Flood, an earthquake, an armed conflict between two states, a civil war, persecution – there are many reasons why people may be forced to flee their homes and leave their relatives and belongings behind. They find themselves homeless, often fearful and traumatized, and in a situation of displacement in which life changes radically and the future is uncertain. According to the annual report of the UNHCR entitled “Global Trends” the number of people forcibly uprooted by conflict and persecution worldwide stood at 42 million at the end of 2009, out of which 16 million people are refugees and asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced people uprooted within their own countries. More than eighty percent of the total number is made up of women and their dependent children. An overwhelming majority of these women come from the developing world. South Asia is the fourth largest refugee-producing region in the world and again, a majority of these refugees are made up of women. Keeping these facts in mind this module tries to indicate that both displacement and asylum is undoubtedly a gendered experience. At least in the context of South Asia it results from and is related to the marginalization of women by the South Asian states. These states at best patronize women and at worse infantilize, disenfranchise and de-politicize them. It is in the person of a refugee that women’s marginality reaches its climactic height.

The nation building projects in South Asia have led to the creation of a homogenized identity of citizenship. State machineries seek to create a “unified” and “national” citizenry that accepts the central role of the existing elite. This is done through privileging majoritarian, male and monolithic cultural values that deny the space to difference. Such a denial has often led to the segregation of minorities, on the basis of caste, religion and gender from the collective ‘we’. One way of marginalizing women from body politic is done by targeting them and displacing them in times of state verses community conflict. As a refugee, a woman loses her individuality, subjectivity, citizenship and her ability to make political choices. As political non-subjects refugee women emerge as the symbol of difference between ‘us’/citizens and its ‘other’/refugees/non-citizens. By taking some select examples from South Asia in this module we will addresses such theoretical assumptions. Here the category of refugee women will include women who have crossed international borders and those who are internally displaced can also be regarded as potential refugees.

For understanding gendered nature of forced migration in South Asia we intend to divide this module into four sub-themes namely, a) violence, livelihood & gendered nature of Forced Migration, b) camps & the gendered experiences – a review of the legal discourse, c) refugees, IDPs and issue of Public Health and d) women refugees and IDPs- agency and participation.

History Revisited

The partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 witnessed probably the largest refugee movement in modern history. About 8 million Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan to resettle in India while about 6-7 million Muslims went to Pakistan. Such transfer of population was accompanied by horrific violence. Some 50,000 Muslim women in India and 33,000 non-Muslim women in Pakistan were abducted, abandoned or separated from their families. Women’s experiences of migration, abduction and destitution during partition and State’s responses to it is a pointer to the relationship between women’s position as marginal participants in state politics and gender subordination as perpetrated by the State. In this context, the experiences of abducted women and their often forcible repatriation by the State assumes enormous importance today when thousands of South Asian women are either refugees, migrants or stateless within the subcontinent. Abducted women were not considered as legal entities with political and constitutional rights. All choices were denied to them and while the state patronised them verbally by portraying their “need” for protection it also infantilised them by giving decision making power to their guardians who were defined by the male pronoun “he”. By insisting that the abducted women could not represent themselves and had to be represented, the State marginalised them from the decision making process and made them non-participants. Even today the refugee women do not represent themselves. Officials represent them. For the abducted women it was their sexuality that threatened their security and the honour of the nation. Thus, their vulnerability was focused on their body. This made all women susceptible to such threats and so had to be protected/controlled. By denying agency to the abducted women the State made it conceivable to deny agency to all women. Readings taken from Ritu Menon and Kamla Bhasin’s Borders and Boundaries portray the trauma faced by these women who could never be considered as full citizens.

Refugee women from other parts of South Asia reflect trauma faced by women belonging to communities considered as disorderly by the state. Ethnic tensions between the Tamil minority and Sinhala majority leading to armed conflict since 1980s have led to several waves of refugees from Sri Lanka. They are victims of a failed nationalizing project. By 1989 there were about 160,000 refugees from Sri Lanka to India, again largely Tamil women with their dependents. Initially the State Government provided these refugees with shelter and rations, but still many of them preferred to live outside the camps. They were registered and issued with refugee certificates. In terms of education and health both registered and unregistered refugees enjoy the same rights as the nationals. Nevertheless in absence of specific legislation their legal status remained ambiguous.

