brookings
Institution ,2000), p. vi.
References
Paula Banerjee, Sabyasachi Basu Ray
Chaudhury and Samir Das, Internal Displacement in South Asia.
Addressing Internal Displacement: A Framework For National Responsibility
Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement
Web-based
1. E-material: Protection of Internally Displaced Persons:
Inter-Agency Standing Committee Policy Paper
3. E-e-material3:An Overview of Revisions to the World Bank Resettlement Policy
Resource Politics, Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, and Displacement
Objective of this module is to
contemplate the impacts of resource crisis, climate change and subsequent forced
migration on development of the society. Resource crisis, climate change and
forced migration are one of the major concerns of the contemporary development
discourse. Forced migration due to resource crisis caused by climate change and
environmental degradation is a serious impediment to attaining the basic
normative goal of development i.e. a relatively equal society along with capable
social actors by the virtue of favourable structural facilities and
opportunities. In this module it is particularly intended to examine to what
extent the issues of resource crisis, climate change and resultant forced
migration are impairing the social equality on the one hand, and to what extent
the existing social inequality, particularly in the relationship between the
countries of the North and the South, causing the problems of climate change,
resource crisis, and forced migration on the other.
It is already accepted that one of the
major sources of climate change, environmental degradation, and subsequent
resource crisis is our present mode of production and consumption. Global
warming and sea level rise caused by anthropogenic climate change are
susceptible to displacing millions of people. Given the present pattern
of our lifestyle, significant amount of green house gases have concentrated in
the atmosphere by increasing the global temperature. Global warming causes the
sea level to rise because of primarily thermal expansion and to a lesser degree,
the melting of the polar ice caps and mountain glaciers. The rise of the sea
level will seriously affect the living conditions of the coastlines, on which
over two-thirds of the world’s population resides. Sea level rise will
increase the salinity of ground water and soil and cause complete submersion of
low-lying islands. While we know that the industrialized countries have been and
still remain to be the largest contributors of greenhouse gases, the sufferers
of the global warming will be basically the developing countries of the South.
The most vulnerable areas to sea level rise are the tropics, most of which are
in the developing world. Therefore, the nations and populations that will be
most adversely affected seem to have most limited coping capacity because of
gross inadequacies in their social security systems, infrastructure and economic
resources.
Climate change and resultant resource
crisis as direct cause of forced migration is an issue on which there are
different views. On the one hand, there is a view that argues that climate
change and environmental degradation are increasingly becoming a significant
cause of forced migration, and therefore, one should give proper attention to
the environmental factors of forced migration by officially recognising these
migrated peoples as environmental refugees. On the other hand, there is a view
that argues that while environmental degradation and climate change do play a
part in forced migration, they are at the same time closely linked to a range of
other political and economic factors. Therefore, focusing on the environmental
factors in isolation from political and economic factors cannot help to
adequately understand the issue of forced migration. On the contrary,
identifying these people as merely environmental refugee might divert attention
from the complex nature of the relationship between climate change, resource
crisis and displacement of the population.
Proponents of the former view, for
example Norman Myers[1]
argues that environmental pressures lead to fierce competition over land,
encroachment on ecologically fragile areas and ultimate impoverishment. These
events then can cause political and ethnic conflicts which may eventually become
violent. As a result, the sufferers of such resource crisis caused by climate
change and other environmental degradation ended up in the urban slums or in the
camps for internally displaced people within their own country. Millions of such
peoples, however, leave their own country and take refuge in the neighbouring
countries, where they may cause further environmental harm and conflicts. Many
of them also try to get asylum from countries in Europe and America. While rich
countries are shutting down their doors, the neighbouring poor countries are
facing tremendous pressure of such refugees. In the absence of proper
arrangement for such number of refugees, the refugee camps and shantytowns are
becoming breeding grounds of civil disorder, social upheaval and violence.
Hence, it is necessary to officially recognize the climatic and environmental
causes of displacement of the people and device proper institutional setup to
tackle with the problem.
Proponents of the later view, for
example, Richard Black[2]
rejects such apocalyptic vision and considers it a neo-Malthusian approach based
on dubious assumptions. According to him, it constructs refugees and migrants as
a threat to security. He also claims that there is no evidence that climate
change and environmental degradation lead directly to mass refugee flows,
especially flows to developed countries. He sees the emphasis on environmental
refugees as a distraction from central issues of development and conflict
resolution, which are at the core of the refugee problem in the developing
countries. Black does see the problems of rising sea levels, declining water
supplies and others as very real. However, he finds little evidence of actual
permanent large-scale displacements caused by these factors. He argues that
rather than looking at global forecasts it is important to examine the
strategies adopted by communities and governments in specific cases. He argues
that the key problem is perhaps not climate and environmental change itself but
the ability of different communities and countries to cope with it which is
closely related with the problems of underdevelopment.
There is no doubt that there is an urgent need to protect and help the people who are forced to migrate due to climate change and environmental degradation. For this purpose one may, however need a comprehensive and multi-dimensional approach. Such an approach should include, but should not be limited to, actors such as the UNHCR and other United Nations agencies, governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and local community members. Strong co-ordination should be practiced between international, national, regional and local actors to mitigate the problem of forced migration causing by climate change and resource crisis. While through co-ordination and co-operation between different actors the problem of forced migration can be managed to a certain extent, it is however, difficult to resolve the problem without adequately addressing the root causes of climate change and resource crisis.
