Claiming Space and Contesting Gendered Refugeehood in Exile Issues and Factors of Rohingya Refugee Women's Civic Engagement in Diaspora (original) (raw)
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2024
This open access book investigates the gendered violence and vulnerabilities experienced by Rohingya men and women, drawing on qualitative data from refugee camps in Bangladesh. It shows that in Myanmar, men suffered torture and sexual violence, while women experienced physical, mental and sexual violence, legitimized by patriarchal norms. Sexual violence was wielded as a weapon to coerce their exodus from Myanmar and to disrupt the essential facets of Rohingya femininity, motherhood, and reproductive capabilities. Structural, cultural and symbolic violence affected the Rohingya differently across gender lines. A gendered threat narrative and othering cast women as ‘ugly’ and reproductive threats while men are framed as potential threats to national security and Buddhist nationalism. In Bangladesh, gendered othering continued, with Rohingya men seen as security threats and women as vulnerable victims. This book contributes to peace and conflict studies, gender studies, and migration and refugee studies, by analysing gendered violence.
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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
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Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics
Encampment of the Rohingyas in the camps in Bangladesh has reinforced the continuum of male dominance and violence carried out on women's bodies. This article employs Judith Butler's concepts of precarious life and frames of recognition to analyse three layers of violence against Rohingya refugee women: the violence carried out by the humanitarian regime, by Rohingya men as spaces to express their anger and frustrations, and by local Bangladeshi men as sites to demonstrate their superiority over the Rohingya intruders into the national space. The article draws on secondary literature on Rohingya refugees' lived experiences in camps and semi-structured interviews conducted with humanitarian service providers.
Honour in Transition: changing gender norms among the Rohingya.
Honour in Transition: changing gender norms among the Rohingya., 2020
Communicating with Communities (CwC) team in the Site Management and Site Development Unit at IOM Cox's Bazar. The objective of these consultations is to provide and build a better understanding of the thoughts, practices, traditions, culture, values and perspectives of the Rohingya community as a group of people with different ways of thinking, feeling and behaving. These works are supported by relevant insights and research on the Rohingya population in Myanmar, Bangladesh and other contexts. For further information, please contact IOM's CwC team. This consultation paper has been produced in collaboration with United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and IOM.
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].
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.
International Organization for Migration (IOM) Bangladesh, 2020
IOM’s Site Management, Protection and Transition and Recovery Department teams in Cox’s Bazar piloted the Women’s Participation Project (WPP) in 2018, and the intervention has evolved as a best practice model that is currently being scaled up across IOM’s response. The goal of the project is to better understand how women’s participation in governance structures in camps and camp-like settings could contribute to mitigating and reducing the risks of gender-based violence. The WPP Learning Report provides a snapshot of key lessons learned from the project, focusing on the achievements and challenges of the Women’s Committee in Leda Makeshift Camp as well as cross-cutting issues related to disability inclusion and social cohesion that can be applied and replicated in other similar interventions.