Refugee/IDP Camps

Citation:

Manchanda, Rita. 2004. “Gender Conflict and Displacement: Contesting ‘Infantilisation’ of Forced Migrant Women.” Economic and Political Weekly 39 (37): 4179–86.

Author: Rita Manchanda

Abstract:

The experience of the refugee or the internally displaced person is one that is fundamentally disenfranchising. While women and children make up a majority of the forcibly displaced, international humanitarian discourses confer on them a presumed passivity that is naturalised in practice. Systems of care and protection even in UNHCR camps remain largely gender insensitive especially in south Asia where national laws reinforce gender discrimination. This paper uses a gender sensitive perspective, analysing the way a woman as a refugee subject is configured as a non-person so as to gain fresh insights on the 'infantilisation' and 'de-maturation' of the refugee experience. Moreover, it raises questions on the secondary status women occupy as citizens in south Asian polities.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Asia, South Asia

Year: 2004

Citation:

Krause, Ulrike. 2014. “Analysis of Empowerment of Refugee Women in Camps and Settlements." Journal of Internal Displacement 4 (1): 29–52.

Author: Ulrike Krause

Abstract:

This article analyzes the empowering impact that refugeeism can have on women, a largely neglected area of research. In the past, the academic discourse of refugees’ identity reveals a clear trend towards homogenization, objectification, and victimization. Refugee women are still seen as disempowered passive victims. Considering that most refugees are caused in patriarchal societies in the global south, this article presents the idea that forced displacement can break patriarchal patterns because refugees renegotiate and redefine gender relations while in camps and settlements which could lead to women’s empowerment. This argument is made after an extensive review of literature on refugee identity, differing camp and settlement structures, and the discourse about actions that can disempower or empower refugee women. In order to move beyond assumptions, this paper relies on concrete empirical research of national policy analyses and a field research case study of Rhino Camp settlement in Uganda. A review of this research will show how displacement can both challenge and reinforce traditional gender roles and will focus on the potential for empowering women in this context.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gender Roles, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2014

Citation:

Hyndman, Jennifer, and Wenona Giles. 2011. “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography 18 (3): 361–79.

Authors: Jennifer Hyndman, Wenona Giles

Abstract:

Millions of refugees are stuck in camps and cities of the global South without permanent legal status. They wait in limbo, their status unresolved in what the United Nations (UN) calls ‘protracted refugee situations’ (PRS). The material conditions and depictions of such refugees as immobile and passive contributes to a feminization of asylum in such spaces. In contrast, refugees on the move to seek asylum in the global North are perceived as threats and coded as part of a masculinist geopolitical agenda that controls and securitizes their movement. Policies to externalize asylum and keep potential refugees away from the affluent nations of the global North, in which they may seek legal status, represent one strategy of exclusion. This article traces these divergent trajectories of immobility and demonstrates how humanitarian space for both groups is narrowing over time. For those seeking asylum in the global North, measures such as increased detention and rapid return to transit countries aim to deter migrants from arriving at all. It is contended that the discrete systems that manage asylum seekers in the global North and refugees in long-term limbo are themselves gendered. European Union policies to ‘externalize’ asylum and keep asylum seekers offshore dovetail with policies by EU member states to ‘build capacity’ for refugee protection in refugee ‘regions of origin’. These represent a shifting, not a sharing, of responsibility for their welfare and prolongs their wait.

Keywords: feminization of refugees, protracted refugee situation, waiting, externalization of asylum

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Masculinity/ies, Gender Analysis, Femininity/ies, International Organizations

Year: 2011

Citation:

Grabska, Katarzyna. 2011. “Constructing ‘Modern Gendered Civilised’ Women and Men: Gender-Mainstreaming in Refugee Camps.” Gender and Development 19 (1): 81–93.

