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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The Personal is Political: Maternity Protection



Aponayan/Elimination, a solo exhibition of installations and drawings by Dhali Al Mamoon, a Bangladshi artist at the Bengal Art Lounge, Dhaka.



“The personal is Political” is not just a rallying cry of some feminists rather a living experience of most women, particularly, women workers in the formal and informal economy. An issue such as ‘pregnancy’ is, indeed, a personal issue of a woman. It concerns the contentious issues of her right over her body, her emotional readiness to be a mother and make a long-term material commitment to care for a child, and her physical ability to be pregnant, carry the foetus in her womb and give birth without endangering her life.

When we look at the overall environment and specific contexts in which these ‘personal’ prerogatives of the millions of women have to be exercised, we can see how bleak the situation continues to be for women.  The situation is infested with issues of control of women and their reproduction, and regards maternity protection as a financial liability. The situation, therefore, calls for ‘political’ actions such as conscientization or critical consciousness-raising, empowerment of women, affirmative action, legalization of maternity protection, mass-protests, mobilization of men for women’s rights and so on. The old feminist adage helps see the ‘political’ dimensions or the power relationships that interrupt a personal matter. 


Photo: The Daily Star, Read the Essay: Begum Rokeya, Sultana's Dream and woman power

Bangladesh is the home to Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain (1880 – 9 Dec 1932) who wrote Sultana’s Dream (1905), perhaps the first feminist novel in the world with a sci-fi story involving a Utopia where male-female roles reverse. She spent her life working tirelessly for social reform and wrote courageously against restrictions on women, for women’s emancipation, ending the gender based division of labour.

Bangladesh is also a signatory to the Convention 183 - Maternity Protection Convention, 2000 (No. 183) but it has not ratified the Convention so far. The Labour Act 2006 in the land of Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain continues to see pregnancy as an individual woman’s issue because it does not recognize men’s role in pregnancy, child-birth and in caring for a child, and it continues to treat pregnancy as a financial burden on the employer and an economic drain for the larger economy. It is far from recognizing the social returns and the economic dividend that the country gains from this individual function of women. Pregnant and lactating women and those with children who still require care are still vulnerable in the formal economy workplace and completely unprotected in the informal economy.

Discrimination against migrant Bangladeshi women workers does not make the situation look any less bleak. Most countries of destination for the migrant workers do not recruit pregnant women and the health checks within Bangladesh wean off pregnant women from the list of potential migrant workers. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have a requirement of periodic health checks, which include pregnancy tests and as per their laws/rules they can send back women who are found to be pregnant. The stories of women being harassed and sacked after becoming pregnant in the countries of the Middle-East, or of women being made to sign pledges that they will not become pregnant, and being denied paid maternity leave are not uncommon.

One cannot even imagine the trauma that women, who have been trafficked, smuggled for forced labour or who have crossed the borders through irregular migration channels have to go through when they get pregnant.

Photo: Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights

To tie in with the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 Nov 2012, the ILO, in collaboration with a number of other UN agencies, has published Maternity Resource Package to help organizations, government ministries, workers and employers organizations strengthen and extend maternity protection to women at work. The Maternity Resource Package can be accessed at: http://mprp.itcilo.org/pages/en/index.html.
 
As per the ILO, the aim of such protection is to preserve the health of the mother and her new baby and to provide economic security for the women and their families. This can be achieved through maternity leave, cash and medical benefits, health protection in the workplace, employment protection and non-discrimination, and breastfeeding at work.

Since the societies and economies gain from women’s role involving pregnancy, child-birth, and child-care, maternity protection is not just a personal issue, it is a political issue that requires a concerted political action. Maternity protection and gender equality in the process of child-care help achieve a number of development goals. ILO, therefore, regards it as a collective responsibility. It suggests that the governments, employers, recruiters and workers need to work together in a social dialogue so we can find solutions that meet the rights and the needs of the women workers in both the domestic economy and in the countries of destination where migrant Bangladeshi women live and work or aspire to go.

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The Capital, the Business and the Labour

Is this too strong?

