Gender Migration and Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

I find the commonly used term ‘migration’ highly political in nature. In humanitarian crisis parlance it refers to “the movements of refugees and internally displaced people” (IDPs). It is and cannot be a value-neutral word in humanitarian contexts because in such contexts migration is not self-induced. Humanitarian workers like me have not seen prior desire or motivation to leave among the migrants or if at all there has been a motivation, it has been induced by poverty or armed conflict or war. Not surprisingly, the main causes of migration remain wars and armed conflicts, although in many other contexts natural disasters and large-development projects are also to blame. For example, migration forced by ‘development induced displacement’ in the states of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh in India. There are other types of forced migration as well, but these are not rigid categories since overlaps are common.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), there are some 50 million displaced people around the world, including both refugees and IDPs. Around 75-80 per cent of them are women and children; women and girls account for an estimated 50 per cent of any displaced population. The causes and effects of forced migration vary and range from political, socio-economic, environmental and cultural factors, and according to factors such as gender, class, age, race, or ethnicity.  The proportion of women refugees and IDPs vis-à-vis men from the same context is particularly affected by the cultural factors.

Globally, since the 1980s, there has been growing recognition that not adequate attention has been given to women in conflict situations, and their needs and capacities did not form the basis of planning and implementation of humanitarian assistance. But the growth in recognition remains slow and limited and results of this recognition have not led to more than a few women/girl child specific projects.

Throughout the 1990s, women’s rights advocates raised the issue of women’s bodies being used as battlegrounds by the warring factions in a conflict and sexual exploitation and abuse of women and girls in humanitarian response and in development induced disaster situations. The adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Charter of the Rights of the Child (CRC), and the United Nations (UN) Security Council Resolution 1325, and the appointment of a Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women by the UN have been milestones in the effort towards gender mainstreaming and recognition of women’s/girls’ rights.

In the humanitarian and development fields, I find that gender analysis of the needs and capacities of women and men and girls are being taken into account but regrettably in an ad-hoc manner. Culture, tradition, family unity, religion, etc continue to be used as excuses for not responding to transformative gender needs. This observation is not a reflection on only small community based or local level non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rather it is based on experiences with larger international NGOs, international institutions and organs of the national governments. At the national, regional and international governance level, gender based discrimination and denial of the rights of women asylum seekers continue to be a reality. It is not surprising that even in the programmes run by the international institutions and large international NGOs, immediate protection and assistance of women/girl IDPs with their participation and decision-making remains a need yet to be met. The process to engender the migration discourse and response is relatively new and still evolving. There is increased awareness of the differences in wider effects of migration caused by conflict, large infrastructure development, or natural disaster. International and humanitarian organizations are waking up to these considerations. But most of the recognition remains limited to the text. Action on gender analysis and implementation of gender guidelines and policies is still weak. Gender issues have been relatively readily accepted in protection of and assistance to refugees. The same cannot be said of assistance to the IDPs. Also, among IDPs in context of natural disasters and ‘development induced displacement’ acceptance of engendering approach is the least.

In the recent times, a major development has been the move towards seeing the rape and sexual abuse of women and girls during wars and armed conflict as a deliberate strategy and a crime to be punished, as reflected in the UN Security Council Resolution 1820 passed in 2008 and the statutes for the War Crimes Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Republic of Yugoslavia. However, the move does not always cover the sexual exploitation and abuse that take place as a consequence of political instability and conflict. For example, in Nepal, the conflict between the Maoists and the State, put Nepali women in the eastern hill areas at a higher risk of abuse. At one end women were being pressurized to join the militia, at the other end, if they fled to escape poverty and militia, trafficking for sex work was a major threat. Such women, even if rescued, were rarely reintegrated with their communities because of the associated stigma. The situation has not been any different for Bantu women in Somalia, a country located far from Nepal in East Africa. Starvation and sexual violence were the two most important factors for fleeing Somalia during war in 1990s. Bantu women, young and old, suffered multiple rapes while fleeing and in the IDP and refugee camps. Rape created an acute sense of disempowerment among both women and men. While women and girls were being raped, men and male children were forced to watch the sexual persecution of their female relatives. In the camps it was not uncommon to find sexual exploitation of male children. Most of these cases went unreported out the fear of stigma or out of a not-so-far from reality belief that no action will be taken either by the state machinery or the international actors.