Root causes of forced migration caused by climate change and resource scarcity are located at different levels: at local level, at national level, at regional level, and at global level. Hence, it is important to device relevant policies for relevant levels. However, it is important to remember that the rich countries of the North are still responsible for the causes of climate and environmental changes that induce population displacement in the poor countries of the South. Hence the policies merely concerning the local or national level cannot arrest the problem of global warming and rise of the sea level. It requires relevant policies that can adequately address also the global structural causes of climate change, environmental degradation and resource crisis. The very first objective of such policy could be to stop Northern practices that make things worse in the poor countries of the South. The second policy objective could be a reform of global rules directed towards sincerely achieving clean development mechanism. Finally, a third set of policy objectives could be to devise a package of aid measures that facilitate environmentally sustainable development in the developing countries, alleviate environmental pressure on the developing countries and made specific initiatives to help developing countries to confront the threats caused by climate change and environmental degradation.
R
esearch Methodology in Forced Migration StudiesMuch of research
depends on wit, particularly if the enquiry is sensitive in the eyes of the
people enquired into. And there is no training in wit.
This lecture is
more in the nature of sensitizing ourselves about possibilities rather than
developing a blueprint, which is likely to become a straitjacket leading to
foreclosure. One should be open, and of course capable, of breaking the grammar.
1.In
the social sciences methodology is taken to be a discipline, bordering on
philosophy, whose function is to recommend and examine the methods, which should
be used to produce valid knowledge. Methodology lays down procedures to be used
in generation of valid knowledge and these procedures are justified or
criticized by means of philosophical arguments. It is clear that methodology’s
claim to prescribe correct procedures to social sciences presupposes a form of
knowledge that is thought to be provided by philosophy.
In this sense methodology presupposes a particular kind of relationship
between philosophy and the social sciences where judgment and validation of the
claim to knowledge is possible. Different philosophies may conceive of that
relationship in different terms, and to that extent each discourse describes a
different ‘regime of truth’, that is, the operation of criteria, norms and
procedures for identifying or arguing about ‘true’ propositions in any given
case.
2. For any
researcher on any problematic, the first thing to ponder over is the choice of
appropriate epistemology. The choice is a function of the nature of the issue to
be enquired into and of a researcher’s non-academic intent, even his or her
sympathy. This is assuming that the researcher is aware of his right to choose.
A well-written text book on methods of research, an articulate teacher and a
path-breaking text can produce closed minds, and thus stand in the way of
development of such awareness.
3. ‘Forced
migration’ as a problematic demands a critical epistemology. It believes in
value-determined nature of enquiry, unlike positivism and post-positivism
interested in explanation only. Further, it wants enquiry to critique with an
intention to transform social, political, economic, and ethnic and gender
structures, which constrain and exploit woman and man. The inquirer becomes an
instigator, a ‘transformative intellectual’ confronting ignorance and
misconceptions.
4. Constructivism
is another appropriate epistemological position, which envisages multiple
realities. Constructivism enquires into people’s constructions about reality
in order to understand these. The investigator is a ‘passionate
participant’, engaged in enabling multivoice construction of his/her own as
well as of other participants’ perceptions.
5. Both Critical
epistemology and Constructivism want value-driven enquiry and its outcome
ensuring empowerment of the marginal people. The forced migrants become marginal
at the places of their arrival. In case they were already marginal in their
original social location, they become doubly marginalised.
6. These two
epistemological positions direct a researcher to qualitative approach to the
problem. This is also perceived as a ‘humanist’ approach, because it keeps
woman at the centre of enquiry.
7.Theoretical
critique of positivism has encouraged in recent times a shift to qualitative
methodology in social research. The basic assumptions central to this critique
can be briefly stated as: (i) commonsense knowledge of social structures cannot
be discounted in favor of the misplaced hope of achieving an objective
knowledge; in an inter-subjective world both observer and observed use the same
resources to identify ‘meanings’, (ii)Statistical logic and experimental
methods are not always appropriate for the study of this inter-subjective world,
(iii) In an inter-subjective world, policy interventions based on a
stimulus-response model of change can neither analytically nor politically
acceptable.
8.
‘Qualitative’ denotes an attention to processes and meanings that are not
subjected to measurement in terms of quantity, amount, intensity or frequency.
Qualitative analysis is best understood in terms of what it intends to
do: bring out the distinctive attribute of a social phenomenon or relationship
between phenomena which can not be represented by a quantitative indicator
entirely or at all. The synonymous expressions for qualitative approach also
imply its character. These are: ‘naturalistic’, ‘inquiry from inside’,
and ‘interpretative’. Along with such labeling, there is a critical
attribution that it is a paradigm meaning that it is a set of beliefs and
imperatives concerning what should be studied and how. Qualitative research is
multimethod in focus, involving an interpretative, naturalistic approach to its
subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their
natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms
of the meanings people bring to them. Qualitative research involves use and
collection of a variety of empirical material - case study, personal experience,
introspective, life story, interview, observational, historical, interactional,
and visual texts----that describe routine and problematic moments and meanings
in individuals’ lives. Qualitative research is bricolage and researcher is a
bricoleur, a ‘jack of all trades’ ready to use any strategy, method or data.
There is no prior commitment to any. A context sets a research question, which
in turn suggests a research practice. Qualitative research is a call for
openness for the sake of better understanding.
9. The attributes
of qualitative research establish how it seeks to locate distinctiveness of
phenomena. These are: an explicit commitment to examining events, activities,
experiences and their underlying normative framework ‘through the eyes of’ a
people being studied; a detailed descriptive attention to aspects of everyday
life process likely to reveal specific contexts of behavior; locating wider
historical and social as well as immediate and particular context; and an
examination of inter-locking processes.