"The globalization of the capital and businesses without much attention to ethical employment generation at one end and a large working population and poor application of the labour standards at the other end has resulted in the ‘commoditization-of-labour’. It is a transaction process in between these too ends where, at some point, labour has no human features that differentiate it from the raw materials, tools and equipments needed for producing consumable products, and the businesses buy."

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Disability and Violence against Women

Photo: Art for Prabhat, Disability India Network

Within the gamut of violence against women, one of the things that I find extremely intriguing, at least, in the context of India, is reluctance among organizations and activists to take up issues of sexual violence against children, especially girls by their family members and sexual violence against disabled women. Here, I want to bring attention to a general apathy, and denial around sexual lives of disabled women and sexual violence against them. References to sexual rights of this population group and their violations are rarely heard. Discussion and programmes designed to address violence against women rarely keep this group in view. These groups’ numerical under-representation in the organizations working on violence against women could be one of the reasons.

I find that the reluctance also has to do with this group being a minority – accessing information about the abuses this group goes through and reaching them with protection and care services would require some extra efforts which do not seem ‘cost effective’ to many.

The disability movement in India has focused on political ideas of universal physical access and survival. The issue of violence against them is not a priority. As a result, public and private violence against disabled women, especially intellectually challenged women, has not surfaced as an issue.

Families, most of them, somehow cannot see their intellectually challenged family members as anything other than a curse and a liability on the family. It is not surprising then that despite protests by some women’s activists, institutional violence against disabled women is sometimes carried out with the support of their family members. Examples of such collaborations include prevention of (potential) pregnancy by violent methods like vaginal hysterectomy or uterine hysterectomy.

These actions are given the name of protection measures. But protection from what – living with implications of having a sexual life or from implications of sexual violence like rape? If such measures are a protection from implications of having a sexual life, shouldn’t one treat these measures as violations of reproductive rights? And if these measures are being treated as protection from implications of sexual violence like rape, shouldn’t these measures be considered as institutional and family ‘approval’ of men’s ‘right’ to rape women?

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Protection of the Girl Child

 

Photo: Guardian

Battered baby in coma: http://ow.ly/8JASu

Two female foetuses found in CP dustbins: http://ow.ly/8JAV3

Manipur girl raped in Delhi: 48 hours on, no breakthrough
Read more at: http://ow.ly/8JCQt 

Girl jumps off roof to escape rape: http://ow.ly/8JB3u

A class X student was allegedly raped: http://ow.ly/8JBmO

The above links are just a few examples to indicate the status and extent of sexual abuse of women and girls in the city of Delhi alone. Abuse at home remains a taboo topic, rarely brought out.

Most child abuse is committed by the person a child trusts

Sexual abuse of children in any form of household setting by a family member or someone in a holding power over a child in India is among the most urgent forms of child abuse which our society must address. As per women's organizations and activists nearly ninety-five percent of the abused are girls and more than ninety-five percent abusers are males. Surveys carried out in schools and informal chats reveal that around 40% girls experience incest abuse or sexual abuse in one or the other form in India. Still it is not an issue in most child protection discussions, policies and measures. Till now majority of the Indians avoid it or deny it and ignore it. We have been an ostrich society.

 

Feminists in India have been are in the forefront among those who are ready to spell, explain, and act against incest abuse. There are lawyers and child rights activists as well who have been raising the issue. But even if we put together all such people, they are still not a critical mass and their views strong enough to be able to impact consciousness of the policymakers, police, lawyers, judges, teachers, schools, mental, physical and sexual health professionals, and all those who could take up the issue. In general incest abuse continues to be treated as a rarity rather than a norm.

Backlash against the victim or survivor of incest abuse or those who try to support the victim or survivor is commonplace. Family honour, social sniggering and abuse of other family members of the abused child and a lack of support mechanism and resources are major barriers that prevent the defence of the abused child - within the household and or from resorting to legal defence. More than often there is a counter attack on an abused child by the other family members, if the child dares to report or complain or raise the issue in any other form.

The Indian laws on sexual offences do not recognize incest abuse. For that matter, even the broader issue of child sexual abuse is not addressed by the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, specifically Section 376 of the IPC. As of now recognition of sexual abuse is limited only to rape (read vaginal-penis intercourse) and sodomy. Any other form of rape and abuse is expressed as 'outraging the modesty' and is a bailable offence in the law (Section 354 of the IPC). The limitations of such a law reduce it to mere tokenism. Anomaly among several laws affecting children make it further easier for abuse of children in homes to go on.