Displaced women are threatened by deprivation of property, goods and services and deprivation of their right to return to their homes of origin as well as by violence and insecurity. Of particular concern is the fact that sexual violence against uprooted women and girls is employed as a method of persecution in systematic campaigns of terror and intimidation forcing members of a particular ethnic, cultural or religious group to flee their homes. Women and children continue to be vulnerable to violence and exploitation while in flight, in countries of asylum and resettlement and during and after repatriation. At the same time refugee, displaced and migrant women in most cases display strength, endurance and resourcefulness and can contribute positively to countries of resettlement or to their country of origin on their return. Women make an important but often unrecognized contribution as peace educators both in their families and in their societies. Against this backdrop the term ‘gender’ in the module will thus be used to refer to the construction of differences between men and women and ideas of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’.

Women in the Camps

Generally, refugees or internally displaced persons (IDPs) may have no other option than to seek protection and assistance in camps. Although camps are necessarily a choice of last resort, they often represent the only option for displaced persons in need of assistance, safety and security. In situations of conflict and natural disaster it seems initially that camps may be needed for only few months. Often the reality is that camps last for years and sometimes even for decades. Yet it is true that regardless of their life span, they can only offer temporary assistance and protection and do not represent a durable solution for displaced persons. Despite their temporary nature, therefore it becomes imperative that camps exist in order to ensure that the basic human right to life with dignity is upheld for the camp community. Once camps are established efficient and sensitive management is needed to ensure that they function effectively in what are often complex and challenging circumstances. Where humanitarian assistance and protection in a camp are not organized properly, coordinated, and monitored, the vulnerability and dependence of the camp population increases. Gaps in assistance, or duplication of humanitarian aid, can lead to partial and inequitable provision of services and inadequate protection.

History reveals that though refugees think camps as transitory safe spaces, where people seek protection till they return home, however, unfortunately refugee concerns for security in camps are rarely met. The experts working on the camps have regarded camps as ‘political islands’, which have the potential of generating conflict and straining local economic and other resources. The campmates are regarded as the ‘other’ even though in the case of refugees, who are part of the international refugee regime which might be recognized by the State. In the case of the internally displaced, the situation is further complicated as they are citizens with same rights and cannot be derecognized. Their status therefore depends on how the local population views their rights and ultimately the acceptance or closure of the camp depends to a large extent on these communities.

We still have insufficient detailed accounts of camp lives of women partition refugees. What we have is mostly stories and some autobiographical writings. After all we have to remember that the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 witnessed probably the largest refugee movement in modern history. About 8 million Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan to resettle in India while about 6-7 million Muslims went to Pakistan. Such transfer of population was accompanied by horrific violence. Some 50,000 Muslim women in India and 33,000 non-Muslim women in Pakistan were abducted, abandoned or separated from their families. Women’s experiences of migration, abduction and destitution during partition and State’s responses to it is a pointer to the relationship between women’s position as marginal participants in state politics and gender subordination as perpetrated by the State. In this context the experiences of abducted women and their often forcible repatriation by the State assumes enormous importance today when thousands of South Asian women are either refugees, migrants or stateless within the subcontinent. Abducted women were not considered as legal entities with political and constitutional rights. All choices were denied to them and while the state patronized them verbally by portraying their “need” for protection it also infantilized them by giving decision making power to their guardians who were defined by the male pronoun “he”.

Initially after independence, India laid down executive policies for resettlement of people moving in after Partition 1947. In this Indian regime, spaces for women were created. The largest population from the about 9 million who crossed borders first sought refuge in camps. The Indian example of camps is placed alongside the European experience even though Malikki places the refugee camp as a “standardized, generalizable technology of power…in the management of mass displacement” in post-World War II Europe. The camps in India existed from 1947, when run by private organizations, and later in 1948 by the government and so institutionalized. Camps in the West e.g. in Punjab, existed for a short time while in the Eastern part of India they remained for a longer time. In the east, different waves kept arriving and the camps kept springing up. Most, however, were for aged, disabled and widowed mothers. The widows were sent to Titagarh and Kartickpur camps in 24 Parganas and Ranaghat of Nadia in West Bengal. The latter became the largest rehabilitation centre for ‘distressed’ women. Later these women were provided huts as a resettlement measure. Grants were given for marriage of girls, remarriage of widows, for cremations and milk for children and pregnant women and health problems such as T.B.. There was an attempt to provide comprehensive needs but these spaces, though materially better than most camps of today, did not always provide protection from violence. As per official record, during partition four million people were killed and others faced forced conversion and abduction.