Author: Katarzyna Grabska

Abstract:

Gender mainstreaming in humanitarian programmes with forced migrants is based on a belief that such an approach will lead to greater gender equality, while raising the status of women through their ‘empowerment’. In this article, I focus on the activities of international and local humanitarian organisations in Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. I argue that the concepts of ‘gender’ and ‘women’ are often over-simplified and essentialised in gender mainstreaming, and this results in programmes which not only exacerbate gender asymmetries, but may also place women at risk.

Keywords: gender-mainstreaming, Kenya, migration

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Migration, Forced Migration, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya, Sudan

Year: 2011

Citation:

Gladden, Jessica. 2013. “Coping Strategies of Sudanese Refugee Women in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 32 (4): 66-89.

Author: Jessica Gladden

Abstract:

Thirty Sudanese women currently living in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya were interviewed regarding their coping strategies in May 2011. The three central areas of discussion for the study were informal social support, the role of the women’s beliefs, and formal supports in the camp and how these items contributed to coping strategies. It was found that women were limited in their emotional coping strategies by their many physical needs. Much of the focus of their discussion was around their attempts to meet these physical needs. Formal supports, in particular the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, were the primary form of support available and utilised by the women in the study. Beliefs in God and education were the primary means of emotional support, with little assistance from friends and family.

Keywords: refugee, women, coping strategies, refugee camp

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Education, Gender, Women, Health, Mental Health, Humanitarian Assistance, International Organizations, Religion Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Kenya, Sudan

Year: 2013

Citation:

El Jack, Amani. 2012. “‘Education Is My Mother and Father’: The ‘Invisible’ Women of Sudan.” Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 27 (2): 19-29.

Author: Amani El Jack

Abstract:

Education plays a significant role in informing the way people develop gender values, identities, relationships, and stereotypes. The education of refugees, however, takes place in multiple and diverse settings. Drawing on a decade of field research in Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, and North America, I examine the promises and challenges of education for refugees and argue that southern Sudanese refugee women and girls experience gendered and unequal access to education in protracted refugee sites such as the Kakuma refugee camp, as well as in resettled destinations such as Massachusetts. Many of these refugees, who are commonly referred to as the “lost boys and girls,” did not experience schooling in the context of a stable family life; that is why they often reiterate the Sudanese proverb, “Education is my mother and father.” I argue that tertiary education is crucial because it promotes self-reliance. It enables refugees, particularly women, to gain knowledge, voice, and skills which will give them access to better employment opportunities and earnings and thus enhance their equality and independence. Indeed, education provides a context within which to understand and make visible the changing nature of gender relationships of power.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Education, Gender, Women, Girls, Gender Analysis, Gendered Power Relations, Gender Equality/Inequality Regions: Africa, East Africa, Americas, North America Countries: Kenya, South Sudan, Uganda, United States of America

Year: 2012

Citation:

Woodward, Lucinda, and Peter Galvin. 2009. “Halfway to Nowhere: Liberian Former Child Soldiers in a Ghanaian Refugee Camp.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 99 (5): 1003–11.

Authors: Lucinda Woodward, Peter Galvin

Abstract:

This study utilizes Kunz's kinetic model of refugee displacement to interpret the placelessness experienced by Liberian former child soldiers in the Buduburam refugee camp in Ghana. From August to December 2007, a clinical psychologist and a geographer interviewed ten Liberian former child soldiers to determine spatial and social barriers to successful resettlement and the prospects for overcoming these obstacles. Based on the interviews, five areas of intervention were suggested: (1) geographic desegregation and relocation, (2) education and employment, (3) psychological counseling, (4) societal acceptance and reintegration, and (5) security and protection.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Education, Gender, Girls, Boys, Livelihoods, Post-Conflict, Security Regions: Africa, West Africa Countries: Ghana, Liberia

Year: 2009

Citation:

Mulumba, Deborah. 2011. “Encampment of Communities in War-Affected Areas and Its Effect on Their Livelihood Security and Reproductive Health: The Case Of Northern Uganda.” Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review 27 (1): 107-29.

