Forced Migration

Citation:

Mulumba, Deborah. 2005. Gender Relations, Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health Among Women Refugees in Uganda: The Case of Sudanese Women in Rhino Camp and Kiryandongo Refugee Settlements. PhD thesis, Wageningen University.

Author: Deborah Mulumba

Abstract:

Armed conflict and civil wars are the main cause of refugees in the Great Lakes Region of Eastern Africa. Forced migration into alien refugee settings exacerbates gender inequalities and increases the vulnerability of women and girls. The main objective of the study was to gain a deeper understanding of gender relations, livelihood security and reproductive health among refugees in Uganda with a particular focus on women. The research design was descriptive and exploratory in nature and the methodology was primarily qualitative. The main findings were that refugee policies and gender relations have an immense influence on human reproduction, reproductive health and livelihood security. Although UNHCR has formulated gender sensitive policies, their implementation in rural settlements remains gender neutral. In addition, the strategic needs of women refugees are not catered for. The study concludes that there is a discrepancy between the international and national policies and what is on the ground. (ResearchGate)

Annotation:

Table of Contents:

1. Background and Rationale for the Study
2. Theoretical and Conceptual Perspectives
3. Research Questions and Methodology
4. The History and Management of Refugees and Displacement in Uganda
5. The International and National Health Policies
6. Ministries, Organizations and Programmes Dealing in Reproductive Health Issues
7. The Study Area and ‘Host Environment’
8. Gender Relations, Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health: Discussion of Findings and Experiences from Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement 
9. Gender Relations, Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health: Discussion of Findings and Experiences from Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement
10. Conclusions

Topics: Armed Conflict, Civil Wars, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Girls, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Health, Reproductive Health, International Organizations, Livelihoods, Security Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Sudan, Uganda

Year: 2005

Citation:

Sankey, Diana. 2016. “Recognition of Gendered Experiences of Harm at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia: The Promise and the Pitfalls.” Feminist Legal Studies 24 (1): 7–27. doi:10.1007/s10691-016-9309-9.

Author: Diane Sankey

Abstract:

Forty years after the beginning of the Khmer Rouge regime, the recent Trial Chamber judgment in case 002/01 before Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) has provided legal recognition of the devastating violence of the forced population movements. However, despite the undoubted significance of the judgment, it represents a missed opportunity to more fully reflect issues of gender. The article argues that in order to capture the plurality of gendered experiences it is necessary to foreground a social understanding of harm. Drawing on civil party oral testimony, the article begins to surface gendered experiences of the social harms of familial separation and starvation of family members, harms that have often remained silenced in international criminal law. In doing so it seeks to contribute to emerging feminist discourse on broader gendered harms and illustrates the need for further scrutiny of the approach of the ECCC.

Keywords: Gendered harm, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, International Criminal Law, forced displacement

Topics: Forced Migration, Feminisms, Gender-Based Violence, International Criminal Law, International Tribunals & Special Courts

Year: 2016

Citation:

Meir, Avinoam, and Maria Gekker. 2011. “Gendered Space, Power Relationships and Domestic Planning and Design among Displaced Israeli Bedouin.” Women’s Studies International Forum 34 (3): 232–41. doi:10.1016/j.wsif.2011.01.010.

Authors: Avinoam Meir, Maria Gekker

Abstract:

Following displacement to State planned towns, Israeli Bedouin women lost many of their traditional agro-pastoral productive roles and became subject to stricter patriarchal confinement to their homes. Despite becoming the focus of their lifeworld, their involvement in establishing it, and their domestic gender planning and design relationships, have received little attention. In this study, roles of husbands and wives and participation in planning and designing their homes were examined in the new Bedouin town of Hura. Differences emerge between the displaced generation and the second urban generation, characterized by different ages and educational levels and varying accessibility to forbidden public spaces. This component of Bedouin women's identity and power has begun to recover, following deterioration after displacement. And yet the most significant involvement of women is restricted to the aesthetic, rather than to the physical domestic aspects of gendered relationships. Greater accessibility to hitherto forbidden public spaces has become a major source of changing internal domestic gender planning and design relationships.

The Bedouin of the Negev desert are part of Israel's internal refugee population resulting from the 1948 Israeli War of Independence/Palestinian Naqba (Abu-Rabia, 1994 and Abu-Rabia, 2002). Many of them have been twice displaced since then: first, from their traditional tribal territories and agro-pastoral subsistence economy into a militarily administered enclave, a phase that lasted until the mid-1960s, and second, since then, about half of the rapidly growing population into State planned towns. This process of settling in town after displacement has been extensively studied from a variety of cultural social economic and political perspectives (Meir, 1997 and Ben-David, 2004). One of its sub-processes is the novel experience of urban permanent home building, a most fundamental and critical one in striking roots in the new environment. Yet, despite receiving some attention (Ben-David, 1992 and Ben-David, 1993) and the recent spurt in research on Bedouin women, no attention whatsoever has been paid to the house project as a highly intensive arena of gendered relationships. In particular, research on Bedouin women misses here one of their most intimate spatial areas of experience within a patriarchal social setting, second only, perhaps, to the self and body. We refer to their unique need to both conceptually and physically reconstruct their homes, as well as their identities within them, amidst the deep socio-cultural crisis following forced relocation.