There have been several talks of amendment of the IPC over the last two decades but till the profile of the issue is visible among those involved in advocacy and processing of the amendment, it is bound to be ignored.

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Dressed to Get Raped, They Said.

He said that the ‘others’ say that when women dress ‘fashionably’, they incite the onlookers. He further added that if what the ‘others’ say were not true, why the schools and colleges would stop them from wearing such clothing. He is the senior most police official of a metropolitan city in India. He knows ‘better’.

I thought that he is such a drab. At least, he could have been a little creative in ‘repeating’ what the others say. But then the Indian Police Services does not hire people for their creativity or their ability to analyze, and be resourceful and innovative in problem-solving. Not his fault when his society, his Police Service and those around him have either taught him to follow what is already laid down or tolerate what he says because he speaks from a position of power. Especially not when he claims that media misrepresented him and that what he said was a repetition of what the ‘others’ say. Now how can he distort what the others say! He can’t.   

So as ‘they’ say, women and girls invite molesters and rapists when they dress in a certain way – short or tight, off-shoulder or hipster, backless or cleavage revealing, and so on. Applying ‘their’ argument, in a country where about 40-50% of men are probably dhoti or lungi-clad with torso uncovered or covered with unbuttoned shirts or torn under-shirts, all the women who see these men should be on sexual high forever. Alas, no. What’s wrong with these men’s bare legs, chests, and all the other parts that some of them and some other fully dressed men keep flashing on little girls, big girls and women? Nothing, women do not have such needs; men need sex more, ‘they’ say. Now who can stop somebody from meeting a ‘need’ when it is so well-established that men have ‘more need’ and are not responsible for creating this ‘more need’. Perhaps this is why in so many parts of the world, the institutions of marriage, religion, culture and tradition, have formalized sexual slavery of women. Only lack of social intelligence can inhibit a person from seeing a ‘fact’ so clearly laid out and stated so often.

Now in these times, because of the men-hating feminist women and some insane feminist men so many rubbish laws have come up, which brand ‘meeting the need’ as sexual abuse or rape. When these simple acts of ‘meeting a need’ are branded as crimes, obviously the so-called rapists and sexual abusers are overwhelmingly men. It’s a trap laid out by these feminists, you see.

Isn’t worth wondering why these feminists make the so-called sexual violence their issue? After all, sometimes, when the little boys or young men appear more ‘dressed up’ for ‘meeting the need’, they are the ones who are ‘used to meet the need’. Shouldn’t feminists, if at all, raise it as an issue if the so-called victims were only girls and women; they can’t do so when they are predominantly girls and women? Why don’t these feminists teach girls and women to mind their clothing and be what they call ‘safe’? Why do they waste their time and others’ by asking frivolous question like ‘why do men rape and how can a society and governance system recognize, take action and stop it’?  How a society can stop them, when it’s a natural need that men have and a society is supposed to help its members meet their needs!

It would be so much easier for the men to control themselves, if girls and women, little boys and young boys do not sexually excite them. It is so easy for girls and women to mind their clothing and behaviour. After all, they are taught to fear, not to trust men, behave ‘decently’ and take all precautions, like not going out of the home or not going out alone, not playing and definitely not playing with boys and men, if out then not staying out late; not drinking or smoking, etc. It’s another thing that they may get sexually abused or raped in their homes. How long can men control themselves with little and big women pondering around them and some men have ‘much more need’ than the others. It may so happen that burqa-clad girls and women and women with ghunghat as down as to touch the ground, get sexually abused or raped. This is because there’s something inciting in their body movement and that is why women are taught to mind the way they walk, sit, get up or lie down from a young age. It may also happen that a seventy year old woman suddenly finds a man mounted on her. But such acts happening in homes with girls and women or with elderly women are aberrations. These incidents happen when the society fails to recognize and meet the rather ‘more frequent needs’. Sometimes, some women need to be taught a lesson or else the others’ start becoming careless about the teachings they receive. Sometimes, some girls and women need to be sexually abused or raped to teach a lesson to the men in their families. Men who are relatives, immediate relatives more so, have a responsibility to control the bodies and sexual conducts of ‘their’ girls and women and the way to discredit these men’s abilities is by showing that they have failed.

