Modules Notes for Tenth Annual Orientation Course on Forced Migration 2012

Flood, an earthquake, an armed conflict between two states, a civil war, persecution – there are many reasons why people may be forced to flee their homes and leave their relatives and belongings behind. They find themselves homeless, often fearful and traumatized, and in a situation of displacement in which life changes radically and the future is uncertain. According to the annual report of the UNHCR entitled "Global Trends" the number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42 million at the end of 2009, out of which 16 million people are refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries. More than eighty percent of the total 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 and again, a majority of these refugees are made up of women. Keeping these facts in mind this module tries to indicate that both displacement and asylum is undoubtedly a gendered experience. At least in the context of South Asia it results from and is related to the marginalization of women by the South Asian states. These states at best patronize women and at worse infantilize, disenfranchise and de-politicize them. It is in the person of a refugee that women’s marginality reaches its climactic height.

The nation building projects in South Asia have led to the creation of a homogenized 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 marginalizing 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 can also be regarded as potential refugees.

For understanding gendered nature of forced migration in South Asia we intend to divide this module into four sub-themes namely, a) violence, livelihood & gendered nature of Forced Migration, b) camps & the gendered experiences – a review of the legal discourse, c) refugees, IDPs and issue of Public Health and d) women refugees and IDPs- agency and participation.

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. 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.

Displaced women are threatened by deprivation of property, goods and services and deprivation of their right to return to their homes of origin as well as by violence and insecurity. Of particular concern is the fact that sexual violence against uprooted women and girls is employed as a method of persecution in systematic campaigns of terror and intimidation forcing members of a particular ethnic, cultural or religious group to flee their homes. Women and children continue to be vulnerable to violence and exploitation while in flight, in countries of asylum and resettlement and during and after repatriation. At the same time refugee, displaced and migrant women in most cases display strength, endurance and resourcefulness and can contribute positively to countries of resettlement or to their country of origin on their return. Women make an important but often unrecognized contribution as peace educators both in their families and in their societies. Against this backdrop the term ‘gender’ in the module will thus be used to refer to the construction of differences between men and women and ideas of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’.

Generally, refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) may have no other option than to seek protection and assistance in camps. Although camps are necessarily a choice of last resort, they often represent the only option for displaced persons in need of assistance, safety and security. In situations of conflict and natural disaster it seems initially that camps may be needed for only few months. Often the reality is that camps last for years and sometimes even for decades. Yet it is true that regardless of their life span, they can only offer temporary assistance and protection and do not represent a durable solution for displaced persons. Despite their temporary nature, therefore it becomes imperative that camps exist in order to ensure that the basic human right to life with dignity is upheld for the camp community. Once camps are established efficient and sensitive management is needed to ensure that they function effectively in what are often complex and challenging circumstances. Where humanitarian assistance and protection in a camp are not organized properly, coordinated, and monitored, the vulnerability and dependence of the camp population increases. Gaps in assistance, or duplication of humanitarian aid, can lead to partial and inequitable provision of services and inadequate protection.

History reveals that though refugees think camps as transitory safe spaces, where people seek protection till they return home, however, unfortunately refugee concerns for security in camps are rarely met. The experts working on the camps have regarded camps as ‘political islands’, which have the potential of generating conflict and straining local economic and other resources. The campmates are regarded as the ‘other’ even though in the case of refugees, who are part of the international refugee regime which might be recognized by the State. In the case of the internally displaced, the situation is further complicated as they are citizens with same rights and cannot be derecognized. Their status therefore depends on how the local population views their rights and ultimately the acceptance or closure of the camp depends to a large extent on these communities.

We still have insufficient detailed accounts of camp lives of women partition refugees. What we have is mostly stories and some autobiographical writings. After all we have to remember that 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. 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 patronized them verbally by portraying their “need” for protection it also infantilized them by giving decision making power to their guardians who were defined by the male pronoun “he”.

Initially after independence, India laid down executive policies for resettlement of people moving in after Partition 1947. In this Indian regime, spaces for women were created. The largest population from the about 9 million who crossed borders first sought refuge in camps. The Indian example of camps is placed alongside the European experience even though Malikki places the refugee camp as a “standardized, generalizable technology of power...in the management of mass displacement" in post-World War II Europe. The camps in India existed from 1947, when run by private organizations, and later in 1948 by the government and so institutionalized. Camps in the West e.g. in Punjab, existed for a short time while in the Eastern part of India they remained for a longer time. In the east, different waves kept arriving and the camps kept springing up. Most, however, were for aged, disabled and widowed mothers. The widows were sent to Titagarh and Kartickpur camps in 24 Parganas and Ranaghat of Nadia in West Bengal. The latter became the largest rehabilitation centre for ‘distressed’ women. Later these women were provided huts as a resettlement measure. Grants were given for marriage of girls, remarriage of widows, for cremations and milk for children and pregnant women and health problems such as T.B.. There was an attempt to provide comprehensive needs but these spaces, though materially better than most camps of today, did not always provide protection from violence. As per official record, during partition four million people were killed and others faced forced conversion and abduction.