This paper is thus concerned with the gender dynamics of Bedouin husbands and wives in the process of domestic planning and design within the new semi-urban environment. The questions addressed refer to the process of gendered power relationships within the patriarchal household following displacement, how an understanding of improved women's access to other social and economic resources helps placing this process in context, and whether it is capable of empowering women externally within the Bedouin community at large.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, IDPs, Urban Displacement, Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Hierarchies, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Africa, MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Israel

Year: 2011

Citation:

Horst, Cindy, and Anab Ibrahim Nur. 2016. “Governing Mobility through Humanitarianism in Somalia: Compromising Protection for the Sake of Return.” Development and Change 47 (3): 542–62. doi:10.1111/dech.12233.

Author: Cindy Horst

Abstract:

This article aims to contribute to an increased understanding of the importance of migration in humanitarian and ‘post-humanitarian’ contexts, by exploring the interlinkages between protection and displacement. It argues that the strategies by which conflict-displaced populations protect themselves are largely based on mobility. Yet, humanitarian approaches to displaced populations do not take sufficient account of the mobility needs of those they assist. Furthermore, the actual location at which aid is provided is affected by funding realities and donor priorities. This article discusses the case of protracted displacement realities of Somali refugees and internally displaced people in Kenya, Somaliland and south-central Somalia. Based on in-depth semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions with humanitarian aid workers and displaced people, the article offers an analysis of the recent ‘stabilization discourse’ that fuels programming directed at the return of displaced Somalis. The authors argue that humanitarian protection is compromised by immobile aid practices and by humanitarian programmes that are guided by states’ interest in refugee return.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, IDPs, Refugees, Gender, Women, Humanitarian Assistance Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya, Somalia

Year: 2016

Citation:

Wirtz, Andrea L., Kiemanh Pham, Nancy Glass, Saskia Loochkartt, Teemar Kidane, Decssy Cuspoca, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Sonal Singh, and Alexander Vu. 2014. “Gender-Based Violence in Conflict and Displacement: Qualitative Findings from Displaced Women in Colombia.” Conflict and Health 8 (10).

Authors: Andrea L. Wirtz, Kiemanh Pham, Nancy Glass, Saskia Loochkartt, Teemar Kidane, Decssy Cuspoca, Leonard S. Rubenstein, Sonal Singh, Alexander Vu

Abstract:

Introduction: Gender-based violence (GBV) is prevalent among, though not specific to, conflict affected populations and related to multifarious levels of vulnerability of conflict and displacement. Colombia has been marked with decades of conflict, with an estimated 5.2 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and ongoing violence. We conducted qualitative research to understand the contexts of conflict, displacement and dynamics with GBV. This as part of a multi-phase, mixed method study, in collaboration with UNHCR, to develop a screening tool to confidentially identify cases of GBV for referral among IDP women who were survivors of GBV.

Methods: Qualitative research was used to identify the range of GBV, perpetrators, contexts in conflict and displacement, barriers to reporting and service uptake, as well as to understand experiences of service providers. Thirty-five female IDPs, aged 18 years and older, who self-identified as survivors of GBV were enrolled for in-depth interviews in San Jose de Guaviare and Quibdo, Colombia in June 2012. Thirty-one service providers participated in six focus group discussions and four interviews across these sites.

Results: Survivors described a range of GBV across conflict and displacement settings. Armed actors in conflict settings perpetrated threats of violence and harm to family members, child recruitment, and, to a lesser degree, rape and forced abortion. Opportunistic violence, including abduction, rape, and few accounts of trafficking were more commonly reported to occur in the displacement setting, often perpetrated by unknown individuals. Intrafamilial violence, intimate partner violence, including physical and sexual violence and reproductive control were salient across settings and may be exacerbated by conflict and displacement. Barriers to reporting and services seeking were reported by survivors and providers alike.

Conclusions: Findings highlight the need for early identification of GBV cases, with emphasis on confidential approaches and active engagement of survivors in available, quality services. Such efforts may facilitate achievement of the goals of new Colombian laws, which seek to prevent and respond to GBV, including in conflict settings. Ongoing conflict and generalized GBV in displacement, as well as among the wider population, suggests a need to create sustainable solutions that are accessible to both IDPs and general populations

Keywords: gender-based violence, Intimate partner violence, conflict, displacement, Colombia, humanitarian settings

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, IDPs, Domestic Violence, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Gendered Power Relations, Humanitarian Assistance, Livelihoods, Military Forces & Armed Groups, Sexual Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2014

Citation:

Meertens, Donny, and Margarita Zambrano. 2010. “Citizenship Deferred: The Politics of Victimhood, Land Restitution and Gender Justice in the Colombian (Post?) Conflict.” International Journal of Transitional Justice 4 (2): 189–206. doi:10.1093/ijtj/ijq009.

Authors: Donny Meertens, Margarita Zambrano

Abstract:

This article discusses the advancement and constraints of gender justice for women victims of armed conflict and forced displacement in Colombia, with special reference to land restitution. Women constitute the overwhelming majority of rights claimants under the 2005 Justice and Peace Law and their rights have been supported by rulings of the Constitutional Court. Government response, however, has been insufficient. Women's claims are part of a broader political debate on the limits of victimhood and the costs of reparation, in which the need for restitution of land is reluctantly acknowledged. Displaced women have been more vulnerable to violent land seizures and they face greater security risks than men when attempting to reclaim their land. In this context, what approaches can Colombia use in designing a gender-sensitive land restitution program that is transformative of gender relations? The authors argue that special protection measures, land deeds for women and better access to justice must be included in transitional justice processes as a means of fostering gender-equitable development.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Gender, Women, Justice, Reparations, Transitional Justice, Land Grabbing, Violence Regions: Americas, South America Countries: Colombia

Year: 2010