If only the feminists could see that what they call sexual violence or rape is ‘inevitable by-products’ of the way girls and women dress and behave!

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Migrant Women Workers

Image: MS Office

Migration ceased to be a venture of a select few looking for better avenues long time back. 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 internally, 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.

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:



Image: Christian Aid

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 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. Thus a combination of elements, such as local conflicts and global restructuring of work, result in an array of migration patterns in Southern Africa.

Women migrant workers and economic development:

 

Image: Christian Aid

Studies indicate that migrant women workers contribute to the development of both sending and receiving countries — Ethiopians in diaspora sent a total of $591 million to Ethiopia in 2006, which is nearly 4.4% of Ethiopia's GDP and Eritrea received $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.

Migration and the UN:

The UN has adopted several conventions to protect migrant workers including the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. However this convention is not in effect because it has not been signed by enough countries. There is also a UN protocol dealing with the rights of trafficked women and children under the International Convention on Transnational Organized Crime and the Optional Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

To learn More:

For more information on migrant workers see the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Fact Sheet on http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FactSheet24rev.1en.pdf and violence against women migrant workers on http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/vaw/v-hrc.htm.   

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). http://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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The 6th of the February: A Day of Zero Tolerance

     



International Day of
Zero Tolerance of FGM



The proprietors of passion

Wage a war to conquer lust

Open in an understanding

The source of unquenchable bodily wants

The culprit is somewhere outside

Someone who instigated desire

They say:

Using a force unravelled

She imposed a desire on renunciators

She the subject of ‘animal’ instincts

Lacking in the nuances of control

Enabled violence against herself

They claim:

She fashioned herself as the object of regulation

And so

The war goes on against her body. 

Watch a video on FGM. Help End it! 



The 6th of the February is the International Day of
Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
Watch the UNFPA-UNICEF Video

FGM is practiced by the elders using crude tools like blades, knives and pieces of glass as well as by some professional doctors and nurses using professional tools. Up to 140 million women and girls are affected by it Nearly three million girls are mutilated each year. Women and girls from both rich and poor families are either forced to go through it or convinced to go through it because otherwise they would not be regarded as a respectable woman/girl and would not be entitled to their basic rights like the right to inherit property. FGM is a heinous crime. Stop it!

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Going Through Death to Give Birth

Seventeen years old and visiting a doctor for the first time in her life, Amira, married a few months back, finds out that she is pregnant. She remembers that about two years back, the health worker had advised her to take vitamins because she used to feel fatigued. Today, the doctor tells her that she is anaemic. Her blood test suggests that her haemoglobin level is as low as 6g/dl. The doctor tells Amira’s mother-in-law that she will have to be careful about Amira’s food and care, otherwise, Amira and her foetus may not be able to pull through. Amira’s mother-in-law is insisting that the doctor should give her daughter-in-law some tablets. But the doctor replies that it may not be a good idea because Amira is already suffering from diarrhoea and the medicines used in cases of anaemia have a tendency to cause constipation or diarrhoea may aggravate her condition. Amira is angry. She can’t understand why she has to go through this when other girls her age are going to the school, and do not have to worry about anything. The doctor tells her that she is in this situation because she is married and pregnant while her friends may not be. He explains that at 17 she is still growing; her own body requirement of red blood [haemoglobin] is high. Pregnancy at this age means far more increased demand for red blood [haemoglobin] to meet the needs of the foetus. Since her body is producing more blood to meet the needs of the foetus without having enough iron in her food, it is causing wateriness in the blood. “it is like adding water to blood to meet the quantity requirement but it reduces redness in blood and causes all the trouble that she is facing”, the doctor explained.