Even today the refugee women do not represent themselves. Officials represent them. 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 the former Prime Minister of India, 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 Government of India’s (GOI) 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. In fact, when they get shelter in camps with other women as well as men, their private space get merged with the public space. Above all, 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.

Many displaced women who are unable to cross international border swell the ranks of the internally displaced. Even in IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps women are responsible for holding together fragmented families. For example, 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.

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. The depolitization of women becomes marked in refugee and IDP camps, which are the epicenter of marginalization of groups that are considered as alien or unwanted. The women in the camps face a double bind. They face a hostile world outside of the camps as they are marked as aliens and within the camps they are victimized by their own patriarchies. The physical structure of these camps emphasizes the total disregard of women’s concerns. The camps are often built in such a way that there is usually a complete lack of privacy of women. Quarters for each family are separated by flimsy sarees and in such quarters women are forced to live, eat, change, sleep, make love and procreate. Often the camps are fitted with toilets and women are not forced to go to fields for effication but even that is a source of problem. The toilets are always at the back of the camps with dim lighting and so single women going there at night becomes a prey for the unsavory elements that these camps are teeming with. Women therefore avoid these camps at night often leading to health complications such as urinary tract infection and in extreme cases kidney infection. When there are budget cuts in the camps the first casualty are girls schools which are considered as having a very low priority. Women heads of household face added problems in many camps. Sometimes male camp leaders ask them for sexual favors, at other times they are last to get rations and at other times they are abused by the powers that be as was seen in UNHCR run camps in Jaffa. However, even though women face many abuses in the camps but everything pales in comparison to their voicelessness. Even in IDP camps women are unable to exercise their citizenship rights. They completely lose their voice and right to represent themselves and becomes completely dependent to those who represent them such as lawyers or women NGO leaders. By losing their voice they lose their ability to access rights. Their lack of mobility outside of the camps makes them isolated and completely robs them of their right to make free choices.

Despite the excessive abuse and violence that women are exposed to, they are resilient and resourceful in camps. Sometimes they themselves manage adversities, while at other times the community rallies around them. Sometimes the local women’s organizations support women in camps in fighting gender-based violence. In Bangladesh, UNHCR renewed the camp layouts to improve their overview from different directions to diminish security risks, water is provided during the day and latrines on the outskirts have been moved (Personal information, UNHCR, 2002). In Sri Lankan camps in Tamil Nadu, women have established committees (Visit to camps in Chennai by author in 2004). These prove that camps can be islands of protection if different agencies and women’s groups assist women to take up the challenges.

By making women permanent refugee, living a savage life in camps, it is easy to homogenize them, ignore their identity, individuality and subjectivity. By reducing refugee women to the status of mere victims in our own narratives we accept the homogenization of women and their de-politicization. We legitimize a space where states can make certain groups of people political non-subjects. With these facts under consideration this module tends to discuss the causes of such de-politicization that often results in displacements keeping the refugees, IDPs and stateless women in mind and considers policy alternatives that might help in their rehabilitation and care in South Asia.

In this context one can refer CRG’s study entitled Voices of Internally Displaced in South Asia. It was a pilot survey, which hints at certain trends and features and suggests the need for deeper enquires into the fundamental issues of rights of the displaced, responsibilities of the states and the international community towards the victims of displacement, questions of representation, citizenship, democracy, and sovereignty.

Women Protection in Refuge/Displacement: National and International Legal Regimes

As social actors women are vulnerable but forced to shoulder the burdens of refuge. Women’s status in camps is linked to the standards that nations apply. The Refugee Convention, like other Conventions and laws of the time, was Euro-centric in nature and the word gender/ women, was not included. The Convention does not operate in South Asia nor are there any refugee specific national laws, so dependence has to be on non-refugee International National Standards. These include certain initiatives such as recognition by the Executive Committee of the UNHCR in 1985 which, for the first time, recognized the importance of inclusion of women and three years later the first Consultation on Refugee Women was called. Consequently in 1991 the UNHCR issued Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women to address their needs and enhance their decision making power. This was followed by the 2003 Guidelines on sexual and gender-based violence to ensure protection a primary mandate of the UNHCR.

The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement under principle 11 stipulate the prevention of “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 form of indecent assault” (United Nations, 1998). In 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was the major initiative to recognize discrimination against women and the specific problems faced by them and added protection strategies. The role of the international community increased as violence against women became increasingly visible due to writings on gender issues and media portrayals. One of the most important documents produced is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the atrocities in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. It defined violence as a war crime (United Nations, A/CONF.83). In 2000 the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 came into being (S/RES/1325 and UN. A/60/L.1.2005). This comprehensive document calls for protection of women living in conflict zones and mandates their involvement in peace processes. In 2005, Governments meeting at the United Nations (World Summit) reiterated the importance of the document (A/60/L.1.2005).

There are no specific national laws for treating refugee/IDP women but legal and implementation processes provide an insight into women’s status as refugees or IDPs in South Asia. It is pertinent to point out in this context that, 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. Yet all these orders are ad hoc 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.