10. An enquiry is
good if knowledge possesses: according to critical epistemology if it has the
property of historical situatedness (care taken about social, political,
economic, cultural, ethnic and gender specificities of the studied situation);
according to constructivism, trustworthiness, criteria of credibility,
transferability, dependability and confirmability, and authenticity criteria of
fairness, ontological authenticity (enlarging personal constructions), educative
authenticity (leading to improved understanding of others’ constructions),
catalytic authenticity (stimulating
action) and tactical authenticity (empowering action). These are set against
proof of internal validity (isomorphism of findings with reality), external
validity (generalizabilty), reliability (stability) and objectivity (distanced
and neutral observer) for positivism and postpositivism.
11. The philosophy
underlying the qualitative approach is best represented in the unobtrusive
measures. These are so-called because these do not intrude into social settings,
groups and individuals who are objects of investigation. Unlike interviews and
observation these are ‘non-reactive’ since these do not involve interaction
between the investigator and the people being studied.
12. Unobtrusive
methods take a variety of forms: Textual analysis, Content Analysis, Discourse
Analysis, and Analysis of visuals, Semiotics, Translation, and Analysis of
existing statistics.
13. Because more
than one method can be necessary, the need for triangulation arises. The
expression ‘triangulation’ is a metaphor drawn on trigonometry, a branch of
mathematics. It means originally a method of surveying in which an area is
divided in to triangles, one side (the base) and all the angles of which are
measured and the lengths of the other lines calculated trigonometrically. Social
scientists are seldom conversant about trigonometry. Hence we may be excused
trying to make sense more of the suggestions thrown up by the specialist
definition. These are: ‘area’, ‘angle’ which implies sides---three, that
is, more than one, ‘survey’ and ‘calculation’. Central to this exercise
is dividing in triangles and then relating them for a survey. For the social
scientists, the area is the phenomenal world or a part thereof, which is sliced
up, comprehended and then ‘sewn up’, again for comprehension. If the slices
are different in nature, their comprehension involves use of different methods.
In social sciences, triangulation means employment of a number of different
methods in the belief that the variety facilitates achievement of validity of an
observation. This is according to the positivist position. In post-modernist
eyes, triangulation or use of multiple methods is useful for ensuring ‘rigor,
breadth, and depth to any investigation’. Triangulation refers to the use of
more than one approach to the investigation of a research question in order to
enhance confidence in the ensuing findings. Since much social research is
founded on the use of a single research method and as such may suffer from
limitations associated with that method or from the specific application of it,
triangulation offers the prospect of enhanced confidence.
12. Triangulation
can take five forms:
(i). Data
triangulation, which entails gathering data through several sampling strategies,
so that slices of data at different times and social situations, as well as on a
variety of people, are gathered.
(ii).
Investigator triangulation, which refers to the use of more than one
researcher in the field to gather
and interpret data.
(iii). Theoretical
triangulation, which refers to the use of more than one theoretical position in
interpreting data.
(iv).
Methodological triangulation, which refers to the use of more than one method
for gathering data.
(v)
Interdisciplinary triangulation, which refers to triangulation of different
disciplines.
A distinction is
also possible between within-method and between-method triangulation. The former
involves the use of varieties of the same method to investigate a research
issue; for example, a self-completion questionnaire might contain two
contrasting scales to measure emotional labor. Between-method triangulation,
involved contrasting research methods, such as a questionnaire and observation.
Sometimes this meaning of triangulation is taken to include the combined use of
quantitative research and qualitative research to determine how far they arrive
at convergent findings.
Hesse-Biber,
Sharlene Nagy and Leavy, Patricia. (2004). Approaches to Qualitative
Research: A Reader on Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press
Bryman, Alan (1992) Quantity and Quality in Social Research, Routledge.
Giles, Judy and Middleton, Tim (1999): Studying Culture: a practical
introduction. Blackwell Publishers.
Kripendorff, Klaus (2003) Content Analysis: an introduction to its
methodology, Sage Publications
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.)(1998-a): Strategies of
Qualitative Enquiry.
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.) (1998-b): Collecting and
Interpreting Qualitative Materials.
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.)(1998-c): The Landscape of
Qualitative Research.
Thwaites, Tony, Davis, Lloyd and Mules, Warwick (2002): Introducing Cultural
and Media Studies.
Hall, Stuart (2002): Representation: Cultural Representations and
Signifying Practices.
Hammersley, Martyn and Atkinson, Paul (1995): Ethnography: Principles and
Practice.
Chaplin, Elizabath. (1994): Sociology and Visual Representation.
Hesse-Biber,
Sharlene Nagy and Leavy, Patricia. Approaches to Qualitative Research: A Reader
on Theory and Practice (2004).pp 1-14,15-38, 62-78.
Bryman (1988) Quantity and Quality in Social Research, pp 45-71, pp95-97,
112-113.
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.)(1998-a): Strategies of
Qualitative Enquiry. pp 1-34.
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.)(1998-c): The Landscape of
Qualitative Research.pp 185-220.
Giles, Judy and
Middleton, Tim (1999): Studying Culture: a practical introduction. pp
56-80.
Hall (2002) Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices
pp 1-74.
Thwaites, Tony, Davis, Lloyd and Mules, Warwick (2002): Introducing Cultural
and Media Studies.
Hesse- Biber and Leavy (2004) Approaches to Qualitative Research: A Reader on
Theory and Practice pp 79-129,142-146, 303-315, 334-365.