Amira’s village falls within the service catchment area of a health centre. The centre is not far from her home. “It is useful for children”, says Amira about the centre. Her family did not want her going to the centre when Amira complained of dizziness a couple of times. This centre has no facilities for women’s health other than an examination room. Amira did not complain about it, “I don’t like to go to the health centre, anyway”. But her family took her to the centre when she developed persistent irregular bowel movements. The health worker prescribed her medicines meant for diarrhoea. Amira’s mother-in-law patiently listened to her grumblings and cajoled her to take the medicines as prescribed by the health worker. Two days later Amira fainted. Her husband collected his savings and decided to take her to a private hospital in a neighbouring town. Her mother-in-law gathered a few things that may be needed in case they have to hospitalize Amira. She loves Amira. She frequently asked her son to be gentle with Amira and showered extra affection on her thinking she is a delicate girl who is having difficulty adjusting to the married life.

Safiah, Amira’s mother-in-law is around 40 years old. She is dressed in a black abaya and a black pair of gloves which reflect her family’s modest condition. The opening in her naqab for the eyes has lost its shape and is partly covering her left eye. When the doctor was explaining Amira’s condition, she could feel a lump in her throat. She couldn’t help breaking into loud sobs when Amira’s angry voice asked why she has to go through this. Safiah is not convinced with the doctor’s explanation. So while the doctor was explaining she interjected many times to tell the doctor as well as Amira that it is women’s fate to go through death to give birth. Like many traditional Yemeni women, Safiah believes motherhood is a holy duty that every woman must perform even if it means risking her life. But she is desperate to protect Amira. Once they came out of the doctor’s room, she dragged her son to one side and asked him to pray so that Amira’s first child birth goes smoothly. In a slight indirect way, she asked him to give Amira some rest.

“We did what we could do. We are doing what we can do. Allah will save Amira like he saved me”, Safia says in a voice, which shows that she is trying to reconcile to the reality of the situation. Amira’s husband, a 25 year old brick-maker is Safiah’s first live born. She was lucky that her parental family was relatively well-off. She remembers that her father often told her mother to feed her well. But the first pregnancy nearly killed her. She still remembers the long painful labour at the end of which she fainted. When she regained consciousness, her mother told her between cries that her child is with Allah. She remembers taunts and stigma that she had to bear till she gave birth to a son, Amira’s husband. In all, she went through 14 pregnancies of which nine survived. Only her youngest son, now eight years old, was born in a hospital. She had to be rushed to the hospital when her water broke but she was unable to push the baby out. These multiple pregnancies have taken a toll on her. She is glad that her husband finally heeded to the doctor’s advice to use protection to save her life. She remembers that her stepmother was not so lucky. Barely two-three years older than Safiah, she suffered and finally succumbed to death while giving birth to her first child at home. She was barely 17 or18 years old. As always safiah mutters a prayer for her stepmother and her thoughts move to one of her three married daughters.

Safiah’s three daughters were married by the time they reached 17 years of age. Two of them became mothers within first year of their marriages. Safiah’s second daughter, Arwa who was married at 16 years of age, could not adjust to the life after marriage. She wanted to finish basic schooling and join the secondary school. Her parents-in-law and husband prohibited her from studying and reprimanded her every time she failed to do any of the household chores. Fatigued and pregnant with her first child, Arwa ran away to her parents’ house. She was forced by her father to go back to her husband. A few days later, she had a miscarriage. Her health deteriorated rapidly. There is no government hospital close to her marital village and the cost of treatment in a private hospital was something her husband refused to bear. In a matter of months Arwa was divorced. She has been at her parents’ house since then.

I narrated this intergenerational story to highlight how near absence of knowledge of women’s health among health centre staff, unavailability of women health workers and doctors, early marriage, lack of knowledge and sensitivity among decision-makers in the family, and many other such reasons take a toll on women’s lives. Yemen is one of the countries with the highest rates of maternal deaths during childbirth and infant mortality. In areas where some preventive women’s health programmes are available, shortage of women paramedics and doctors and cultural resistance to examination by men, early marriage leading to early pregnancy, scarce resources and many other such reasons practically push women to death. Yemeni women will continue to die unless the government, development organizations and society become sensitive towards women and begin to believe that terrible realities of women’s lives can be changed and must be changed.

Originally published at: Yemen Times.