It is not such an uncommon knowledge that displacement affects women and men differently because of the pre-determined gender division of roles and responsibilities. Though war is seen as a ‘male affair’, mostly women, children, the elderly, and the disabled are the main victims of wars. It is estimated that they constitute 30-90 per cent of casualties (for more information, please see: http://www.unicef.org/children-in-war/mainfindings-humimpact.pdf). In low informal low-key armed conflicts, women and children are 80 per cent of casualties by small arms and the rest are military causalities. Among such casualties the number of young men is far higher. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) men account for 96 per cent of the detainee population and 90 per cent of the missing, and women and children represent a majority of the displaced. For example, it is estimated that 70 per cent of the IDPs in Somalia are women and children. In Nepal, a large percentage of IDPs are women in the age group of 20-35 years of age.

It is generally said that a war does not discriminate and that it targets all in its range: women, men, children, livestock, and so on. The reality, however, is that women are not just affected as civilians or targeted because they happen to be in the range. Rather they are targeted because of their gender. Armed conflict usually aggravates social and gender inequalities and makes those who lack social power or have disadvantaged position in society particularly vulnerable. Weaker population groups and women usually have less access to education and training opportunities and have poor employability and entrepreneurial skills. Because of their low educational and training levels, they are not among the ‘favoured’ type of migrants. Due to their poor social status and their traditional productive and reproductive roles they are also not used to mobility. This is one of the reasons that lead to higher mortality and morbidity among women and impoverished minorities during armed conflict. Other factors include a lack of access to basic goods and services, and gender discrimination against women.

 

Since a larger portion of the migrants are women and because they are a group without marketable skills and education, and are denied rights to own and control assets and property, they experience distinct economic and social problems as migrants. It is much harder for them to earn a living and support themselves and their families financially while continuing to be the traditional ‘carers’ at home. This pushes them further towards hunger, malnutrition, and exploitation. Not surprisingly, among displaced populations, women and girls ‘voluntarily’ resort to sex work. A recent survey by UNHCR in Bassaso IDP camps in Somalia reveals that considerable number of young women offer sex in exchange of basic services to meet their own and their families’ basic needs or for protection. In Nepal, poverty and conflict have been two major factors prompting women to seek opportunities in neighbouring India as well as far away countries. A Nepali NGO, Saathi, has reported an ever increasing number of women leaving villages. Many of these women are falling prey to traffickers who lead them to the brothels in India or to the Arab countries. In some cases women know the consequences, yet they have gone ahead ‘voluntarily’ as they had no option. Between June 2003 to February 2006, the Kathmandu Post regularly reported the increase in rural to urban migration as a result of insurgency and increase in violence. They reported dramatic increase in sex work along the highways and in the dance and cabin restaurants close to Kathmandu.

Migration is also associated with the lack or disruption of basic services, including healthcare. The absence or disruption of the health services during high migration period when women and girls are at a greater risk of being sexually abused, exploited, contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and getting pregnant and infected by HIV/AIDS complicates women’s vulnerabilities. The spread of HIV/AIDS is further fuelled by sexual violence in the armed conflict contexts. HIV positive women and girls are targets of socio-economic violence.

The increased inequalities caused by globalization have increased women's vulnerability to violence, particularly in the context of economic migration and trafficking in persons. Several studies have noted that internally displaced women, illegal immigrants and street children are particularly vulnerable to sexual exploitation and HIV/AIDS, and often resort to ‘survival sex' to earn a living, with some women accepting food or items for their children in exchange for sex. According to a survey conducted by General Welfare Pratisthan around the market of Hetauda in Nepal in 2004, 98 per cent of the sex workers, most of whom are displaced women, are aware of the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS and spread of STDs, not more than 60 per cent have been making use of condoms. The reason is their poor bargaining capacity in relation to their customers and no power in relation to their abusers and exploiters.