Denzin, Norman K and Lincoln Yvonna S(eds.) (1998-b): Collecting and
Interpreting Qualitative Materials. pp 130-149.
Hall S (2002): Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying
Practices. pp 75-150.
Denzin, and Lincoln
(eds.)(1998-a) Strategies of Qualitative Enquiry. pp 110-136.
Hammersley, Martyn and Atkinson, Paul (1995) Ethnography: Principles and
Practice.
Denzin and Lincoln
(eds.)(1998-a) Strategies of Qualitative Enquiry. pp 86-109.
Chaplin, Elizabath.
(1994): Sociology and Visual Representation.
Hesse-Biber and
Leavy (2004) Approaches to Qualitative Research: A Reader on Theory and
Practice (pp 535-545).
Ethics of
Care and Protection
The entire history of refugee care and protection has been also
one of “refugee manipulation”. Study after study has shown how in countries
such as Pakistan, Zaire, Cambodia, or erstwhile Yugoslavia the principle of
refugee protection has been manipulated in considerations of power. Refugees
have been used and abused in the interests of the states, and institutions have
been either willing accomplices or have been ignored in these policies and acts
of manipulation. Indeed, in recent years there is increasing interest in the
ethical dimension of the principles and practices of care and protection of the
uprooted and the displaced. There is now interest on how war, politics, and
human suffering have produced a mix of evil interests and humanitarian
strategies of protection (Stedman, 2003)
In this context of growing interest in the normative aspects,
legal professionals too are engaged with developing normative frameworks for the
protection of the refugees and the Internally Displaced Persons (Bagshaw, 2005).
At one stage it was thought that the path of human rights treaty making would
ensure compliance to an un-stated normative framework, possibly because human
rights by themselves would ensure the normative aspects. But the human rights
treat making path had its rise and has gone into decline now in view of its
limited effectiveness. Alternative law making techniques are being discussed
today.
Why should we care for and protect the victims of forced
displacement? The “we” here refers to those who have not had experienced
displacement themselves, yet harbour some form of an ethical commitment to the
victims of forced displacement. The ethical language therefore is expected to
establish some form of a connection between them and us – between those who
are not forcibly displaced and those who are. Ethics in other words cannot but
be dialogical. Its language in no way denies agency to the victims. CRG’s
studies in the partition ‘refugees’ in the east, for example, underline a
plethora of self-help initiatives undertaken by them. Ethical language therefore
is a language of universality that cuts across the given boundaries of the
victims’ groups and communities. While ethical language has to be universal,
the phenomenon of forced displacement is not. It is true that the incidence of
forced displacement has alarmingly been on the rise – thanks to the forces and
processes of globalization, their number is still considerably smaller than that
of the world’s settled population. Much of what the displaced persons do for
them will not be construed as ethical practice. Ethics is essentially about the
self, which cares for and holds itself responsible to the other. Caring for the
other however may be the means of caring for the self.
Since the issue on which ethical judgement is called for may
vary, the ethical connection is contingent on the specificity of the dialogic
situation. Diversity of situations, issues, and principles of contention in the
field of forced displacement is great. While this plurality is helpful in
building the much-needed ‘consensus’ around the principles in question,
rigour and coherence in arguments and reasoning may more often than not turn out
to be a liability for those who feel committed to the care and protection of the
displaced persons. That is the reason why scholars like Peter Penz (2004) argue
for more self-consciously uncertain and middle-level theories of ethics.
We think not unnaturally that the importance of ‘moral
reasoning’ in initiating organized responses is great. But we must keep
in mind that the organised and unorganised responses take on two rather distinct
ethical trajectories. Most of the empirical studies on unorganised, altruistic
responses in general seem to indicate their un-self-conscious character. That is
to say, those who care for and protect are not at the same time bothered about
the fact that they are actually involved in any ‘extraordinary’ act that
otherwise begs ‘moral reasoning’ (Monroe 1996:197-215). On the other hand,
responses get organized, ordered and orchestrated precisely through a
self-conscious act. It is by way of consciously entering into some form of
argumentation and reasoning with others that we evolve the principles of care
that will be “binding” on us. Pradip Bose’s review essay included in the
reference list reveals the way ethical deficit is produced in the process of
organised responses supposedly based on consensus on ethical principles.
Therefore, organized responses will face perpetual challenge in
form of an ethics of care and protection, and our understanding of the issues in
question will have to take into account this paradox. The challenge is perpetual
because humanitarianism as a body of practices and ideology is always
insufficient, and can meet the demands of reality only partially notwithstanding
the best endeavours. We have an essay here on the ethical practices of the World
Bank demonstrating the dilemma. There is no denying that what we do in the name
of care and protection is structured in the power relations prevailing in the
society. The question of care and protection in that sense can never be
disentangled from that of power. Michel Foucault showed how care for others has
always involved some form of self-empowerment and subjectivity (Foucault in
Rabinow ed. 1994:269-80). Samaddar for example, points out how our humanitarian
responses geared to the objective of protecting life are scripted in and thereby
reproduce, the imperial ‘power of death’ (Samaddar 2002). But the irony is
that we as ethical agents always refuse to conflate what we do in the
name of care and protection with what we ought to do and seldom confer
moral recognition on the former. The ethics of care and protection imposes on us
the painful obligation of denying the existence of power in the public sphere
while at the same time this ethics is being shaped and structured by it. The
attempted erasure of power from ethical considerations is a precondition of the
functioning of public ethics or to put in other words, ethics as an issue in
public sphere.
