Gender, Violence and Refugees

Jane Freedman

Université Paris 8

Some figures to start …

•70.8 million people forcibly displaced worldwide (UNHCR)

•13.6 million forced to flee in 2018

•Around 50% of these are women (reliable sex-disaggregated data is not available everywhere)

Gender and Violence in Displacement

•Refugee women and girls exposed to exceptionally high levels of violence

•Gender-based violence occurs at all stages of migration – countries of origin, transit and destination

Sources of violence • Social, economic, political and cultural inequalities and

systems of power in countries of origin, transit and destination structure experiences of refugees and their vulnerabilities to violence •Migration and asylum policies and legislation limit safe

migration routes • Inadequate reception systems create vulnerabilities and

violence (in camps but also outside) • Potential transformation in gender roles in migration –

can improve women’s possibilities for resilience but can also cause vulnerabilities

International Response • UNHCR. 2008. Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls. • UNHCR. 2008. UNHCR Guidance Note on Refugee Claims Relating to Sexual

Orientation and Gender Identity..

• UNHCR. 2007. UNHCR Accountability Framework for Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming.

• UNHCR. 2006. Standard Operating Procedures for Prevention of and Response to Gender-Based Violence.

• IASC. 2005.Guidelines for Gender-Based ViolenceInterventionsin Humanitarian Settings: Focusing on Prevention of and Response to Sexual Violence in Emergencies

• UNHCR. 2003.Sexual and Gender-Based Violence against Refugees, Returnees and Internally Displaced Persons: Guidelines for Prevention and Response.

• UNHCR. 2002. Guidelines on International Protection: Gender-Related Persecution within the context of Article 1 A (2) of the 1951 Convention and/or its 1967 Protocol relating to the status of Refugees..

• UNHCR. 2001.UNHCR’s Commitments to Refugee Women. • UNHCR. 1991.Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women

But • Despite a wide range of international policies, guidelines,

commitments to protection of refugees against SGBV

• Failure to tackle root causes of SGBV in countries of origin

• Lack of resources devoted to creating safe routes, safe spaces for refugees

• Prioritisation of « state security » and « border security » over « human security »

• Failure to listen to and take into account voice of refugees themselves regarding their protection needs

Focus on European Refugee « Crisis »

•Since 2015, more than 2 million refugees arriving in Europe (Eastern and Central Mediterranean routes)

•Thousands of deaths en route (at sea and in border/transit countries)

• Increasing securitisation of EU borders (Frontex etc) – increasing insecurities for refugees

Security and EU Borders

• Current refugee « crisis » highlights the ways in which the production/reproduction of Europe and European security occurs through enmeshing gendered and racialised discourses

• Challenge to EU’s « normative » role (including WPS agenda)

• Securitisation of EU borders leads to increasing insecurity for individual refugees

• Borders are increasingly produced as both external and internal concurrently (mobile and virtual apparatuses of control) – Borders as « dislocated » or « ubiquitous »

• « Artefacts of dominant discursive processes that have led to the fencing off of chunks of territory and people from one another » (Agnew, 2008)

« Crisis »: What Crisis

• « Crisis » labelling reinforcing securitisation of migration to EU • Justification of exceptional measures – increasing insecurity for

individual refugees • Securitisation through « spectacular » politics rather than everyday

bureacratic/technical management

• Move to humanitarian treatment of « crisis » (failure of the political?)

• Individuals overlooked in regional crisis management

• Reinforcement of gender stereotypes/dichotomies – vulnerability/threat. These are particularly pronounced for refugees from the Middle East

Gender, Violence and Insecurities for Refugees • Migration control regimes interact with social, economic, political

conditions in countries of origin, transition and destination to create gendered forms of insecurity

• Insecurities produced at the physical borders of EU exacerbated through EU policies (eg higher rate of mortality for women during sea crossings)

• Visible/Invisible insecurities:

• Visible – smugglers, other refugees/migrants

• Invisible – reception centres, reception conditions, everyday insecurity

Dangerous Journeys

• ‘I cannot explain to you all the terrible things that happened to us on our journey, when you are women alone it is horrible.’ (Syrian woman arriving in Greece)

• “We were walking for three days and nights across the mountains in the snow. Some of the women slipped and fell. I was really scared that I would fall and they would leave me to die in the mountains.” (Iranian woman describing crossing to Turkey)

Perpetrators

• Smugglers/traffickers

• Border guards, security forces • “He tried whatever he could to getme alone in a room with him. He used to

approach me and whisper to me that I am very beautiful and that he would help me out, that he would personally look into my case. ” (account of detention centre in Macedonia)

• Local populations

• Migrant « family »

Reception Conditions

• Lack of adequate reception facilities for refugees across Europe

• Often not separate facilities for women and men

• Greece – women « trapped » on Greek islands since EU-Turkey agreement of March 2016

• Insecure and insalubrious conditions in camps

• Lack of access to medical, psychological, legal or social support • “There is no real security for asylum-seeking women because whenever they

are attacked, either physically or sexually harassed, nobody knows what to do. There is no clear policy ” (Social worker, reception centre Italy)

Economic vulnerability

• Lack of economic resources, employment opportunities renders refugees (particularly women) vulnerable

• Ubiquity of transactional sex

Families split up

G., a Syrian woman, is living in Athens with her four children aged 15, 13, 9 and 6. Since arriving in Greece she has been moved from one camp to another before finally being housed in an apartment in Athens. She has been waiting over a year to hear about her application for family reunification with her husband in Germany. She expresses the despair and anxiety felt by so many women: “Please somebody help me to go soon. Please do something. We’ve been separated for three years now. My son is ill with epilepsy. My children miss their father and every woman wants to be with her husband”.

Gendered Representations of Refugees

• Gendered categorisations of women as « vulnerable », men as « threat »

• Men, especially young men seen as a « terrorist » threat

• Masculinities as threatening – hypersexualised men from « other cultures » - threat of sexual violence against European women (Cologne), Lisa case, Sweden « rape »

• Or failed masculinities – bad fathers, failed fighters

Women as « Vulnerable »/Victims

• Representations of women refugees as « vulnerable » or « victims »

• Vulnerability as category of analysis in EU refugee and asylum policies

• Women travelling alone, pregnant women etc automatically categorised as vulnerable

• Vulnerability can be used strategically by women

• But also seen as symbolic violence

• Vulnerability associated with religious/racialised representations

• Vulnerability is not an innate characteristic but a produce of particular conditions

• “They think that all Syrian women are stupid and oppressed. They don’t understand how it was for us before in Syria”.

(R, Syrian architect, 32 years old)

• “They gave me 1kg of chocolate biscuits, and I told them I don’t like chocolate. But then they said “I thought you said you were hungry. If you’re hungry you’ll eat them”. I felt so humiliated. They just treated me as if I was stupid, nothing”.

(H, Syrian, 40 years old)

Feminist Dilemmas?

•Need to move away from categorisations of women as « vulnerable » •But also acknowledging that in various circumstances women may be more insecure, need more protection •How to guarantee protection within EU asylum and refugee systems, whilst at the same time avoiding generalising and totalising categories?