However, not all effects of migration on women are bad. Some women gain greater mobility and are able to use opportunities to learn new skills and assume new roles. In many countries, some migrant women regard changes in their lives as a result of migration an empowering experience as has been reported from some of the Tamil IDP camps in Sri Lanka. I also saw this in Somalia. However, such gains for women do not go without contentions which create further tensions in gender relations. In the meetings held on the issue of increasing political participation of Somali women in the governance and democratic institutions, I often came across an argument from men that women should not be allowed equal representation and participation because they are already the breadwinners of majority of the Somali households. Research conducted in Nepal indicates that men find it difficult to cope with their reduced ability to fulfil their traditional responsibilities. In such instances men use the social power over women more aggressively leading to higher incidence of violence against women and girls. But women facing domestic/social violence find it harder to gain refuge in another country. The 1951 Refugee Convention, popularly known as the Geneva Convention, on which most countries’ asylum laws are based, considers refugees “persons outside their country of nationality who have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion” (for more information, please read: Mertus, J.A., ‘War’s Offensive on Women. The Humanitarian Challenge in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan’. Humanitarianism and War Project: Kumarian Press, 2000).

The Geneva Convention does not include violence against women or gender based violence as a form of persecution despite decades long struggle of women’s rights advocates to get the countries to recognize violence against women or gender based violence as a ground to seek refuge.

   

For a long time, monitoring of humanitarian response initiatives, urban slum projects, and migration have shown that migrant women and girls living in the refugee/IDP camps/makeshift slums suffer from rape, early pregnancies, kidnapping, and forced marriage. Girls and young women from the marginalized ethnic groups are one of the most vulnerable. For examples, in Somalia, rape and sexual abuse in IDP camps is common but marginalized ethnic Bantus and Ogadenis women and girls suffered from greater risk. Traditionally, shelter is organized in consultation with men Somali women and girls living in refugee camps in Kenya have also been the target of rape and sexual attack by other Somalis, Kenyan police and soldiers. In some instances, the design of camps adds to women’s and girls’ discomforts and insecurities. For instance, communal housing offers no privacy for women, while lone women and girls housed in marked tents may become easy targets of sexual abuse. A survey conducted by the UNHCR in Bassaso, Somalia indicates that women are often sexually or physically attacked going out for toilets or for the collection of fuel wood and water.

The women/girl child-specific projects of the national and international NGOs and international institutions are not at all enough to address gendered needs of women migrants. Though there is a move towards an inclusive approach but it has focused attention on wider issues but the attention is usually around the immediate needs of women. Conceptualization of transformation of gender roles and relations to eliminate inequalities in the long-term are greatly lacking. Unless gender role and relation transformation is aimed and greater attention is paid to the impact of policies and programmes on the displaced in general, and women in particular, the issues around women’s participation and decision-making in redressing their challenges around migration cannot be secured. In the absence of a vision for gender role and relation change, encouraging women to assume new roles may merely increase their work burden. It is not possible to get women to perform leadership roles or an equal role without challenging the gender stereotypes and biases because they will not have institutional or social support to fulfil these roles.  

While specificities may vary from country to country and culture to culture the broader trends indicate that women are more vulnerable to sexual and other types of gender-based violence, and they are frequently forced to cope with more and different roles in the search for their survival and that of their families. They are forced to take on greater role and responsibilities than before in an environment of gender-based discrimination and disempowerment. Such inequalities have to be confronted and addressed to allow women to acquire more skills, confidence, and gender and political consciousness. There is also a need to engage with men towards changing the gender roles and relations to ensure that their coping capacity in context of displacement and their abilities to evolve in the face of challenges to their traditional gender roles and identity is adequately supported.

Another significant thing to remember is that not all women and men are affected in the same manner and proportion by displacement. Factors such as class, age, race, ethnicity, and rural/urban differences, as well as wider political and socio-economic issues affect their experiences. In order to address the ‘involuntary’ migration, the issues affecting both marginalized men and women and particular challenges of women need specific attention. The start off point towards that is to improve representation of marginalized men and of women in the decision-making in such contexts.