What we see is the presence of a wide variety of argumentation
and reasoning offered by us in justification of our advocacies for care and
protection of the displaced persons. First of all, there is the rights-based
argument. Care and protection according to this argument, will be construed
as our ‘duty’ insofar as the ‘well being’ of the displaced persons
becomes ‘a sufficient reason for holding us to be under this duty’ (Raz
1986: 166-8). The problem recognized by almost all the exponents of this
argument is that the right against displacement is not an end in itself and
cannot per se be regarded as the ‘sufficient reason’ for holding us under
this duty. Sufficiency of reason does not reflect itself in the same way as in
the two advocacies for the right against displacement and say, the right to
life. If one’s displacement becomes a necessary condition for another’s
enjoyment of the right to life – often understood as decent life, we can say
that the former is derogable and the latter is not. Thus, the right against
eviction that is routinely carried out in the metropolitan cities of South Asia
– whether in Dhaka, Kolkata or Islamabad or elsewhere, has to contend with the
argument for development and decent life defined everywhere as a ‘collective
goal of the community as a whole’ (Dworkin 1977:82-5). The successful
assertion of the right against displacement therefore entails some form of
abrogation of ‘the collective goal’. Many of those who were evicted from the
banks of the Beliaghata circular canal of north Kolkata had been living there
for more than one generation. Yet all of them were the illegal occupants of
land. In the absence of any legal title, they are unlikely to sustain their
claim to land in the first place, in any court of law. The UN Guiding Principles
(1998) too revise the right as only a limited right against arbitrary
displacement. While we cannot compromise with the ‘collective goal’ we can
certainly reduce the sufferings of the displaced through compensation, relief
and rehabilitation. Conversely and by the same logic, we should be prepared to
accept that the importance of the same right will vary if it ever becomes a
necessary condition for the enjoyment of one’s non-derogable rights including
that to life. What if it becomes impossible to carry out displacement without
simultaneously violating ‘the rights to life and freedom from cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment’? What if displacement involves violation of the
victims’ right to life and livelihood? Displacement in that case is bound to
be illegal for it leads to derogation of an otherwise non-derogable right
enshrined in the Constitution or law. By basing itself on the rights-based
argument, the ethics of care and protection remains beholden to the contingent
nature of the relationship between the right against displacement on one hand
and any of the non-derogable rights recognized by the court of law on the other.
An argument is often made to locate the rights of the displaced persons within
‘a radical democratic perspective’, bravely redefine the lines of
derogability and non-derogability and thereby extend the sphere of their rights
beyond the given limits of law by constantly waging and organizing political
struggles (Jayal 1998). This in fact turns the rights-based argument by its head
by basing rights on ethics and ethical reasoning and not vice versa.
Yet what this rigmarole ignores is the fact that ethical
reasoning inexorably emerges as judicial reasoning, and therefore to be
interpretable calls for a public power in as much judicial reasoning invokes a
distinct type of public power. Who decides which way the issue of derogable or
non-derogable nature of claim will be decided? Who will decide on issues of
practical application of agreed ethical principles? Or, who will frame the
structure of rights and duties whereby we can say that it is the duty of the
public power to offer such and such responses to certain claims against
displacement, or conversely it is the duty of the affected person/group to move
out for greater public good?
This takes us to the second argument. According to it, care and protection follow not the logic of public authority, but that of the established lines of community and kinship. Organizing responses beyond these lines prove particularly difficult especially in South Asia where community and kinship ties are found to be exceptionally strong. The community-based argument also has its limits: in course of organizing the responses, it not only reinforces the traditional lines of rivalry, but re-enacts the inequities and asymmetries otherwise internal to these bodies. Various reports emphasize how life in camps, allocation and utilization of aid and assistance for the displaced persons reinforce the kinship and community lineages and become the fertile ground for future tensions and ethnic strife. For a select study of the reproduction of inequalities through humanitarian efforts, post-Tsunami care is a significant case (Calcutta Research Group report, 2005)
.The limits of the community-based argument are coped with what we
call, the humanitarian argument. A somewhat old-fashioned version of the
argument looks upon care and protection as a form of ‘moral exercise’ that
we require for making our individual selves ‘pure and perfect’. Helping
others according to this version is a form of self-help, of achieving one’s
higher moral self. The objective of self-help does not however rule out the
necessity of organized responses. Learning to work with others is also a means
of helping oneself and the proponents of this argument recognize the importance
of institutions and organizations in accomplishing this objective. Today
however, the humanitarian ethics seldom turns on one’s own self. It instead
considers others as equal ethical agents in the sense that they are as much
entitled to ‘purity and perfection’ as we are. Viewed in this light, our
care and protection are a tribute to their ethical entitlements, of which they
are otherwise deprived. In this connection Itty Abraham’s argument (2005) is
worth listening to.
In the particular context of South Asia, we can find two major
ethical presuppositions: First, displacement in South Asia cannot be fathomed
without the understanding that home is not simply where we live or to which all
of us are entitled like we are to many other sites of our social existence, but
that it is often the fountainhead of several of our ethical entitlements. Any
involuntary displacement is a disjuncture between home and home, between
what we are and what we want to become, between our senses of lack and
fulfilment. Second, should a conflict arise between our and their moral
entitlement, humanitarian ethics settles for a minimal path. It means
practically, that those of us who have the commitment to and power of taking
care and protecting the displaced persons will do so minimally, that is, in a
way that does not sacrifice anything of comparable moral importance, that is to
say, our own right to life and livelihood Possibly both these understandings are
valid beyond South Asia too. (Singer in Markie ed. 1998:800).