1.   Paula Banerjee and Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, Women in Indian Borderlands, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2011.
2.   Paula Banerjee, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury and Samir Das, Internal Displacement in South Asia, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2005.
3.   B.S. Chimni, International Refugee Law – A Reader, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
4.   Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: Women in India’s Partition, New Delhi, 1998.
5.   Urvashi Bhutalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India , Delhi : 1998.
6.   Ritu Menon (ed.), No Women’s Land: Women from Pakistan, India and Bamgladesh write on the Partition of India, Women Unlimited, New Delhi , 2004.
7.   Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Refugees and the State, Sage Publications, New Delhi, 2003.
8.   Ranabir Samaddar, The Marginal Nation, Sage Publications, New Delhi , 1999.
9.   Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, eds., The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, Vol.1, Stree, Kolkata, 2003.
10. -------------------, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender and Partition in Eastern India, Vol.11, Stree, Kolkata, 2009.

A. Selected Articles from REFUGEE WATCH, a South Asian Journal Published by CRG

1.   Gladston Xavier and Florina Benoit, “Security among the Refugees and Quality of Life - Case of the Sri Lanka Tamil Refugees Living in Camps in Tamil Nadu”, Refugee Watch, No.37, June 2011, pp.1-15.
2.   Anita Ghimire, “Rethinking Women in Forced Migration”, Refugee Watch, No.37, June 2011, pp.30-43.
3.   Paula Banerjee, “Agonies and Ironies of War,” Refugee Watch, No. 2, April, 1998.
4.   Paula Banerjee, “Women and Forced Migration”, Refugee Watch, No. 10, 2000
5.   Mekno Kaapanda and Sherene Fenn, “Dislocated Subjects: The Story of Refugee Women”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
6.   Kate de Rivero, “War and Its Impact on Women in Sri Lanka”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
7.   Arpita Basu Roy, “Afghan Women In Iran”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
8.   Jagat Achariya,, “Refugee Women of Bhutan”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
9.   “Rohingya Women – Stateless and Oppressed in Burma”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
10. Manju Chattopadhyay, “Widows of Brindaban: Memories of Partition”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
11. Syed Sikander Mehdi, “Chronicles of Suffering – Refugee Women of South Asia”, Refugee Watch, 10 & 11, 2000.
12. Paula banerjee, “Dislocating the Women and Making the Nation”, Refugee Watch 14, 2001.
13. Soma Ghosal, “An Endless Journey: The Plight of Afghan Refugee Women”, Refugee Watch, 5& 6, 1999.
14. Letters from a Palestinian Refugee Camp, Refugee Women”, Refugee Watch 19, 2003.
15. Kaushikee, “Common and Specific Features of Displaced Women”, Refugee Watch 21, 2004.
16. Oishik Sircar, “Women's Rights, Asylum Jurisprudence and the Crises of International Human Rights Interventions”, Refugee Watch 28, 2006.
17. Asha Hans, “Gender, Camps and International Norms”, Refugee Watch 32, 2008.
18. Elizabeth Snyder, “Build Back Better – Hurricane Katrina in Socio-Gender Context”, Refugee Watch, 31, 2008.
19. Report of Rapid Assessment Survey on Displaced Bhutanese Refugees from the Camps, Discussion paper, Refugee Watch 31, 2008.

To Acess and Download the above Articles (Except First Two) Please Visit our Website www.mcrg.ac.in

1. Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury and Ishita Dey “Citizens, Non- citizens and the Camp Lives”, Policies and Practices 21, 2009.
2. Nilanjan Dutta, Dulali Nag and Biswajit Roy, “Unequal Communication: Health and Disasters as issues of Public Sphere”, Policies and Practices 5, 2005.

To Acess and Download the above Articles Please Visit our Website www.mcrg.ac.in

1.  Anasua Basu Ray Chaudhury, “Violence, Victim hood and Minority Women: The Gujarat Violence of 2002”, Lipi Ghosh (ed.), Political Governance and Minority Rights: The South and Southeast Asian Scenario, Routledge, New Delhi, 2009, PP.44-64.
2.  ______________, “Women after Partition: Remembering the Lost World in a Life without Future” in Navnita Chadha Behera (ed.), Gender, Conflict and Migration, Sage, New Delhi, 2006, pp. 155-174.
3.  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.
4.  Denise Militzer, Disaster and Gender: The Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Sri Lankan Women, April 2008,
https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/10364/1/Disaster%20and%20Gender.pdf
5.  UNHCR Policy on Refugee Women, http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_92.htm
6.  Select UNICEF Policy Recommendation on the Gender Dimensions of Internal Displacement,
http://www.safhr.org/refugee_watch10&11_92.htm
7.  CEDAW: http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
8.  http://www.unifemantitrafficking.org/main.html

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Module D

Statelessness in South Asia

(Concept Note, and Suggested Readings)

Concept Note

Stateless people are those who are obliged to live without the protection of a state. In fact they are the unfortunate few who are forced to be without a nationality, or at least without the protection that nationality should offer. Nationality is the legal bond between a state and an individual. It is a bond of membership that is acquired or lost according to rules set by the state. Once held, nationality, or membership of a state, brings with it both rights and responsibilities for the state and for the individual. As the world has been parcelled out into states, not to be a member of any one of them is a matter of serious concern. While membership of a state is the norm, statelessness continues to be widespread and has not escaped the interest of the international community. Within the realm of public international law, rules have evolved in response to the problem of statelessness.