Even today the refugee women do not represent themselves. Officials represent them. Refugee women from other parts of South Asia reflect trauma faced by women belonging to communities considered as disorderly by the state. Ethnic tensions between the Tamil minority and Sinhala majority leading to armed conflict since 1980s have led to several waves of refugees from Sri Lanka. They are victims of a failed nationalizing project. By 1989 there were about 160,000 refugees from Sri Lanka to India, again largely Tamil women with their dependents. Initially the State Government provided these refugees with shelter and rations, but still many of them preferred to live outside the camps. They were registered and issued with refugee certificates. In terms of education and health both registered and unregistered refugees enjoy the same rights as the nationals. Nevertheless in absence of specific legislation their legal status remained ambiguous. The precarious nature of their status became clearer in the aftermath of the former Prime Minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination. All sympathy for these women disappeared after Gandhi’s assassination and in the Indian state perception they were tarnished by a collective guilt and so became expendable.

After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination the politicians began to shun the refugees. As most of these were women they were initially considered harmless but with the number of female suicide bombers swelling there was a marked change in Government of India’s (GOI) attitude to women refugees. Soon the government turned a blind eye when touts came to recruit young women from the refugee camps in Tamil Nadu to work as “maids” in countries of Middle East. Most of these women were then smuggled out of India and sent to the Gulf countries. Often they were badly abused. By April 1993 refugee camps were reduced from 237 to 132 in Tamil Nadu and 1 in Orissa. In Indian camps refugee families are given a dole of Rs.150 a month, which is often stopped arbitrarily. Women are discouraged from taking up employment outside the camps. During multiple displacements women who have never coped with such situations before are often at a loss for necessary papers. When separated from male members of their family they are vulnerable to sexual abuse. The camps are not conducive for the personal safety of women, as they enjoy no privacy. In fact, when they get shelter in camps with other women as well as men, their private space get merged with the public space. Above all, what is more worrying is that, without any institutional support women become particularly vulnerable to human traffickers. These people aided by network of criminals force women into prostitution. Millions of rupees change hands in this trade and more lives get wrecked every day.

Many displaced women who are unable to cross international border swell the ranks of the internally displaced. Even in IDP (Internally Displaced Person) camps women are responsible for holding together fragmented families. For example, today roughly one-third of all households in Sri Lanka are headed by women and the numbers increase many fold in the camps for internally displaced.

The overwhelming presence of women among the refugee populations is not an accident of history. It is a way by which states have made women political non-subjects. The depolitization of women becomes marked in refugee and IDP camps, which are the epicenter of marginalization of groups that are considered as alien or unwanted. The women in the camps face a double bind. They face a hostile world outside of the camps as they are marked as aliens and within the camps they are victimized by their own patriarchies. The physical structure of these camps emphasizes the total disregard of women’s concerns. The camps are often built in such a way that there is usually a complete lack of privacy of women. Quarters for each family are separated by flimsy sarees and in such quarters women are forced to live, eat, change, sleep, make love and procreate. Often the camps are fitted with toilets and women are not forced to go to fields for effication but even that is a source of problem. The toilets are always at the back of the camps with dim lighting and so single women going there at night becomes a prey for the unsavory elements that these camps are teeming with. Women therefore avoid these camps at night often leading to health complications such as urinary tract infection and in extreme cases kidney infection. When there are budget cuts in the camps the first casualty are girls schools which are considered as having a very low priority. Women heads of household face added problems in many camps. Sometimes male camp leaders ask them for sexual favors, at other times they are last to get rations and at other times they are abused by the powers that be as was seen in UNHCR run camps in Jaffa. However, even though women face many abuses in the camps but everything pales in comparison to their voicelessness. Even in IDP camps women are unable to exercise their citizenship rights. They completely lose their voice and right to represent themselves and becomes completely dependent to those who represent them such as lawyers or women NGO leaders. By losing their voice they lose their ability to access rights. Their lack of mobility outside of the camps makes them isolated and completely robs them of their right to make free choices.

Despite the excessive abuse and violence that women are exposed to, they are resilient and resourceful in camps. Sometimes they themselves manage adversities, while at other times the community rallies around them. Sometimes the local women’s organizations support women in camps in fighting gender-based violence. In Bangladesh, UNHCR renewed the camp layouts to improve their overview from different directions to diminish security risks, water is provided during the day and latrines on the outskirts have been moved (Personal information, UNHCR, 2002). In Sri Lankan camps in Tamil Nadu, women have established committees (Visit to camps in Chennai by author in 2004). These prove that camps can be islands of protection if different agencies and women’s groups assist women to take up the challenges.

By making women permanent refugee, living a savage life in camps, it is easy to homogenize them, ignore their identity, individuality and subjectivity. By reducing refugee women to the status of mere victims in our own narratives we accept the homogenization of women and their de-politicization. We legitimize a space where states can make certain groups of people political non-subjects. With these facts under consideration this module tends to discuss the causes of such de-politicization that often results in displacements keeping the refugees, IDPs and stateless women in mind and considers policy alternatives that might help in their rehabilitation and care in South Asia.