The variations in the tenor and accent of our ‘moral
reasoning’ can hardly escape our attention. The way in which the rival
realities of community, nation, state, and immigration are entangled in a matrix
of power is evident in the article by Catherine de Wenden (2001) reproduced in
this collection. It is these interrelations and the inter-conflicts that make
ethical judgements so complicated and predicated on many a factor beside the
moral. Of course they need not be blown out of proportions either. The
rights-based argument may well be linked with the humanitarian argument or for
that matter, the community-based argument. In many ways, the arguments cut
across each other and are not mutually exclusive. While in our ‘moral
reasoning’, we face the challenge of extricating ethics from power, most of
the studies in this respect point out how the practices of care and protection
continue to be governed by power and security considerations. The camps and
shelters built for the displaced persons represent sites where war is continued
‘by other means’. The budgetary allocation is paltry and irregular. The
camp-dwellers are deprived of the non-derogable freedoms the Guiding Principles
propose to secure. Search for any durable solution in such condition ironically
makes us confront power and negotiate its terms.
This module will discuss the related issues at length, and will
engage with the central question, namely, as asylum, protection, rehabilitation,
and resettlement become highly charged political issues across the globe,
raising a host of difficult ethical and political questions, what
responsibilities will nations, states, communities, and individuals have towards
the displaced, immigrants arriving at the borders, and other victims of forced
migration including the trafficked human beings? How shall we place the issue of
responsibility along with rights, belonging, etc. in the map of our guides to
actions? And can we say these will have no constraint of power on them? What
bearings will these have on our idea of democracy? (Gibney, 2004) Once we focus
on this central question, we shall then understand, that our attempts at
disentangling ethics from power too are a power game. And, this is at least
partially possible when ethics is not seen as sentiment or even as moral
reasoning, but as considerations towards practical steps for caring for the
selves. If we judge in this way, we shall have the space in our actions for our
own desire to cling to what we hold to be true. In this tension-filled relation
between ethics and truth there is scope for negotiation, partial disentanglement
of ethics and power, and the scope of truth procedures to guide our actions. In
this context it is important to note the call by the philosopher Alan Badiou
(2001) for understanding ethics in relation to our understanding of evil and the
production of truth procedures. Morality would have little place in these
appreciations and considerations.
References
Abraham, Itty (2005): “Refugees and Humanitarianism”, Refugees
Watch, No. 24-26, October, www.mcrg.ac.in/rw%20files/RW24.doc
Badiou, Alan ((2001): Ethics. London: Verso
Bagshaw, Simon (2005): Developing a Normative Framework for the Protection of
Internally Displaced Persons. New York: Transnational Publishers.
Calcutta Research Group report (2005): http://www.mcrg.ac.in/tsunami.htm
Dworkin, Ronald (1977): Taking Rights Seriously. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press.
Foucault, Michel (1994): Ethics: Essential Works of Foucault 1954 – 1984,
Vol. 1, ed. Paul Rabinow. London: Penguin.
Gibney, Matthew J. (2004): The Ethics and Politics of Asylum. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Jayal, Niraja Gopal (1998): ‘Displaced persons and discourse of rights’ in Economic
and Political weekly, XXX (5), 31 January.
Monroe, Kristen Renwick (1996): The Heart of Altruism: Perceptions of a
Common Humanity. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Penz, Peter (2004): ‘Development, displacement and International Ethics’ in
Omprakash Mishra (ed.), Forced Migration in South Asia – Displacement,
Human Rights, and Conflict Resolution New Delhi: Manak Publications.
Raz, Joseph (1986): The Morality of Freedom. Oxford: Clarendon
Samaddar, Ranabir (2002): ‘Caring for the refugees: Issues of power, fear and
ethics’ in Three Essays on Law, Responsibility and Justice, SAFHR Paper
12. Kathmandu: South Asia Forum for Human Rights.
Samaddar, Ranabir (2003): “In life, In Death: Power and Rights” – Seminar,
Annual Number 2003; http://www.india-seminar.com/2004/533/533%20ranabir%20samaddar.htm
Singer, Peter (1998): ‘Famine, affluence, and morality’ in Stephen Cahn
& Peter Markie (eds.), Ethics: History, Theory and Contemporary Issues.
New York: OUP.
Media and Forced Migration
Stories that
Seldom Make the Front PageIn January 2007, about 900 people who lived in a makeshift camp
in Solabila, in Bongaigaon district in western Assam, were woken up at night and
asked to pack their meagre belongings and board several buses that would take
them to a resettlement camp a little further away in Barpeta district. The
residents of Solabila were then herded into the buses that refused to move.
Children, pregnant women and elderly people were cramped into privately owned
buses in the cold January night. By dawn, many wanted to relieve themselves,
some wanted to get out of the bus and stretch their limbs and the younger ones
just wanted to get back into the decrepit shacks they used to call home.
However, policemen armed with rifles and batons barred them all from getting off
the bus. The reason for the delay -- they were told -- was because local people
of the proposed resettlement camp were annoyed that they had not been consulted
about this move and in protest, decided to destroy a few key bridges that led to
the area.
The residents of Solabila were no strangers to displacement. All
of them were Bengali-speaking cultivators, whose ancestors had farmed the
inhospitable chars along the
Brahmaputra for decades. Over time, some had begun to acquire permanent leases,
or land titles to cultivate along the wet-rice growing areas of western Assam.