According to the International Law Commission, the definition of stateless persons contained in Article 1 (1) of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, now forms part of customary international law. The Article defines ‘stateless persons’ as those who are “not considered as a national by any state under the operation of its law”. They therefore have no nationality or citizenship and are unprotected by national legislation and left in the arc of vulnerability. The 1954 Convention relating to the status of Stateless Persons and 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness exclusively deal with the issue of statelessness. These two legal instruments explain statelessness mainly in two ways de jure and de facto. A stateless person as defined by the 1954 convention is generally equated with the term de jure statelessness. Besides, the Convention also refers to the category of de facto stateless persons— those who remain outside the country of their nationality and hence are unable or, for valid reasons, are unwilling to avail of the protection of that country. ‘Protection’ in this context refers to the right to diplomatic protection exercisable by a state of nationality in order to remedy an internationally wrongful act against one of its nationals, as well as diplomatic and consular protection and assistance, generally including the national’s return to the state of nationality. Again, Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasises: “Everyone has a nationality. No One shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality or the right to change his nationality”. It implies, first of all, that one cannot have the option of remaining stateless and, secondly, deprivation of nationality or denial of the right to nationality is possible provided it is not ‘arbitrary’. International Law empowers the state to determine by the operation of law who are its citizens. The operation of law must be in accordance with the principles established by International Law. The stateless are those who do not have any nationality and not having nationality may be the outcome of the way a state determines its nationality. One acquires one’s nationality insofar as a ‘genuine and effective link’ is established through any combination of birth, descent and residency within the state.

In this context, it is to be kept in mind that nationality and citizenship are two words most commonly used to describe the same phenomenon – the legal bond of membership between an individual and a state. Nationality can only be conferred or confirmed by states and states are responsible for protecting the fundamental rights of everybody on their territory, including those of stateless persons. Clearly, for all activities relating to statelessness, the states are indispensable actors.

Statelessness most commonly affects refugees, although not all refugees are stateless, and not all stateless men, women and children can be qualified as refugees. Refugee status entails the extra requirements that the refugee be outside his or her country of nationality (or country of habitual domicile if stateless), and is deserving of asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution for categorised reasons which make him/her unwilling or unable to avail of the protection of that country. According to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or the extended definitions in relevant regional instruments and under UNHCR’s international protection mandate, refugees may also, and frequently do, fall within Article 1(1) of 1954 convention. If a stateless person is simultaneously a refugee, he or she should be protected according to the higher standard which in most circumstances will be international refugee law, not least due to the protection from refoulement in Article 33 of the 1951 Convention.

Statelessness can have serious consequences for the individuals concerned as well as for internal— and international— affairs of states. This is in part due to the role that nationality, as membership, plays in the formation of people’s identities and the connection that they feel to the place where they live and the people around them. To be rejected by every state is to be enveloped by a debilitating “sense of worthlessness”. The possible consequences of statelessness are profound and touch on all aspects of life. It may not be possible for them to work legally, to purchase property or to open a bank account. Stateless people may be easy prey to exploitation as cheap labour. They are often not permitted to attend school or university; they may be prohibited from getting married with a persons from other communities and may not be able to register births and deaths. Stateless people can neither vote nor access the national justice system.

What causes Statelessness?

Experts argue that there is one common root cause for statelessness, i.e. ‘discrimination’. The UNHCR, on its part, has made some valuable observations about how to analyse and deal with the causes of statelessness:

· Understanding that discrimination against a certain group often underlies a statelessness situation facilitates the identification of categories of people that are often exposed to a heightened risk of statelessness. Frequent grounds for discrimination are gender, ethnicity, religion or language.

· To effectively tackle the causes of statelessness (i.e. to develop prevention or reduction strategies), not only must the “sovereign, political, legal, technical or administrative directives or oversights” be developed and improved, but also all underlying discriminations must be weeded out from such preventive procedures. Similarly, addressing protection issues also requires overcoming discriminatory attitudes towards the group as a precondition for a truly successful and durable solution.

· The discrimination that has culminated in statelessness may also fuel (further) persecution, displacement, insecurity and conflict, as will be discussed in the section on the consequences of statelessness. Statelessness can thus be a useful indicator of a broader issue that needs our attention. (UNHCR Expert Meeting on The Concept of Stateless Persons under International Law, 2010, http://www.unhcr.org/4cb2fe326.html)

Causes and Context of Statelessness in South Asia

Normally statelessness emerges from succession of states or territorial reorganisations. But it also emerges from persecution of minorities and a state’s majoritarian bias, which lead states at times to expel citizens or inhabitants. This condition, reinforced by the protracted refusal of the involved states to take them back, creates a circumstance which may eventually lead to the loss of their nationality and citizenship. Also, states in South Asia, being what is sometimes referred to as ‘kin states’, represent social and ethnic continuities across the borders and the cases selected below illustrate this, although there are overlapping sources of statelessness in contemporary South Asia. Experts have identified three salient facts while analysing the causes of statelessness in South Asia.

