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V O L U M E 1 • N U M B E R 1 2 6 • 2 0 0 2
WOMEN:Seeking A
Better Deal
The Lost Girlsof Sudan
3R E F U G E E S
2 E D I T O R I A L
A double ending to a tragic story.
4Efforts to give refugee women a better deal have made progress. But a lot more needs to be done.
StatisticsThe world of refugee women at a glance.
SudanFirst it was the Lost Boys of Sudan. Now it is the Lost Girls of Sudan.
By Emmanuel Nyabera
OpinionWomen need to be included in peacemaking.By Swanee Hunt
14 A PHOTO ESSAY ON REFUGEE WOMEN
OlympicsPlaying games is good for you.
By Danya Chaikel
EducationBack to the classroom for Afghanistan’s girls.
By Michelle Brown and Veronika Martin
30 P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S
From refugee to national president.
31 Q U O T E U N Q U O T E
C O V E R S T O R Y
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4 In the last few years, thelot of refugee womenhas improved with new
international and nationallaws, humanitarian guidelinesand programs tacklingeverything from illiteracy tosexual violence. But muchmore needs to be done tohelp women like theserefugees from Sierra Leone.
14This photo essayunderscores not onlythe brutality of
refugee life, but the resilienceof its women victims.
8 It was a terrible story ofbiblical proportions—thousands of youngsters
wandering for years in theAfrican bush. Until now theworld has only heard onepart of the story.
EEddiittoorr::Ray WilkinsonFFrreenncchh eeddiittoorr::Mounira Skandrani
CCoonnttrriibbuuttoorrss::UNHCR staff worldwide
EEddiittoorriiaall aassssiissttaanntt::Virginia Zekrya
PPhhoottoo ddeeppaarrttmmeenntt::Suzy Hopper,Anne Kellner
DDeessiiggnn::Vincent Winter Associés
PPrroodduuccttiioonn::Françoise Peyroux
AAddmmiinniissttrraattiioonn::Anne-Marie Le Galliard
DDiissttrriibbuuttiioonn::John O’Connor, Frédéric Tissot
MMaapp::UNHCR — Mapping Unit
HHiissttoorriiccaall ddooccuummeennttssUNHCR archives
RREEFFUUGGEEEESS is published by the PublicInformation Section of the UnitedNations High Commissioner forRefugees. The opinions expressed bycontributors are not necessarily thoseof UNHCR. The designations andmaps used do not imply the expressionof any opinion or recognition on thepart of UNHCR concerning the legalstatus of a territory or of its authorities.
RREEFFUUGGEEEESS reserves the right to edit allarticles before publication. Articlesand photos not covered by copyright ©may be reprinted without prior permis-sion. Please credit UNHCR and thephotographer. Glossy prints and slideduplicates of photographs not coveredby copyright © may be made availablefor professional use only.
English and French editions printedin Italy by AMILCARE PIZZIS.p.A.,Milan.Circulation: 232,000 in English,French, German, Italian, Japanese,Spanish, Arabic, Russian andChinese.
IISSSSNN 00225522--779911 XX
CCoovveerr:: Going home. U N H C R / R . C H A L A S A N I / C S • T Z A • 1 9 9 6
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N ° 1 2 6 - 2 0 0 2
2 R E F U G E E S
The odyssey was a stirring tale of survival.
Thousands of young people, some as young
as seven or eight, forced from their homes
by a vicious civil war, wandering for years, sometimes
literally without clothing, surviving on roots and
leaves. The majority lost their parents. Some were
killed by lions,
crocodiles and bandits
during their travels.
They eventually
arrived at a refugee
camp in northern
Kenya where they sat
in the swirling dust of
the African plains for
several more years.
Their story eventual-
ly seeped into the
wider world. The
United States agreed
to resettle several
thousand of these
young people.
They were interviewed extensively by the media
on their biblical wanderings and their collision with a
strange new world which included cars, washing
machines and television for the first time in their lives.