They had somehow escaped being victimised as foreigners during the Assam
agitation in the early 1980s. However, with the beginnings of a radical
political mobilisation of the Boro people of western Assam, the Bengali-speaking
Muslim peasant was soon to become the first adversary in a political process
marked by violence. In 1992, some radical Boro armed groups burned down hamlets
and villages occupied by Bengali-speaking Muslims, all along the banks of the
Brahmaputra in the current district of Bongaigaon. People from different
villages escaped northwards to the hills of Bhutan. That was the only direction
they could head for. To the south was the river Brahmaputra. To the east were
inhospitable lands cultivated by Assamese peasants, many of whom had just
participated in an anti-foreigner movement. To the west were what they perceived
to be more bands of armed Boro militia. So they headed north, to a place none of
them had ever been to before. A few days later, the Bhutanese police and local
people pushed them back into Assam. After living furtively along the
Bhutan-Assam border for months, many decided to settle in Solabila, near the
Bongaigaon-Barpeta border. They settled along the Gai river and lived along a
highway, breaking stones, making roads, sifting sand from the river-bed, working
as agricultural labourers and even moving away to other states in search of
work.
Between 1993 and 1999, many of the residents of the camps tried
to reclaim the land that they had lost during the conflict. They did not manage
to get very far as political manoeuvrings in the course of the Boro movement had
made it difficult for many non-Boro people to feel secure about claiming land in
place that was seriously contentious. Hence, they lived along fringes of forests
and along highways that took them to distant places in search of work.
Incidentally, they highways also claimed the lives of many children, who in the
absence of regular schools and madrassas, played along a road where traffic was
fairly dense. Their parents left the camp in search of work. Yet, the moment
there was even a faint rumour about the possibility of the administration
forcing a resettlement of the camp, its residents would make the arduous journey
back from places as far away as Lucknow, just so they could stake their claims
as displaced citizens of a state within the Indian union.
Their political power is extremely limited, given the fact that
they are unable to claim any property rights over land and other resources
within Bongaigaon district. The local politicians in the area are more often
than not against the presence of Bengali-speaking Muslims in an area where other
ethnic groups have contending claims to resources and rights. A combination of
factors ranging from their inability to claim recourse to instruments of law;
their ethnicity; and so on, people from Solabila are rendered invisible in the
public sphere. Even though Assam has a vibrant local media, stories of displaced
persons do not find their rightful place in discussion forums and policy-making
circles. The irony of the situation is brought home when one realises that the
only time they can lay claim to being part of a citizenship regime, is when they
are forced back to the camps for displaced people to make sure that their names
are not deleted from the voters’ list.
Visibility and the Public Sphere
The story narrated above has several issues that have a special
bearing on what one considers as the public sphere. Some of these issues deal
with citizenship, sovereignty, power/powerlessness, ethnicity and most of all,
visibility/invisibility in everyday political discourse. Where do these issues
figure most centrally? Who shapes their contours? How can one alter the
trajectories of these stories? These are questions that frequently come into
play when one thinks about the reason why forced migration (especially internal)
does not receive its due in local and national politics. This can be partially
answered in the manner in which we construct the national in South Asia,
especially along its least visible spaces such as Northeast India.
The nation-state as a modern construct draws upon older forms of
associations. In Asia, the modern nation-state was grafted over older structures
that developed indigenously (Winichakul 1996: 67-91). The present-day Indian
state, for example, was a complex political creation that involved the
transition from colonial empire to inclusion of older regional geo-social
formations (Chapman 2000: 77-86). Historically, the region forms a zone that can
be seen as the north-eastern frontier of South Asia, as well as the
north-western frontier of Southeast Asia. Willem van Schendel includes it in his
reconstruction of a physical space concealed from dominant discourses on
geographical realignment of area studies (in Asia) and political decision-making
following the period of decolonisation of large parts of South and Southeast
Asia (van Schendel 2002: 647-668). The region’s pre-colonial political and
social landscape was a reflection of the multi-dimensional migrations into its
hills and valleys. It comprised old kingdoms and chiefdoms as well as wide
swathes of land where authority of the kings and chiefs were negligible.
Commercial interests, coupled with a keen eye on geopolitical balance of power
led the British to “draw lines between hills and plains, to put barriers on
trade between Bhutan and Assam and to treat Myanmar as a strategic frontier-
British India’s buffer against French Indochina and China” (Baruah 2004:5).
During the course of the anti-colonial struggle in the twentieth century,
notions about the region being a frontier were not challenged. In the emerging
historiography of the region there was an attempt to restructure the
relationship between the region and the national hinterland with an overriding
emphasis on establishing a place in the national space of the emerging idea of
India.
The development of social and political structures in the
Northeastern region of India has been characterised by extreme levels of
violence for the last two decades. This violence has articulated itself in
myriad forms. It has appeared as an outright conflict of interests between
ethnic groups and the state; within ethnic groups and at times for or against
notions of development. Resources and identity remain the first, and often last
explanatory comment on the expressions of violence. On one hand, armed groups
professing allegiance to certain ethnic groups in the state have been involved
in militant political activities, directed mainly towards the preservation of
their resources and identity. In some cases, this struggle has involved
alliances across ethnic boundaries, subverting officially sanctioned definitions
of the problems as one of migrants versus locals. On the other hand, the
response of the state apparatus has been to restrain, regulate and repress these
demands at various points of time. This has led to the institutionalisation of
authoritarian practices that, though localised, are rather jarring (Baruah
2005:3).