· Very few contiguous South Asian states have entirely normalised relations with each other, usually on account of disputes concerning borders and cross-border movements, or histories of unwelcome intervention in each others’ affairs. The inherent and massive heterogeneity of South Asian states has frequently given rise to militant resistance— often with a secessionist agenda— to the exercise of central power and the project of national consolidation. These resistances have usually obtained support and legitimacy from the governments or societies of neighbouring states. As threats to the project of national consolidation have accumulated over the past decades— because of interstate conflict, border and territorial disputes, insurgencies, illegal migration, increasing scramble for resources and unfavourable demographic drift— the resistance has intensified, and so has the tension of regional relations. It would not be incorrect to say that a shadow of suspicion hovers over South Asia— a suspicion that has driven the states to progressively tighten their citizenship criteria, thus creating growing pockets of statelessness at their cultural and geographical margins. Examination of the changes that have been introduced to citizenship laws of South Asian states provides an optic on how this tightening of conditions has proceeded. This has happened largely by way of restricting the acquisition of citizenship by right in favour of granting citizenship at the government’s discretion.

· South Asian statelessness was engendered by political turmoil. Such a genesis may be considered the second salient feature of statelessness in the subcontinent. In almost every case, such turmoil has marked and marred the ways in which postcolonial states in South Asia have attempted to mould themselves into culturally unique nation-states by favouring dominant national claims. In the process, of course and predictably, they have had to cast out minority claims/ groups. Conversely, political turmoil and hasty territorial reorganisation have oftentimes left disgruntled minority groups stranded in what they perceive to be hostile national spaces and they have attempted to secede from the dominant majority to create their own uniform homeland. Two of the most tumultuous dissections of South Asia occurred for precisely these reasons— the Partition of India in 1947 and the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. It follows, then, that these nation-building experiments created the ideal conditions for inducing statelessness.

· The third aspect of statelessness in South Asia is the fact that it is a product of economic migration between states. The subcontinent in the pre-colonial and colonial times could not have had and did not have clear-cut, regulated borders. Fuzzy frontiers had engendered and maintained traditions of seasonal migration and permanent minority settlements; for example: Nepali migrants from as early as the seventeenth century in Bhutan or Tamil labourers from the nineteenth century in Sri Lanka. The formation of postcolonial nation-state could not completely obstruct and contain these flows and movements. Bangladeshi Muslims, for instance, continue to flow into India. Since the advent of independent nation-states, however, leaders representing the majority have argued for the disenfranchisement of such groups, which appear to have closer ties to the national identity of a neighbouring state than to the identity of the states of their residence. Political centres have demanded migrants’ ‘repatriation,’ which has been refused by the neighbour state on account of resource constraints and political concerns of its own, leaving the group stateless. (Raghu Amay Karnad, Rajeev Dhavan and Bhairav Acharya, Protecting the Forgotten and Excluded: Statelessness in South Asia, New Delhi: Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre, 2006)

Against this backdrop, this module seeks to find answers to the following questions in the light of our experience in South Asia. (Participants are requested to make their presentations touching on any of these questions, or a combination of them, with reference to various cases of statelessness in the region.)

· How certain groups and communities are rendered stateless? While successor states in South Asia remain far from being ethnically homogeneous, are minorities living within them more vulnerable to statelessness than others?

· Does protracted refugee-hood eventually result in statelessness? Is the distinction between refugee-hood and statelessness increasingly wearing thin?

· Is it possible to put in place an early warning system for addressing and, if possible, pre-empting the problem of statelessness?

· Is the existing legal regime adequate to deal with the problem of statelessness? What has been the experience with case laws in different countries of South Asia?

· Can judicial activism, as evident in some of the countries, particularly in recent years, serve as an effective guarantee?

· Does the varied nature of our experience in South Asia call for changes in the existing municipal and international laws? Does this underline the necessity of framing a regional law relating to the stateless in South Asia?

· Do policymakers need to think beyond legal terms?

· Does all this call for activating and strengthening the civil society institutions? But how does one take the first step towards combating xenophobia directed at stateless groups?

Some Relevant Cases of Statelessness in South Asia

· Chakmas living in Arunachal Pradesh, India

· The inhabitants of the Chhitmahals (Indo-Bangladeshi enclaves)

· Lhotshampas or the heterogeneous ethnic Nepalese population of Bhutan

· The displaced Hindus from Pakistan living in India

· Tamils in Sri Lanka and Sri Lankan Tamils in India

· Urdu-speaking Bangladeshis (sometimes referred to as the ‘Biharis’, an appellation the subjects themselves do not always approve of)

· Rohingyas in Myanmar

· Chinese population in Kolkata

Suggested Readings (CRG publications in bold)

1. Deepak K. Singh, Stateless in South Asia: The Chakmas between Bangladesh and India [Sage Studies on India’s North East], Sage Publications: New Delhi, 2011.

2. Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, “Uprooted Twice: Refugees from the Chittagong Hill Tracts”, in Ranabir Samaddar (ed.), Refugee & The State, Sage: New Delhi, 2003.

3. Subir Bhaumik, Meghna Guhathakurta, and Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, Living on the Edge– Essays on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Manohar publications: New Delhi, 1997.