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Take it Easy

We Can End All Violence against Women

Last Wednesday, I was at a fuel station close to my work-place somewhere in Kenya. There was a big fancy 4X4 vehicle parallel to my vehicle but I could not see who was inside because the fuel booth was in-between. The service person set the fuel quantity and put the hose in my vehicle’s fuel tank and disappeared. This is usual; during peak hours, the service persons serve many drivers simultaneously. I fumbled with my bag, phone and music. The vehicle parallel to mine moved ahead just a bit, stopped at an odd angle, and a man sitting in the front passenger seat smiled and the one driving said something. I didn’t quite appreciate the smile but gave a polite smile murmured, ‘hello’. Synthetic politeness is not my forte but I live and work in an environment of ‘oral and visual civility’ so in order to be culturally adaptable I try to conform. Anybody with less air in the head can see through my polite pleasantries though. But that day even before my lips could return to the normal state, the man from the passenger seat was out and leaning on my window, asking if I need help. Baffled, I asked him, ‘help for what’? He replied in broken English, which in summary meant that these service persons at the fuel stations often cheat and fuel can overflow if left like this and that I should let him help me with this task. I shook my dead politely, thanking him for his offer but clarifying that I am not a damsel in distress. He insisted and my politeness was waning. Finally, he seemed to have shaken off the insistence and put out his hand saying, ‘pleasure meeting you, Miss ...’. His other hand offered me his visiting card. My right hand was holding the wallet so I extended my left hand to take the card saying, ‘oh, thank you’. Lo and behold, he kissed my hand. I pulled my hand back ensuring the card does not drop. The man went back to his vehicle and began talking with the man in the driving seat, both speaking rapidly in Russian loud enough for me to hear and make out the language but just that much I have no skills in Russian. While talking, they kept looking at me, head movements a bit too fast and not right, I thought. Suggestive? I considered the possibility of them following me and damned myself for leaving the work so late every day. Then decided that if that happens, I will just hit them with my vehicle as if I were driving an armoured combat vehicle, not a mini something. By now the fuel tank was full and the service person took the fuel card and went to make the payment on my behalf. The two men in the other vehicle looked at me and smiled together. I looked away. The vehicle moved a bit closer in such a way that if I wanted to move, I would have to reverse the vehicle and meander my way through to the exit gate. The man in the passenger seat was saying, ‘sorry, I forgot your name; please repeat’. ‘I never told you my name’, I replied. He insisted a few more times using the same sentence. Finally, I smiled the sweetest artificial possible and said, ‘no more, stop’. He repeated what I said. I responded, ‘correct and now move away’. The man driving the vehicle looked angry and the one in the passenger’s seat looked a strange red his face. I noted their vehicle number. By now the service person was back with the receipt. I put the card and receipt in the bag and saw the vehicle moving away. The visiting card indicated the man in the passenger seat was a first secretary in one of the Eurasian countries’ embassy. I assume the other one must be another top-notch from the same embassy. The vehicle number confirmed that it belonged to that embassy. I toyed with the idea of reporting to the diplomatic police but decided to let it go and thanked myself for buying a vehicle at last. I already have a record of making a mountain out of a mole like the last time when a British Military-man threw flying kisses and made some obscene gestures. I reported it to the police as well as the Embassy in addition to the people I know. Nothing came out of the noise I made, except, the advices to take it easy and enjoy life.

 

Purple Ribbon Campaign to End Domestic Violence

A few years back, while on a short trip to the buzz city of Haryana, my sister-in-law and I were left with a choice to either wait for a car to pick us from where we were or take the crowded bus across the road. We decided to take the bus. A passenger sitting on the bus engine box, moved to create some space for one of us. I asked my sister-in-law to sit there. I stood facing her with a mass of passengers behind me. Ten-fifteen minutes later I felt somebody was brushing up against my back. I turned back quietly, looked down at the swollen part of the trouser and said underbreath, almost hissing, ‘I am going to cut it’, smiled and looked up. It was a man in his early twenties; from the tools he was carrying in one of his hands, he looked like a mason or a mason’s helper. The man banged the bus wall once (which in the National Capital Territory, signals the driver to stop). The bus stopped and the man ran out. My sister-in-law didn’t notice a thing but I suspect the man who stood next to the man who brushed up, did. He stood like stiff reed, maintaining whatever distance that was possible.