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Raining Challenges

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Map: Geographic Guide

While there is focus on human security and good governance within the framework of the Central America and Mexico Security Strategy Action Plan, its implementation has been sketchy and the concept of human security applied in a rather limited manner. Human security is a powerful concept and responds remarkably well to the needs of development. So there is a need to continue to push for the adoption of the concept as the guiding principle for development and humanitarian work in the Central America. 

The conceptual framework of human security is wide and yields to various forms of wants and insecurities that people in the region face and therefore is specifically relevant to the region. Some of the common challenges of the region include:

• Organized drug trafficking,
• Trafficking and smuggling in human beings,
• Trans-border organized crime,
• Weaker governance institutions and political polarizations,
• Climate change and natural disasters,
• Poverty and poor health,
• Lack of public services such as education, health, legal-juridical, and security and so on.

These challenges are compounded by:

• The poor economic condition in the countries and extremely weak economic governance institutions, which are unable to support economic growth and stability (except for Costa Rica and Panama which seem to be moving in the right direction);
• Complicity between drug mafias and cartels and the political and governance actors;
• High level of corruption and money laundering;
• Weaker business and consequent extremely poor revenue base; and
• Fluid borders across the countries.

All these problems require wider partnerships among development and humanitarian actors as well as with the political actors and business conglomerates. This is essentially to ensure that the linkages among the above cited wants and insecurities could be better addressed. Such partnership formation would be the basis for addressing human security issues in the region. But it requires the countries and their governments to have the capacity to be stable institutions, policies, and skills to administer reform and development.

Most of the above mentioned human-made challenges have the issues of poor livelihoods, weak human capital and natural disasters at the core. The Central American countries are among the top 20 most vulnerable to natural with little capacity to cope. Hurricanes, floods, landslides, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are frequent and contribute to the growth of poverty, malnutrition and poor health. Again, these humongous issues could be addressed only through collaborations because these require improved understanding of how issues of drugs, crimes, poor justice, etc are inter-linked among multiple actors. These call for investment in environment, food, livelihoods, health, education and such other basic needs. This form of response to the challenges will address the issue of youth who have been particularly affected by the lack of economic opportunities, a phenomenon linked to gangs (or the Maras). This would also entail partnering with bi-laterals and donors who have a stake in environmental and livelihoods work, ministries and government institutions dealing with these issues and the wider public media.

Alongside, the issues of organized crime and terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and smuggling in migrants, and the basic lack of rule of law also need to be looked into. Strengthening capacities of law enforcement agencies, preventing money laundering and promoting capacity to counter terrorism, border security and regulation of migration would go along well with the efforts to address issues of poor livelihoods, weak human capital and natural disasters.

The above-mentioned issues are increasingly becoming trans-regional in character and migration, though irregular, represents about 15% of their GDP.  It is for this reason that joint engagement in policy and programming around the issues of border control and migration by the Central American countries is crucial. Migrant smugglers and human traffickers take advantage of poor economic situation and uneducated and unemployed youth seeking employment abroad and make the issues of security and border control all the more complex.

The political leadership in the region seem to be aware of these issues and have acted jointly every now and then. Formation of Sistema de Integración Centroamericana, the International Commission for Central American Recovery and Development, Central American Parliament, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the Central American Common Market are some of the examples. Yet, these bodies have not been effective in the same measure in all the Central American Countries, largely due to the domestic politics and leadership related issues in the member countries. A long way to go!

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Women Crossing Borders

Background:

Migrants and migration long back ceased to be a venture of the select few looking for better avenues. One can safely say that since medieval period it has become a compulsion for farm workers, domestic workers and small landholders workers who are simply looking for a source of income to survive. It is estimated that 1 out of every 6 persons, that is, more than 1 billion persons, are migrating within countries and internationally, in search of employment. Of these 1 billion, 72% are women[1]. This is even more so when it comes to women migrant workers, whose numbers have been increasing, now constituting 50 percent or more of the migrant workforce in Asia and Latin America[2]. According to a study that focuses on women’s migration labour from and between six countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region[3], the numbers of women who undertake migrant labour in Southern Africa have been increasing significantly over the past decade. Most people when they think of migrant labour, usually imagine a male face. But over the years, due to several socio-economic and political changes the face of the African migrant labour is changing into a twin woman-man face. Women now make up almost 50% of migrants in the SADC region.