Everyone featured was a boy. Everyone resettled
was a boy. The ‘Lost Boys of Sudan’ became celebrities.
The missing factor in this story was that many of
the youngsters who survived were girls.
In exile, the boys managed to maintain their per-
sonal identities. It was thus perhaps easier to identify
with them and help them.
The girls were often absorbed into foster homes,
becoming domestic servants cooking, cleaning, chop-
ping wood and on occasion entering into ‘arranged’
marriages and fetching a dowry for their adoptive par-
ents. Their individual identities melded into the daily
routine of the camp and they were overlooked.
The story of the lost boys and girls of Sudan neatly
underlines the often differing problems and fortunes of
refugee women and refugee men highlighted in this
issue of the magazine.
It is undoubtedly true that progress has been made
in the last two decades to tackle women's problems
including adoption of international laws, national legis-
lation, innovative programs and a greater awareness on
the part of both humanitarian workers and refugees
themselves.
It is equally clear more needs to be done—a renewed
commitment by humanitarian agencies, programs re-
examined and perhaps reshaped, new approaches tried.
One of the most fundamental problems, paradoxi-
cally, is the widespread attitude of looking at women
merely as ‘hapless’ refugees and concentrating on their
vulnerability to the detriment of developing their
strengths.
Like the Sudanese girls, Vaira Vike-Freiberga fled a
country at war and trekked through several countries
for a number of years. Through her own strength,
resourcefulness and a little luck her life changed dra-
matically. Today, she is the President of Latvia and as
Refugees reports elsewhere in the magazine is deter-
mined to continue to fight for the displaced: “I don't
know whether we can do it in the next five years or
50 or 100, but I do know we have no choice. We must
act.”
Why the difference?
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The ‘forgotten’ Lost Girls of Sudan in aKenyan refugee camp.
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Even when refugees reach‘safety’ in a camp, life canstill be hellish.
It was another tragic flood ofrefugees, like so many whichhave scarred the African conti-nent in the last few decades—tens of thousands of terrified
Angolans fleeing war in their home-land, trudging across a battered andsavage landscape in search of safety.Neighboring Zaire, a land of poten-tially fabulous wealth also broughtto its knees by the despotic rule ofthe late President Mobutu SeseSeko, nevertheless responded kindly,as so many African nations do, to thenewly arrived refugees.
Food was distributed and largeplots of land earmarked for the An-golans. The criteria for assistance inthe 1980s was simple: It was allocated toall “able-bodied male heads of household.”
Field officer Christine Mougne was ap-palled. “Aren’t there any refugee womenhere?” she recalls asking her colleagues.“It hadn’t entered anybody’s mind that 30percent of the refugees were women.”
“We knocked some heads together,”Mougne said. “It took time, but eventu-ally the women were also given help.”
Another crisis, another decade, but themindset remained the same. As armies ofKurds fled the mayhem of Iraq in the wake
of the Gulf War in 1991, UNHCR emer-gency officer John Telford rememberedthat after a period of utter chaos, an or-derly food distribution system was put intoplace for the displaced civilians.
Unfortunately, all the appointed foodmarshals were local men and little aidreached any women.
“Had that group (of women) stood outin some way—visually or physically, be-cause of their ethnic background, or a re-ligious difference, or whatever—we wouldhave made sure they got food,” he said in
an interview shortly after the op-eration. “But because they werewomen, it didn’t even occur to us.It didn’t even occur to me, I haveto admit—to my shame.”
The story was similar forwomen staff entering the hu-manitarian field. Male personnelfar outnumbered women, whowere often ‘invisible’ at the higherlevels of aid organizations. Onenew recruit interested in genderissues was told by a female col-league, “You have to accept thatentering the world of social ser-vices (for women) you will becomea pariah within UNHCR.”
