Women’s Participation and Leadership in the Rohingya Refugee Response: Lessons from the Women’s Committee. (original) (raw)
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International Organization for Migration (IOM) Bangladesh, 2022
The case studies presented in Establishing Women and Girls Safe Spaces in the Rohingya Refugee Response: A Guidance Note and Best Practice from Cox´s Bazar provide lessons learned, key challenges and best practice in establishing a safe space in the Rohingya refugee camp context and host community that can inform similar interventions for GBV service providers working in other humanitarian emergency settings. Often the true impacts of these interventions cannot be adequately reflected in donor reports or well captured by numbers alone. This guidance note was also developed to illustrate the value and impact of safe spaces to women and girls and their communities. IOM finds that the anecdotal insights and qualitative information from the women and girls served by these spaces (and the staff working within them) are often the most illuminating of the benefits they provide. A safe space remains one of the most impactful interventions on the lives of affected women and girls who are living in precarious circumstances in displacement or in crisis settings.
Refugee Women at the Sahrawi Camps: Towards Gender Equality
International Journal of Gender Studies in Developing Societies, 2016
This paper examines the different roles women acquire during their experience in post-war refugee settlements. It focuses on the consequences of these new roles in the context of the Sahrawi conflict. The core of the paper addresses the particular form of management of the Tindouf Refugee Camps, which are run by the Polisario Front with the participation of the National Union of Sahrawi Women (UNMS), among others. Is the involvement of Sahrawi women in the administration of the camps making a difference in comparison with other refugee camps? Is any kind of gender dimension being implemented? The paper concludes by taking into account the fragility of the concept of peace, and observing whether the parties have adopted a gender dimension in the reconstruction and peace strategies
Securing Women Rights during Conflict and Emergencies: Rohingya Crisis in Perspective
SCLS Law Review, 2019
The Rohingya, an ethnic minority group that traditionally have lived in the Rakhine State of Myanmar, has been facing severe structural discrimination from the Myanmar state over the years. Rohingya women and girls have also experienced horrific acts of gender-based violence from the Myanmar army in Rakhine. Burmese security forces have committed widespread rape against women and girls as a part of the campaign of ethnic cleansing against Rohingya Muslims. High level of sexual violence against Rohingya women and the alarming rates of unwanted pregnancy is the result of their Rohingya cleansing program. As a result, they flew to southern Bangladesh in fear of persecution. Among the refugees there remains a lion’s share of women and according to a recent report, among the newly arrived 655,000 Rohingya in Bangladesh, 60 percent are women.1 From this statistics, it is easy to perceive the threats of any crisis situation poses to women. Structural inequalities put these Rohingya women, who have just escaped unspeakable horror in their native country, in a more vulnerable position to all forms of violence. State before they fled to Bangladesh and the refugee camps in Cox Bazar area. In these refugee camps, gender-based violence continues to be widespread, much like other refugee camps in other parts of the world. Rohingya women and girls are vulnerable because of their gender, refugee status and ethnic affiliation. The problem is now even acute amid the reality of scarcity of food, medicare and shelter since Bangladesh is already overburdened with its densely populated reality. Since at least 400 people have been killed and thousands of homes and villages have been burned, there is no nearer possibility of repatriating them in their own homeland. The Myanmar government even does not recognize the roughly 1.1 million Rohingya as citizens, leaving them stateless. Among them, women and children have suffered the most
2018
Reports of gender-based violence (GBV) are common in camps for refugees and displaced populations. In the Dadaab refugee camps in north-eastern Kenya, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and CARE International (CARE) implement programmes that aim to both respond to and prevent GBV. A cornerstone of this work has been to train refugees, known as refugee community workers, to deliver aspects of GBV prevention and response work in order to develop a broader implementation of traditional GBV outreach, community mobilisation, and case management. To date, there has been limited rigorous research on this broader GBV case management plus task sharing approach in the context of a refugee camp setting. To address this key gap in evidence, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), in collaboration with IRC and CARE, have sought to assess this model to understand its feasibility, acceptability, and influence a...
Domestic Violence and Displacement: Gendered Social Norms in the Rohingya Refugee Response.
4th European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV), 2021
Gender norms govern the lives and behaviours of Rohingya communities yet there is little research on how displacement and the humanitarian response have resulted in redefined norms. Using a feminist approach and qualitative research design, 27 focus group discussions and 10 key informant interviews were completed with Rohingya men and women in 8 refugee camps through a purposive sampling method. Indicators of izzot and purdah are changing – Rohingya women carefully negotiate to engage in activities considered less honourable, for traditional values. Many of these changes are highly contested and have resulted in backlash against women and girls including increased rates of intimate partner violence. Findings are critical in understanding women ́s roles and status within families and communities, highlighting the risks and opportunities in humanitarian and displacement settings. Bahtia, U., Brar, A. Gupta, D., Kapoor, R., Kim, E., Singh, S. and Smith, M. (2021) ‘Domestic Violence and Displacement: Gendered Social Norms in the Rohingya Refugee Response.’ Symposium 5: Domestic Violence in South Asia: Multi-stakeholder Perspectives and Practices. 4th European Conference on Domestic Violence. University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia. Hybrid Format. [Symposium Presentation, Sept. 13th, 2021].