Globalization of labour:

Globalization has contributed to an increasing flow of migrant workers from countries with limited economic opportunities to fill gaps in nations with a dwindling labour supply, for eg, from Somalia to Canada, or in nations which may offer better remuneration for the same work, for eg, from Afghanistan to Iran. Globalisation has also opened up markets for skilled workers and the decrease in traditional labour employment areas such as mining and agriculture. This has provided new entry points for the migrant labour into economies, for example in the service sector. Women are increasingly participating in the trans-national informal sector (for eg, as construction workers in countries other than theirs), and cross-border trade (for eg, between Tanzania and Kenya). This said, since globalization of labour is also characterized by increasing demand for skilled workers and is, therefore, leading to job losses and further impoverishment of unskilled workers. Globalization, in this sense, has created a complex tension between the demand for skilled labour and constraints imposed on unskilled workforce.

Globalization pushes the States to open up the borders for economic transactions. This is leading to increasing number of free trade agreements between countries, emergence and growth of multinational corporations and common markets such as the one mooted and promoted by the East African Community (EAC) for the free flow of products. While the borders are opened for the free flow of products, the borders remain closed for the labourers. Globalization, in this sense, has created another kind of tension between the rich and the poor countries. The developed countries, more than ever before, are banging their doors shut on those seeking refuge or work. Since global concept of production is based on comparative advantage, production sectors within developing economies are losing the diversity of production and labour employed in subsistence production, which benefitted from the diversity of production, is forced to cross borders hiding in trucks and boats or clinging to lifeboats adrift in the oceans.

Within Africa both rural to urban and cross-border migration has been significant due to domestic economic reasons as well as due to colonization. Colonization crated new boundaries, divided communities and separated families and clans. These separations had the effect of increasing cross-border movement. Since the end of colonization, intra-regional migration in SADC includes temporary migration, including workers and seasonal migrants, permanent migration, forced migration and refugee or asylum-seekers. Refugees/Asylum-seekers usually come from politically unstable countries such as Angola, Mozambique and more recently from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, as well as countries that do not belong to SADC. In the East an Horn of Africa, the movement is from Somalia, Southern Ethiopia, Northern Uganda and Southern Sudan. Kenya is a major recipient country of the refugees/asylum-seekers in this region.

Recent trends in migration are increasingly marked by movements linked to cross border-trading and related businesses and street vending, and less by formal employment because, as mentioned earlier, formal employment opportunities are becoming more and more demanding on skills.

Women as migrant labour:

The migrant labour endeavour is a double-edged sword for women. On the one hand, becoming a migrant labourer can mean the acquisition of new skills and uplifting one’s family and community financially, but on the other, women migrant workers expose themselves to several risks during this process.

While globalization may foster the acceleration of trade and investment, it does not create an environment that protects migrant workers’ economic, social and physical security. By creating new economic opportunities, migration can promote economic independence and status for women workers, who provide safety nets that sustain communities at home. But here’s the flip-side of the story: Many of the smugglers of human-labour are part of a growing ring of sex-traffickers. Huge numbers of poverty-stricken girls and women accept the promise of a good job or forced into so-called marriages with financially well to do husband but find they have been tricked into sex work as has been revealed from several cases in the South Asia. Cases noted from Nepal and Philippines suggest that some girls are even sold to smugglers by poverty-stricken families who see them as their only hope for an escape from poverty. Most women trafficked for sex work come from Asia, but increasingly Eastern European women are also getting into ‘international sex trade’ due to the hardship created after the erosion of the social safety nets in their countries.

The chain of exploiters for migrant workers, especially those seeking unskilled jobs include the brokers who facilitate passport, etc, recruiters who find employers and help obtain visa, employers who secure work-permit, and migration officials. Migrant workers are often illiterate or semi-literate and often have limited knowledge about and access to information regarding their rights. Women migrant workers are vulnerable as women, and like the rest, as foreigners and as unskilled labourers, and are exposed to possible abuse and exploitation such as physical and social isolation, and sexual and physical violence. Countries, where the migrant workers migrate to, also resent them when they have to pay for medical and legal services required by the migrant workers.