Web-based References

A. Selected Articles from REFUGEE WATCH, a South Asian Journal Published by CRG

1. Muhammad Tajuddin, “Biharis in Bangladesh: Cessation, Liberation and the Problem of Statelessness”, Refugee Watch Issue No. 4, December 1998.

2. “Protection of Refugees, Migrants, Internally Displaced and Stateless Persons” (Recommendations of Kathmandu consultation on a regional protocol for protection of refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons 21-22 November 1996), Refugee Watch, Issue No. 1, January 1998

3. Paula Banerjee, “Women, Trafficking and Statelessness in South Asia”, Refugee Watch, Issue No. 27, June 2006.

4. Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal, “Homeless and Divided in Jammu & Kashmir”, Refugee Watch, Issue No. 23, December , 2004.

5. Aung Phyro and Tapan Bose, “Refugee Receiving Countries in South Asia: An Overview”, Refugee Watch, Issue No. 2, April 1998.

6. “A journey without end: Sri Lankan Tamil Refugees in India”, Issue No. 2, April 1998.

To access and download the above articles please visit our website: www.mcrg.ac.in

B. Selected references from Policies and Practices (CRG publications)

1. Pascale McLean, Incomplete Citizenship, Statelessness and Human Trafficking: A Preliminary Analysis of the Current Situation in West Bengal, India (Policies and Practices 38), 2011.

To access and download the above articles please visit our website: www.mcrg.ac.in

C. From the Research Report by CRG

1. Executive summary of the project entitled State of Being Stateless: A Case Study of Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh

Additional References

1. Raghu Amay Karnad, Rajeev Dhavan and Bhairav Acharya, Protecting the Forgotten and Excluded: Statelessness in South Asia, New Delhi: Public Interest Legal Support and Research Centre, 2006

2. UNHCR Expert Meeting on The Concept of Stateless Persons under International Law, 2010, http://www.unhcr.org/4cb2fe326.html)

3. Christer Lænkholm, “Resettlement for Bhutanese refugees”, Forced Migration Review, 28, December 2007, http://www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR29/59-60.pdf

4. Michael Hutt, “The Bhutanese Refugees: Between Verification, Repatriation and Royal Realpolitik”, Peace and Democracy in South Asia, Vol. 1, No. 1, January 2005, http://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/pdsa/pdf/pdsa_01_01_05.pdf

5. Willem van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves”, The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 61, No. 1, February 2002, pp. 115-147.

6. League of Nations, Special Protocol Concerning Statelessness, 12 April 1930, C.27.M.16.1931.V, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3ae6b36f1f.html

7. Carol A. Batchelor, “Statelessness and the Problem of Resolving Nationality Status”, International Journal of Refugee Law, International Journal of Refugee Law, Vol. 10, No. 1/2, 1998, pp. 156-182

8. UN High Commissioner for Refugees, The 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons: Implementation within the European Union Member States and Recommendations for Harmonisation, October 2003, http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/415c3cfb4.html

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Module E

Media and Forced Migration

(Concept Note, and Suggested Readings)

Concept Note

Migration – forced or otherwise – is not an issue that exercises the mainstream media, print or electronic, in any sustained manner. This is particularly true of the metropolitan, or more generally urban, media. The situation is somewhat different in areas where migration creates endemic and secular problems of governance and everyday life, as with northeast India by and large, where the media has to engage in a more sustained fashion.

This, it would appear to many, is a logical consequence of a combination of factors, which we shall speak about in a bit. But from another perspective, this unwillingness to engage can also be seen to be counter-intuitive. Any large city in South Asia is of necessity beset by the problem of migration, often forced, as the recipient of large numbers of migrants. It is improbable that a citizen who ventures out of his home – or gated community – for even a couple of hours will not have chanced upon people who have been forced to leave their homes to camp in the city in search of livelihood or bare sustenance. Of course, many will have seen such people either without registering them at all or without knowing that they are migrants in the first place.

Those who actually see such people – dwelling on pavements, hawking, begging – usually do so on a negative register. To them these people are just inconveniences – they make the city dirty, ugly, unsafe, difficult to navigate and constitute an egregious burden on the city’s infrastructure, stretching it to its limits and beyond. Not many ever pause to wonder where these people come from and why they do so in an attempt to eke out a bare existence on the mean streets of the city.

Clearly, however, a large number of migrants to big cities make the move because of push more than pull factors. That is to say, they are driven to the city by endemic poverty, disasters and environmental/ecological unsustainability, or conflict situations. Even though they provide a pool of cheap labour, which benefits the host city, the hostility to migrants is unremitting among the citizenry and among the administration. Even the judiciary is often unsympathetic. A few years ago a judge of the Supreme Court advised migrants to Delhi to go back to their homes unless they arrived with a place to stay and the means of making a living.