About two and half decades back, as I was walking home from the college somewhere in Bihar and wondering about a small assignment of selling a set of books that would get me about 20 rupees, I saw a motorcycle with two middle-aged men on it coming too close to me. Too late for me to move anywhere, I was already next to a boundary wall so completely cornered. The man at the back seat grabbed one of my breasts, both roaring with laughter. They fled off. The incident was seen by the house-helper’s brother-in-law, who dutifully reported it back to the people supposedly responsible for me. I was whipped-whapped for inviting this treatment and for bringing shame to the family. I was so angry with myself for not pushing the motorcycle and for not noting down the number. I spent the next few weeks searching for that motorcycle with a bottle of kerosene oil and a matchstick box in my bag. Every motorcycle looked that motorcycle and almost all motorcyclists looked like those two men. I reasoned with myself that I can’t burn the whole city because I am upset with two of its citizens. The bottle of Kerosene oil was put back in the store and the matchbox in the kitchen.

Nearly three decades back, I stood in a crowded public bus in either Himachal Pradesh or Uttar Pradesh. A senior from the school kept winking at me. I screamed at him but no avail. My class-mate advised me not to ‘speak’ so loudly. I screamed at the driver and the conductor to stop the bus. Both looked back, realized what’s going on and shouted at me to be quiet and not be a nuisance to the others. I could have clubbed them all to death if I were not that puny little character without a club.



White Ribbon Campaign:
Men working to end men's violence against women

These four incidents constitute not even 0.1% of the incidents that occurred from my childhood to the middle-age. Yet, we struggle to produce data to substantiate that sexual crime against women and children is a reality. The data is writ so large, all over the daily lives of ordinary women and girls that it has become invisible.

In general, the negotiations for the acceptance of violence against women and girls, illustrate the continuous struggle, which has gone on for centuries for the recognition of women and children as persons entitled to certain rights and equality. Currently, it is almost acceptable to talk about violence against women and children and about sexual crime but it comes to time for society, state, neighbourhoods and families to prevent and protect, their attitudes change. Few institutions, if any, are willing to do what they need to do to prevent sexual crime from happening and protect the survivor from the double whammy of having suffered the crime and then being blamed for inviting it, leave alone willingness to take punitive action against the criminal.

Sexual crime form part of the culture of almost every society that I know. The songs, rites and rituals, and audio-visual and written tales often abet the crime through humour, directive or messages of reprisal if actions amounting to sexual crime are branded so and not taken in ‘good’ spirit. Sexual crimes are committed on a regular basis throughout the life-span of a woman. External social environment, laws and time taken to deliver justice, legal and judicial attitudes, etc escalate or de-escalate the severity and incidence rates. The nature of proof required, the manner in which proof is required, the attitude to the survivor and the support mechanisms for the survivor determine the reporting.

Another barrier to reporting of the incidents is that only rape is regarded as a sexual crime. Other sexual crimes are not regarded as a violation of the laws or the rights of the survivors. Therefore, sexual crimes other than rape hardly ever get enumerated.

Sexual violence is not treated as a grave crime in law. It is regarded as more of a moral crime. Moralist phrases like 'outraging modesty', 'spoiling honour' and 'soiling chastity' are not uncommon in the legal vocabulary. Apart from reducing gravity as a crime, such jingos put the burden of a moral character on the survivor. If a girl or a woman does not appear to be modest, respectable or chaste, she is branded as the one inviting the male lust as if men's entire brain is just the hypothalamus and the only thing that can drive them to some action is their libido. Discrimination in law through inferior treatment of the issue or contradictions in laws is more of a norm than a discrepancy so the legal and justice institutions and their functionaries fail to give due recognition to the seriousness of the crimes. There are no accountability mechanisms to nail the police, lawyers and judges if they treat sexual crime with less seriousness or no seriousness. The inferior treatment of the crime in law and by the legal and justice related duty bearers, perpetuates under-investigation and under--prosecution of sexual crimes.

Would you still say I take it easy? You may but would I? No.

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