Ethnicities, 2022
Rohingya is one of the ethnic minority groups that has faced profound ethnic violence against them in their home country, Myanmar. Almost a million Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh and are currently living in extremely precarious conditions near the Myanmar–Bangladesh border. Despite the sufferings and oppressions of all Rohingya, women, in particular, have been victims of sexual violence. Using various information sources, this paper analyzes different dimensions of the gender-based violence that has endured in Myanmar for decades. This paper also highlights the health and wellness of Rohingya women, including impacts made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, it provides a framework for reducing gender-based violence in the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh. Even though this paper focuses on the Rohingya crisis, insights are relevant to other contexts facing similar social, political, and humanitarian crises, particularly in the Global South.
Interdisciplinary Journal of Digital Ubiquitous and Situated Learning, 2021
and the former Yugoslavia (World Health Organization, 2002). The situation is often exacerbated by the accepted social norms of patriarchy and their lowly position in the gender hierarchy of the society. Domestic violence and female genital mutilation are extremely rampant yet hushed affairs in several societies. It can be closely associated to under-development, lack of law and order and the deprivation of basic human rights (Castles, Loughna, & Crawley, 2003). Women, therefore become dangerously susceptible to trafficking, sexual, physical and economic violence and severe psycho-social trauma at all times i.e., pre-transit, during transit and post-transit. Furthermore, post-transit, in a host country, the camp is supposed to be a secure environment for particularly women and young girls. But numerous reports from refugee camps in Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan allude to tales of daily sufferings and constant fear of exploitation. Women in camps in Libya and Morocco have reported sexual harassment by detention guards and security staff (Wintour, 2019) (Freedman & Jamal, 2008). In Serbia and Slovenia, women refused food and water to avoid using toilets as they perceived it as unsafe or inappropriate (Amnesty International, 2016). Until the last decade, women were only considered part of families and not individuals who needed equal support as single men. Asylum-seeking women worldwide are rendered almost invisible by such systemic flaws in the UN Refugee apparatuses and regional Refugee Status Determination processes. In addition, the displacement of women outside their homes and countries deranges the most basic needs of women and their ability to carry out their prescribed responsibilities towards their Interdisciplinary Journal of Digital Ubiquitous and Situated Learning Volume II, Issue II, November 2021 69 families. The demoniac breaking apart of social orders and institutional safeguards of the society, exposes women to the most barbaric forms of unrestrained male behaviour (Beyani, 1995). Rohingya Refugees: The World's Most Persecuted Rohingyas are a religious, ethnic, cultural and linguistic minority group concentrated in the northwestern state of Arakan (later renamed as Rakhine in 1989) in Myanmar and are followers of Islam falling under the Sunni sect. They form a minority in the Buddhist majority population of Myanmar who are of East Asian heritage. This stark ethnic differentiation has been principal to the conflict and the repeated waves of persecution and mass exodus. In 1982, Myanmar amended its Citizenship Law which excluded Rohingyas from the list of nationally recognized ethnic groups of the country. The discrimination on the basis of race became systematic and gave rise to armed conflict when the government titled them as "illegal Bengali migrants" (Cheung, 2012). The arbitrary revocation of their citizenship resulted in their current state of statelessness. Myanmar's military-led mass atrocities peaked during its peak campaign of ethnic cleansing in 2017 wherein 7,40,000 Rohingyas were forced to flee the country. The UNbacked International Fact-Finding Mission to Myanmar (IIFFMM, 2019) brought forth serious threat on 6,00,000 Rohingyas still stuck in the country of "killings, rapes and gang rapes, torture, forced displacement and other grave rights violations". The report which included 1,227 interviews of victims as well as witnesses, inferred that the genocidal intent on the part of the State has strengthened and that there continues to lie a grave risk of life as the 'clearance operations' may recur (IIFFMM, 2019). Currently, the prima facie basis is used for recognition of Rohingyas as asylumseekers in India. In 2019, India was housing around 41,000 refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR. Rohingya and Afghan refugees comprise the largest refugee caseload under UNHCR's mandate in the country, with a smaller number from the Middle Eastern and African countries mostly residing in urban and suburban areas (UNHCR, n.d.). They Rohingyas particularly are concentrated in regions of Jammu, Delhi and Hyderabad where UNHCR or its Implementing Partners are involved. Other clusters of Rohingyas are scattered around in the country.