This is just a thin slice of the problem of forced migration. But it is a good point of departure principally because it serves to highlight a salient point: that the metropolitan mainstream media does not even report the problem of migrants who arrive at their very doorsteps and live their deracinated lives within spitting distance. It is seldom considered necessary that the plight of these migrants should be brought to the notice of the citizenry and the factors behind and dynamics of such migration explained so that host populations can arrive at a more informed understanding of the problem and the issues involved, if they choose to. Given this set of circumstances, it is hardly surprising that newspapers, television channels, the almost extinct radio and internet sites with a predominantly big city market are not moved to report on forced migration and population flows within national borders and even less across national borders, unless, in the latter case, national security is construed to be compromised. A case in point is, for instance, the targeting of Bengali-speaking migrants to Delhi as being Bangladeshi by the state, which receives widespread support from both the media and the citizenry, without, all too often, any attempt to verify actual provenance. (I ignore for the moment the legitimacy of targeting them even if they were, in fact, Bangladeshi.)

In this kind of a context, it is incumbent, first, on any media organization and the personnel it deploys to understand what forced migration is about: its multifarious manifestations, the factors that cause it, the disabilities it imposes on victims, its macrosocial, macropolitical and macroeconomic consequences and the ways in which forced migrants can be delivered their ‘just’ entitlements from both a humanitarian and a rights perspective. Consequent to that, it is further incumbent on media organizations to use this understanding and an array of tools, either existent or devised, to present to readers and citizens the various facets and dimensions of the problem to generate public debate about forced migration and perhaps by so doing create citizens’ movements aiming at resolving the problem of forced migration within equitable frames. This may sound a little naïve, given the character and dynamics of the media in today’s world, but the point of this course is to explore ways in which the foregoing can be made more practicable, pragmatic and ‘do-able’.

Before taking up at greater length the issue of the role and responsibility of the media in relation to forced migration, a brief disquisition on forced migration itself would be in order. Let us begin by saying that forced migration can be categorized into two classes – population flows within the borders of a nation-state and those across borders. The former creates a class of people generally called internally displaced persons (IDPs) and the latter refugees or stateless persons. Furthermore, as we have already mentioned forced migration can be caused by a variety of reasons.

In the former case, these would include economic necessity, under which we could include much of rural-urban migration and development-induced displacement, that is displacement caused by loss of land, habitation or livelihoods or all of these as a result of the initiation of ‘development’ projects relating to industry and infrastructure, as in the case, say, of the Narmada project; environmental degradation or change, which deprives people of access to natural resources that they had previously been dependent on, as is the case with most mining projects, especially those located in forested areas; natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones or tsunamis, examples of these in the Indian context being say the earthquake in Latur, the super-cyclone in Odisha and the tsunami that hit the southeast coast of India; and conflict, which has cause large-scale, endemic migrations in most of northeast India and episodically elsewhere as well, most egregiously by the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

Cross-border forced migrations are caused by all of the abovementioned factors, seriatim: migration from Bangladesh hinterlands to Indian cities or those displaced by the Kaptai dam in the Chittagong Hill Tracts to Arunachal Pradesh in India; migration from Nepal to India; migration from, again, Bangladesh to India, caused by the ravages of periodic floods; and migration from Sri Lanka to India in the wake of the decades-long ‘war’, now terminated, in Sri Lanka between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Lankan state. In addition, cross-border migration can be forcibly induced by state persecution of groups, mostly ethnic or political, as with much of population flows out of Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, Jammu and Kashmir or Afghanistan to neighbouring countries.

The issue that follows from the foregoing is what kind of disabilities are suffered by people who are forced to migrate for one reason or another. Clearly, they would be different for IDPs, refugees and stateless persons. In material terms, deracination and migration means most fundamentally that IDPs are denied access to resources and livelihood options, or can access them only through the largesse of the state or charitable actions as far as the former is concerned and on extremely disadvantageous terms as far as the latter is concerned. These lacks are, moreover, located in the context of other vulnerabilities – the uncertainties of camp life, for instance, in which, quite apart from the deficit of amenities, IDPs, especially women and children, are exposed to the predatory attentions of both state personnel and members of the host population. Violence and violation are ever-present conditions of life. The mental, affective and psychological havoc wreaked by such conditions of existence are all too obvious.

Refugees suffer all these disabilities, while additionally they do not have systemic recourse to constitutional, statutory and legal safeguards that at least in theory IDPs enjoy, other than those tenuously guaranteed by international laws and covenants, which experience tells us are all too often enforceable more in the breach than the practice, and whatever consular protection they get from their countries of origin. But, by definition, the stateless are at the bottom of the heap because they do not have any protection under any national laws or legal systems, because they are not nationals or citizens of any nation-state. They do in theory enjoy the protection of international covenants – but their effectiveness is even more limited than in the refugees’ case, especially because many countries, including India, have not ratified them.

The question is how the media can, specifically in the case of India, engage with this problem, and what are the obstacles to a productive engagement that will produce felicific outcomes for victims/survivors of forced migrations and population flows. Let us address the latter issue first. The media – print or electronic, mainstream metropolitan or local – by and large report on migration and large-scale population flows only when it ‘becomes news’. In other words, they feel impelled to engage when the scale involves a critical mass, when there is a political angle to the phenomenon that marks it out as ‘newsworthy’, or, say, when a natural disaster of immense proportion causes such migration. By and large, again, the media is reluctant to engage when the scale is small or when the migration is more quotidian and by that logic stretched over a long duration. The media is similarly reluctant to expend column inches, and time and effort, in what is called in the profession ‘follow-up stories’, even when they have covered the first wave of migration – that is to say, over time even a spectacular case of massive displacement ceases to be newsworthy with the passage of time. If one was to arraign a practising journalist on these counts, he or she would most likely respond with the argument that a journalists’ job is to report what is news not create it. But that response would be, in many ways, somewhat specious. We shall have occasion to interrogate it later on.