Marginalization, racial discrimination and suspicion are all too well known to the migrant women workers. Some countries do racial profiling on grounds of suspicion of a threat to security or sex work. Many women, unable to understand the bureaucracy around migration, find themselves declared ‘illegal’ and in detention centres for months or even years at a time, imprisoned for reasons not known to them. Women and girls going for either domestic work or sex-work, are usually left high and dry by the brokers, recruiters or employers who take their passport and a large chunk of their income. It is not unknown to find cases of women migrant workers being kept imprisoned, unable to escape. When the police of the receiving country reaches them, women migrant workers are usually hesitant to speak out about abuses they suffer because of the fear of deportation or greater sense of economic insecurity.

Combinations of poverty, gender discrimination, abuse, armed conflict, HIV & AIDS and climate change push women to seek employment in other countries. Though there is no data to establish, migrant women have been noticed to be more likely to be divorced, separated or have been abandoned. Similarly, migrant women are also more likely to be widowed than men. The study of migration of women from SADC countries suggests that increasingly, women migrant workers are primary economic providers and heads of households. They often travel alone and need to return to migrant occupations repeatedly.

Key sectors in which women migrant workers are involved:

As far as unskilled of semiskilled women are concerned, women and girls from all over the world are recruited to be domestic workers. In Africa and Asia girls from rural areas are often expected to move to urban areas and become domestic workers in order to help support their families financially. In North America and Europe, women from South America and Asia and in the Middle-east, women and girls from Ethiopia, South-east Asia and South Asia work in the homes of the rich sending money back home to their families abroad. Common experiences of domestic workers include low wages, long working hours, no time off, loneliness, verbal and sometimes physical abuse, being forced to wear uniforms and act in roles of servitude, heavy work demands, homesickness, the denial of a family life of one's own, racism, and vulnerability to sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS[4].

Many women are involved in cross border informal businesses, crossing borders for small periods of time or even daily. Their daily life, therefore, is marked by daily saga of exploitation and abuse.

Migrant women in SADC region, usually find employment as domestic workers or entertainers, or other fields that are not regulated by labour laws. The agricultural sector absorbs a large amount of migrant workers, but its seasonal nature does not make for a stable year-round income. In the East and Horn of Africa, migrant women struggle for daily wage work, small trade of goods, including smuggled goods and as domestic workers. Thus a combination of elements, such as local conflicts and global restructuring of work, result in an array of migration patterns in Southern and East and Horn of Africa.

Women migrant workers and economic development:

Studies indicate that migrant women workers contribute to the development of both sending and receiving countries — Ethiopians in diaspora sent a total of US$591 million to Ethiopia in 2006, which is nearly 4.4% of Ethiopia's GDP and Eritrea received US$411 million in remittance money, which amounts to 38% of Eritrea's GDP[5]. In Somalia, remittances are regarded as the ‘lifeline to survival’. In 2008, remittances were estimated by the World Bank at US$305 billion. These monetary investments — used for food, housing, education and medical services — along with newly acquired skills of returnees, can potentially contribute significantly to poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals[2].

Some women acquire new skills through their migrant occupations, which they use to contribute to both the host and their own countries’ economies. The sending and receiving countries benefit from the remittances women send and the productive investments they are able to make with their earned income. In households, which receive remittances, the bulk is utilized to cover basic needs and services, with differences depending on the country. Most remittances are spent on education in Zimbabwe (57%) and Mozambique (57%), while a significant portion is also spent on medicine in Zimbabwe (40%), Swaziland (39%) and Mozambique (31 %). Recipient households reported having contracted loans to purchase food, etc also use the remittance to pay-off debts. These examples suggest that the households of migrant women workers are highly dependent on external sources of income. In general, remittances seem to be protecting human development because they allow families to pay for education, health, electricity, water and other services, when they are not provided by the State. It can be said then that poverty reduction and community development could be aided by these remittances. Examples from Kerala in India shows that these benefits include improved local physical infrastructure, growth of local commodity markets, development of new services, changes to cultural practices that harm girl children and generation of local employment opportunities.