In this context one can refer CRG’s study entitled Voices of Internally Displaced in South Asia. It was a pilot survey, which hints at certain trends and features and suggests the need for deeper enquires into the fundamental issues of rights of the displaced, responsibilities of the states and the international community towards the victims of displacement, questions of representation, citizenship, democracy, and sovereignty.

Women Protection in Refuge/Displacement: National and International Legal Regimes

As social actors women are vulnerable but forced to shoulder the burdens of refuge. Women’s status in camps is linked to the standards that nations apply. The Refugee Convention, like other Conventions and laws of the time, was Euro-centric in nature and the word gender/ women, was not included. The Convention does not operate in South Asia nor are there any refugee specific national laws, so dependence has to be on non-refugee International National Standards. These include certain initiatives such as recognition by the Executive Committee of the UNHCR in 1985 which, for the first time, recognized the importance of inclusion of women and three years later the first Consultation on Refugee Women was called. Consequently in 1991 the UNHCR issued Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women to address their needs and enhance their decision making power. This was followed by the 2003 Guidelines on sexual and gender-based violence to ensure protection a primary mandate of the UNHCR.

The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement under principle 11 stipulate the prevention of “Rape, mutilation, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and other outrages upon personal dignity, such as acts of gender-specific violence, forced prostitution and any form of indecent assault” (United Nations, 1998). In 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action was the major initiative to recognize discrimination against women and the specific problems faced by them and added protection strategies. The role of the international community increased as violence against women became increasingly visible due to writings on gender issues and media portrayals. One of the most important documents produced is the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) following the atrocities in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia. It defined violence as a war crime (United Nations, A/CONF.83). In 2000 the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 came into being (S/RES/1325 and UN. A/60/L.1.2005). This comprehensive document calls for protection of women living in conflict zones and mandates their involvement in peace processes. In 2005, Governments meeting at the United Nations (World Summit) reiterated the importance of the document (A/60/L.1.2005).

There are no specific national laws for treating refugee/IDP women but legal and implementation processes provide an insight into women’s status as refugees or IDPs in South Asia. It is pertinent to point out in this context that, none of the South Asian states are signatories to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees or the 1967 Protocol. As India is the largest South Asian state it should be interesting to see how women refugees are dealt with here. In India Articles 14, 21 and 25 under Fundamental Rights guarantee the Right to Equality, Right to Life and Liberty and Freedom of Religion of citizens and aliens alike. Like the other South Asian states India had ratified the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1993. Although there is no incorporation of international treaty obligations in the Municipal laws still rights accruing to the refugees in India under Articles 14, 21 and 25 can be enforced in the Supreme Court under Article 32 and in the High Court under Article 226. The other guiding principles for refugees are the executive orders that have been passed under the Foreigners Act of 1946 and the Passport Act of 1967. The National Human Rights Commission has also taken up questions regarding the protection of refugees. It approached the Supreme Court under Article 32 of the Constitution and stopped the Expulsion of Chakma refugees from Northeast India. Yet all these orders are ad hoc in nature and the legal position remains nebulous. This is true not just of India but all of South Asia.

Pakistan also operated under the 1946 Foreigners Act. According to the provisions of this Act no foreigner could enter Pakistan without a valid passport or visa. Such an act can be detrimental for all persons fleeing for their lives and especially for women who are unused to handling documentation proving citizenship. When six to seven million persons entered Pakistan after partition this Act proved useless and had to be supplemented by the Registration of Claims Act of 1956 and the Displaced Persons (Compensation and Rehabilitation) Act 1958. Such Acts did not establish a legal regime for refugees in Pakistan, only the claims of a group of refugees. The ad hoc nature of Pakistani refugee regime continued. As for Sri Lanka, it is not a refugee receiving country but a refugee generating country. There are two Acts, which are especially detested by displaced people, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and Emergency Regulations. Sri Lanka does not have any special acts that help or privilege internally displaced women who are vulnerable to abuse because of their gender. As for other state laws in South Asia, Nepal has an Immigration Act of 1992, which provide that no foreigner is allowed to enter or stay in Nepal without a visa. His Majesty’s Government has full authority to expel any foreigner committing immigration offences. Most South Asian states have punitive measures for immigration offences but hardly any measures for helping displaced people. Further, none of these States have made any special stipulations for women refugees although a majority of all South Asian refugees are women.