For the moment, it is necessary to note what kinds of factors inhibit sustained reporting on forced migration in different situations and locales. Let us begin with the metropolitan/big town situation. The news market in these locales are dominated by the corporate media both as far as English and Indian language media are concerned and in both print and electronic sectors. Editorial decisions are significantly influenced by management perceptions of what would constitute news for their targeted readership: the upper middle class and middle class. In the urban context, it is further perceived that among such a readership issues like forced migration have no sustained traction. Thus, newspapers report ‘spectacular’ episodes of migration, forced or otherwise, but have no incentive to pursue sustained ‘campaigns’ on this and similar issues. This is where the ‘specious argument’ mentioned above kicks in. Media organizations run campaigns all the time to create news from what may not usually be considered news. Clearly, such campaigns are run only when organizations think that they will resonate with their target readership/viewership – for example, urban crime, traffic conditions, etc. Media organizations have to be persuaded that forced migration is an issue that merits ‘campaigning’.

Among other issues that inhibit balanced reportage on forced migration is, importantly, the tendency of the media to assume an identity of interest with that of the state. This applies both to internal migration and to cross-border migrations, though in the latter case it is ubiquitous and egregious. Thus, for instance, the media is all too ready to assume, when at all it reports, to return to an example already cited, that the Bengali-speaking labouring poor in Delhi are predominantly Bangladeshi and, therefore, a security threat, instead of investigating whether, first, it is true that they are Bangladeshi and, second, whether they are economic migrants whose security should be guaranteed by the state or whether they are actual or potential terrorists. Similarly, the media can often share the state’s condition of denial about the magnitude of internal forced migration and the circumstances its victims/survivors live their lives in.

Media organizations in smaller – hinterland, mofussil – locales, which have a stake in reporting on forced migration extensively and in a sustained fashion because they are either in or proximate to zones of forced migration, face different kinds of pressures. Areas from where forced migration happens, for instance, are often areas affected by conflicts or insurgencies. In such areas, newspapers are often buffeted by pressures from various contending (ethnic) groups and state agencies making balanced reporting not just difficult but hazardous.

Another more general problem that many, if not most, media organizations face is the lack of a specific set of skills, which would, in the first place, enable them to report intelligibly on the phenomenon of forced migration. Principal among these would, obviously, be the fact that most journalists are not very familiar with the many dimensions of the problem. They are further hamstrung by a lack of access to data, documentation, literature – sources in general – that would make it possible for them to form a rounded idea of the problem. In such a context, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, for them to apply their conventional journalistic training to report on forced migration.

This media course on forced migration, therefore, aims to build media skills so that it can report in a more sustained and extensive manner on the problem, thus playing a necessary and perhaps crucial role in strengthening the rights of forced migrants and ensuring that they get the opportunities that both citizens and non-citizens are entitled to within a nation-state. Thus, first, this course will focus on acquainting students with the problem of forced migration in its myriad forms – this will include material on causes, forms and remedies in the shape of national and international legal frameworks. Specific case studies will be referred to – for instance, the northeast of India. The course will also provide participants an opportunity to interact with rights activists, survivors, policymakers and academics.

Suggested Readings

1. Dutta, Nilanjan, Forced Migration in North East India: A Media Reader, Frontpage, Kolkata, 2012
2. Sarmah, Bhupen (With Ratna Bharali), ‘Media Audit On Forced Displacement: Assam’, http://mcrg.ac.in/md203.htm#med
3. Joseph, Ammu ‘What Is Gender-just Reporting?’, http://mcrg.ac.in/md05.htm#what
4. Surendra Kumar, S. Y. and Fathima Azmiya Badurdeenm, Finding a Point of Return: Internally Displaced Persons in Sri Lanka, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, 2011, http://mcrg.ac.in/pp2011.htm
5. Amitesh Mukhopadhyay, Cyclone Aila and the Sundarbans: An Enquiry into the Disaster and Politics of Aid and Relief, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, 2011, http://mcrg.ac.in/pp2009.htm
6. Banerjee, Paula, Women and Forced Migration, Calcutta Research Group, Kolkata, 2006, http://mcrg.ac.in/pp2006.htm

Note

a) For a general understanding of forced migration and media analysis, see

i) Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, 1988

ii) Samaddar, Ranabir, Marginal Nation, Sage Publications, Delhi, 1999

iii) (ed), Refugees and the State, Sage Publications, Delhi, 2003

iv) Paula Banerjee, Sabyasachi Basu Ray Chaudhury, Samir Kumar Das (ed), Internal Displacement in South Asia, Sage, Delhi, 2005

Please feel free to contact the module coordinators, or any other faculty member, if you need help choosing your assignment.

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