References:

1. Enaskhi Dua. "Beyond Diversity: Exploring Ways in which the Discourse of Race has Shaped the Institution of the Nuclear Family" in Enashki Dua and Angela Robertson. Eds. Scratching the Surface: Canadian Anti-Feminist Thought. Toronto: Women's Press, 1999. pp 237-260. Quoted in Helene Moussa "Global Surge in Forced Migration Linked to Colonial Past".

2. United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM - now part of UN Women). www.unifem.org

3. United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW - now part of UN Women) and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). “Gender, Migration and Remittances in Selected SADC Countries: Preliminary Findings”.The study focuses on cross-border migration to and from Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa and Swaziland, although it refers to other countries when there are notable trends, particularly related to the relatively unexplored subject of gender

4. Abigail Bakan and Daiva Stasiulis. Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.

5. UN's International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

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Globalization of Withering Weather, Dwindling Economies and Precarious Lives

The number of natural disasters and human-made disasters seem to be increasing manifold, each new year. Humanitarian response organizations are pointing out to the alarming ‘trend’ of increasing unpredictability of weather and seasons and to the fact that these are aggravated by climate change. And climate change has its deeper connections with economic globalization and increasingly lopsided and unsustainable energy consumption patterns. While climate change seems to have caught some attention, at least among the ‘intelligentsia’, media, and civil society organizations, economic globalization and perverse economic development of countries is hardly being taken up as an issue that is negotiable.

Humanitarian agencies across the globe are finding hard to raise resources to cope with old and new forms of disaster. Increasing number of disasters equal increasing demand for funds which practically means that funding is going to be more and more thinly scattered. The situation is becoming acute in the light of the fact that availability of the funds is also getting increasingly influenced by political actions of War on Terror and the like. Destruction of subsistence economies and destruction of forests, water bodies and other natural resources by the Corporates and haphazard development are turning large populations into internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. These IDPs and refugees have to compete with IDPs and refugees created by the ‘democratisation army’ of the US of A and its associates and vice-versa. Often, the IDPs and refugees go through a cyclical process of being affected by impacts of both natural and human-made disasters. The line between the ecological or environmental IDPs and refugees and conflict/war IDPs and refugees is blurring at a faster pace.

Given that the political boundaries are becoming more and more stronger, the physical space that can accommodate the IDPs and refugees is shirking at a rate which is perhaps as fast as the change in climate. IDPs and refugees have become footballs to kick at all levels of politics. Scarcity of resources is further fuelling the tension that has always existed between the host communities and the IDPs and immigrants. IDPs and refugees are often attacked, murdered, raped, abused and denies basic right of movement because the host communities resent what they see as preferential treatment to the IDPs and refugees who get settled in their areas. Retaliation by the IDPs and immigrants also does similar harm to the host communities. The strain on the host communities’ resources leads to creation of newer IDPs and migrants from among these communities.

The globalized world has indeed succeeded in globalizing the natural forces and human lives. Is there a global will to accept that globalization would also imply owning the global responsibility for causing environmental violence and human tragedy and taking the global responsibility to remedy the situation? Or will the countries take individual responsibility in proportion to the damage caused by the country? We wait to hear from the negotiators in Copenhagen.

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Remembering Tsunami: Consequences of natural disaster for women

It has been four years since Tsunami struck 14 out of 28 districts Sri Lanka, and the southern and south-eastern coast of India. It destroyed a large number of areas, diverse forms of living beings, livelihoods and much more. In India, it has severely affected Andaman and Nicobar Islands; Nagapattinam, Cuddalore and Kanyakumari districts in Tamil Nadu; Nellore, Prakasham, Guntur and Krishna districts in Andhra Pradesh; Karaikal in Pondichery; and Kollam and Alappuzha districts in Kerala.