In the construction of a political society, in such instances,
need further interrogation given Habermas’ criteria for identifying what
constitutes a civil society. The idea of the ‘public sphere’ in Habermas’s
sense is a conceptual resource (which) designates a theatre in modern societies
in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk (Fraser:
1993. 110-111). The public sphere in its classical/liberal bourgeois guise was
partial and narrowly based in that sense, and was constituted from a field of
conflict, contested meanings and exclusion. Thus the meaning of ‘civil
society’ here is constituted through the ‘original’ separation and
opposition between the modern, public-civil-world and the modern, private or
conjugal and familial sphere: that is, in the new social world created through
contract, everything that lies beyond the domestic (private) sphere is public,
or ‘civil’, society (Pateman: 1989. 31-32). A conception of civil society,
in the liberal western construct, is inconsistent with realities in
less-developed capitalist societies. If (one) takes civil society in its
characteristically modern meaning – as a way of interfering to the terrain of
voluntary associations that exist between economy and state – there are two
reasons why politics in frontiers contradict this. For one, societies in the frontiers are typically shaped by a
legal order that is autocratic and militarised (Baruah ibid.) Secondly, such
societies are less individually oriented than dominant societies, as being part
of peripheries where the lure of the nation-state and citizenship is weak, they
rely more on people-hood constituted by genealogical and kinship ties (Murray
1997: 11). It is apparent therefore that societies in peripheral, militarised
regions have to be judged by different criteria from the ones that Habermas
comes up with. It is therefore instructive to remember that contentious and
conflict-ridden regions may produce a bewildering diversity of voices in the
public domain. Even a small town of twenty thousand people in Manipur has as
many seven daily papers in different dialects. These papers are part of a larger
repertoire of political disarticulation of citizenship regimes that forget the
margins and its inhabitants. Such regions and societies are rendered invisible
in larger (national) spheres.
Reflecting on the Public Sphere and
Growth of Media in South Asia
How does one read the role of the media in such regions? Is it
enough to say that the media works in different ways in different places? Recent
developments in the South Asian media landscape is worth delving into if one is
to understand the kind of transformation that society, state and media have
undergone in the region. In India, the last two decades has seen a massive
growth of regional and national media, in both print and electronic forms.
Newspaper circulations have increased all over India since the 1990s (Ninan
2007: 27). The number of satellite television channels in the national and
regional levels has increased in the last decade. In countries like Nepal,
community radio stations have revolutionised local politics. In Kathmandu alone,
there are 17 privately owned radio stations (as of December 2007). Pakistan has
recently allowed broadcasts from private radio stations. Moreover the growth of
newspapers in countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan are also phenomenal. All
these changes would lead one to assume that the average citizen has greater
access to information now, than in the past.
This is not true across the board. It is true that print and
television media have multiplied over the last few years. However, this has not
automatically lead to a plurality of voices in the public domain. With the
notable exception of Nepal, the media has followed a predictable path of
widening its reach, while reducing the width of concerns that actually find a
place in the public domain. Therefore, stories of forced displacement, refugees,
civil rights violations and so on, are placed along a same continuum of concerns
that compete with advertising space, pageants and hostile business takeovers.
Obviously, the scope for a plurality of voices diminishes in such a milieu,
where a particular political and economic class increasingly owns media houses.
In the past the state’s legislative, executive and judiciary
were seen as the purveyors of a country’s sovereignty. The media was supposed
to occupy either an autonomous, or subservient place within this constellation.
In theocratic monarchies (like Bhutan), the media was the sole transmitter of
government policy. Today, with the executive, legislative and judiciary losing
much of their authority to trans-national financial institutions and
corporations, the media has emerged as another site for establishing legitimacy.
This is somewhat of a mixed opportunity in every sense of the word. For those
who are able – and this definitely includes those who wish to secede from the
problems of poverty – can create another reality, where conflicts,
displacement and the poor are no longer visible. Those who cannot seem to be
doomed to a life outside rule of law and outside remembered norms of political
discourse. In order to engage with a public domain that has changed tremendously
in the past few decades, one has to unlearn the established notions of what
constitutes the public sphere.
Selected and
Suggested readingsAnderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined
Communities (Revised edition). London: Verso Books.
Baruah, Sanjib. 2005. Durable Disorder: Understanding the Politics of
Northeast India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Calhoun, Craig. 1993. ‘Introduction’ in Craig Calhoun (Ed). Habermas
and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Chapman, Graham P. 2000. The Geopolitics of South Asia: From early empires to
India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing.
Fraser, Nancy. 1993. ‘Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Critique of Actually
Existing Democracy’ in Craig Calhoun (Ed). Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
McLuhan, Marshall. 2003. Understanding
Media. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press.
Murray, Stuart. (Ed) 1997. Not On Any Map: Essays on Postcoloniality and
Cultural Nationalism, Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Ninan, Sevanthi. 2007. Headlines from the
Heartland: Reinventing the Hindi Public Sphere. New Delhi: Sage
Publications.
Pateman, Carol. 1989. The Disorder of
Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, California.
van Schendel, Willem. 2002. Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance:
jumping scale in Southeast Asia. Environment and Planning D: Society and
Space 20:647- 668.
Winichakul, Thongchai. 1996. Maps and the Formation of the Geo-Body of Siam,
in Stein TØnnesson and Hans Antov (Eds), Asian Forms of the Nation.
Surrey: Curzon Press. Pp. 67-91
Website
http://www.thehoot.org
http://www.sacredmediacow.com