Author: Deborah Mulumba

Abstract:

The paper sought to assess the effect of encampment on the livelihood security and reproductive health needs of IDPs in war affected areas of northern Uganda. The research design was exploratory and descriptive in nature and was largely qualitative, although a small amount of quantitative data are included. Primary and secondary data were collected from a representative sample of 125 women and 66 men. Results show the prevalence of negative effects on their reproductive health, while the effect on their livelihood security in camps is ambivalent. Food rations were supplied by the World Food Programme (WFP). The study found that women and youth fared better than men as they could find income-generating activities to do in the camps. However, camp congestion and idleness resulted in heavy alcohol consumption trends that generated poor attitudes towards work and was characterized by gender-based violence.

Keywords: armed conflict, internally displaced persons, livelihood security, reproductive health, sexual and gender-based violence

Topics: Age, Youth, Armed Conflict, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Refugee/IDP Camps, Gender, Women, Gender-Based Violence, Health, Reproductive Health, Livelihoods, Security, Human Security Regions: Africa, East Africa Countries: Uganda

Year: 2011

Citation:

Rosenfeld, Maya. 2002. “Power Structure, Agency, and Family in a Palestinian Refugee Camp.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (3): 519–51.

Author: Maya Rosenfeld

Abstract:

This article seeks to explain the generation, spread, and reproduction of post-secondary education in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank since the inception of this process in the 1950s and into the 1990s, with a focus on the period of Israeli military occupation. It is based on the findings, qualitative and quantitative, of extended socio-anthropological field research that was carried out in Dheisheh camp in the years 1992–95. The conceptual framework that instructed the research methodology and the interpretation of the findings sought to combine a political-economy approach, which accords centrality to the determinants of the “system” of power relationships—in this case, primarily those of the military-occupation regime—with an analysis of “human agency” or praxis, particularly the reorganization of the division of labor in the refugee family household over the years and generations. Accordingly, the article explores and traces the inter-relationships among (1) “system-imposed” barriers and obstacles to the acquisition of education by Dheisheh refugees and to their education-related job mobility; (2) family-based patterns of organization that developed around the education and employment opportunities of second- and third-generation refugees in the face of impeding structural conditions; (3) the long-range consequences of the resultant “education and labor process” for the transformation of socio-economic relationships within the family and the community.

Topics: Displacement & Migration, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Education, Gender, Gendered Power Relations, Households, Political Economies Regions: MENA, Asia, Middle East Countries: Palestine / Occupied Palestinian Territories

Year: 2002

Citation:

Achvarina, Vera, and Simon F. Reich. 2006. “No Place to Hide: Refugees, Displaced Persons, and the Recruitment of Child Soldiers.” International Security 31 (1): 127–64.

Authors: Vera Achvarina, Simon F. Reich

Abstract:

The global number of child soldiers has grown significantly in the last two decades despite a series of protocols designed to curb this trend. They are generally employed in wars where belligerents spend more time attacking civilian populations than fighting professional armies. Used by both governments and rebel groups, child soldiers epitomize many of the problems associated with states at risk: intergenerational violence, poverty, and the failure of efforts to instill the rule of war. Both scholars in security studies and policymakers have largely regarded child soldier recruitment as a humanitarian issue. But recent events have linked child soldiering to insurgency and terrorism, suggesting that this issue is also developing a security dimension. This article examines contrasting arguments about the causes of child soldiering. Using data drawn from nineteen African conflicts, the authors argue that the major explanation for the significant variation in the percentage of child soldiers recruited is the degree of protection against abduction provided by governments and external actors to camps housing internally displaced persons and refugees.

Topics: Armed Conflict, Combatants, Child Soldiers, Displacement & Migration, IDPs, Refugees, Refugee/IDP Camps, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Girls, Boys, Security, Terrorism, Violence Regions: Africa

Year: 2006