Tsumani has been unprecedented in many ways but natural disasters are frequent in Sri Lanka and India. Natural disasters, for a long time, were treated as a matter of material fix up job – it was considered sufficient to provide shelter and amenities and at the most, bring some work to the affected people. Over a period, it has been realized that natural disasters present gender specific challenges to women. Notwithstanding critics of the Tsunami response programmes, it is appreciable that the agencies involved recognized the emotional and psychological distress people affected by disasters suffer and took some measures to minimize dangers to girls and women’s safety. Trafficking in human beings, especially children and among them girls has been given special recognition.

So far, I have not come across any study from India which talks about violence against women (VAW) in Tsunami affected districts. But reports like UNDP’s sitrep 29 and Oxfam’s reports from Sri Lanka suggest that there has been a rise in VAW since the onset of Tsunami. It would not be surprising if VAW has increased in Tsunami affected Indian districts too. Gender relations between women and men in these districts have been such that despite being earning members of their families, women have been dependent on men. All forms of violence including VAW connected as it is to power equations, in frustrating and depressive times is more likely to be perpetrated against those who have the least power to protest or retaliate.

Reports from Nagapattinam district in Tamil Nadu, India as recorded in a study, Gender and Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation, conducted in March 2005 by the Womankind Worldwide suggest that single women and women headed households have not been able to meet basic needs. Most of the families in the affected districts of Tamil Nadu, India are dependent on fishing. Men from these families catch fish, while women are engaged in diving to collect pearl, prawn farming and marketing of fish. Women are not recognized as fisherwomen. Any relief and reconstruction measure which identifies and supports affected people on the basis of occupations is bound to miss out people who are engaged in unrecognized occupations or those whose contributions to the concerned occupation is not recognized. The destruction of prawn farms, salt-making areas, fish markets, and equipments which women use in their occupations has affected their capacity to provide for their families very badly.

In both Sri Lanka and India, women are the primary carers in their families. Most natural disasters invariably mean evacuation and living in congested temporary shelters. Women experience an expansion of their household responsibilities and increased stress after a disaster. With the source of family income destroyed and the trying conditions of a temporary settlement, women face the challenge of providing food and water for their families.

Women in general in both countries are not only responsible for their own health but also for the health needs of the family members, especially children. Spread of diseases means a weakening of their own capacity to care for others but their responsibility to care for sick family members increases sharply. The increase in the intensity of this responsibility is made more difficult due to the destruction of the primary health care centres and other health facilities.

As mentioned earlier, women’s livelihoods in Tsunami affected areas have tended to be dependent on natural resources and on the produce brought home by men. Tsunami has destroyed natural resources and consequently women’s sources of income. Currently, some efforts are being made to give unconventional skills to women so that they could begin from a new base. But it is not clear yet, how much resources and efforts will be extended to build the infrastructure and the base which would help women gain and maximize benefits from their recently acquired skills. If this is not done and the traditional means of livelihoods are not revived with women in a good position to advance their interests, there would be fewer job opportunities for women in the future.

Tsunami, however, also presents the opportunity to re-conceive and reshape ownership of assets and property. But these opportunities have not been taken advantage of by the relief and reconstruction agencies. Most of them have tended to keep away from issues involving rearticulation of gender relations. Some NGOs, however, have tried to alter gender based occupational patterns and asset ownership practices.

Tsunami relief and reconstruction has also highlighted the need to give equal participation and decision-making opportunities to women. An observation paper, WatSan in Kargil Nagar Through a Gender Lense, on water and sanitation facilities in Kargil Nagar in Chennai, India highlights how siting and design of shelter and shelter facilities like toilet and washing facilities could become unusable in the absence of local and need based knowledge. It also shows that poor management planning and management of the water and sanitation facilities could become a threat to health of the people.

It would be a mistake to attribute shortfalls of disaster preparedness, mitigation and reconstruction programme only to the shortage of resources and urgency of the response. The human element is equally if not more important in the giving a shape and direction to a response programme. Gender sensitive attitude and knowledge of gender issues and gender relations, and the capacity to analyze the impact of a particular disaster on women in the immediate and long run among those who are responsible for disaster related programmes are prerequisites to an egalitarian programme. If the prerequisites are present, there would be a greater possibility of people making efforts to devote sufficient time, involve women in the programmes, and get adequate funding to meet and highlight women specific needs.

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