In any civilian exodus, womenand children normally make up an esti-mated 75 percent of a refugee population.But despite that telling statistic, prevail-ing attitudes should, perhaps, not havecome as a particular shock. After all, the1951 Geneva Convention—the Magna Cartaof international refugee law—was craftedby an all-male panel and defined a refugeeas someone with a well-founded fear ofpersecution based on race, religion, na-tionality, membership of a particular so-cial group and political opinion. Thefounding fathers did not deliberately omit
6 R E F U G E E S
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Flight is often a terrifying ordeal. Kosovar womenreach safety in 1999.
Do refugeewomen get afair deal? There’s beenprogress, butthere’s still along way to go
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persecution based on gender—it was noteven considered.
VOICES: “Women are left out of every-thing. We do not participate in planning ordesigning programs which are aimed at us.We are second-class citizens when it comesto food, water and shelter distributions. Weremain the world’s invisible refugees.”
In later decades the fight to give womena better deal, both in the wider world andon the humanitarian scene, progressed fit-
fully in many parts of the world.The situation began to change for
refugee women in the late 1980s and ac-celerated through the last decade of the20th century, but many questions remainrelevant today: How much real advance-ment has been made? How quickly isprogress being achieved? Is this goodenough? What more needs to be done?
To be sure, there have been break-throughs and achievements in many ar-eas. Multiple policy statements and gen-der guidelines were adopted by the U.N.
refugee agency and other organizations. As long ago as 1985 UNHCR’s Executive
Committee endorsed its first Conclusionon Refugee Women and International Pro-tection and three years later organized itsfirst comprehensive Consultations onRefugee Women. In 1991 Guidelines on theProtection of Refugee Women followedand the agency regularly reviews and up-dates key policies.
In 1984 the European Parliament ap-proved what was then a revolutionary res-
There are approximately 50million uprooted peoplearound the world—refugeeswho have sought safety in an-other country and people dis-placed within their own coun-try. Between 75-80 percent ofthem are women and children.
The United Nations High Com-missioner for Refugees caresfor 21.8 million of these peo-ple. Around half of them arewomen and girls.
The majority of people fleetheir homes because of warand the proportion of war vic-tims who are civilians leaped inrecent decades from five per-cent to over 90 percent of ca-sualties. Eighty percent of ca-sualties by small arms arewomen and children, who faroutnumber military casualties.
Domestic violence is the mostwidespread form of abuseagainst women with betweenone quarter and one half ofwomen having been abused by
a partner. Only 44 countriesspecifically protect womenagainst domestic violence.
Females are subject towidespread sexual abuse. InBosnia and Rwanda rape be-came a deliberate aim of war.More than 20,000 Muslimwomen were raped in Bosnia ina single year, 1992, and a greatmajority of female survivors ofRwanda’s 1994 genocide wereassaulted.
One in five women worldwideare victims of rape, many byknown attackers. Between 40-60 percent of sexual assaultsare committed against girlsyounger than 16.
More than 300,000 youngsters,many of them femalerefugees, are currently servingas child soldiers around theworld. The girls are oftenforced into different forms ofsexual slavery.
More than 16.4 million
women today have HIV/AIDSand in the last few years, thepercentage of women infectedhas risen from 41 to 47 percentof the affected population. Insub-Saharan Africa, teenagegirls are five times more likelyto be infected than boys.
The introduction of sex educa-tion and safety procedures canhave dramatic results. InUganda, the rates of sexualinfection among educatedwomen dropped by morethan half between 1995 and1997.
Around 170 countries areparty to the Convention onthe Elimination of All Forms ofDiscrimination Against Womenand its Optional Protocol-major instruments to protectwomen’s rights and to achievegender equality.
The Statute of the Interna-tional Criminal Court wasadopted in 1998, giving itpower to adjudicate a wide
spectrum of offenses includ-ing rape, sexual slavery, en-forced prostitution andforced pregnancy.
The majority of traffickedpeople are women, especiallythose bound for the world’ssex industries. Females are par-ticularly vulnerable to traffick-ing because many have littleindividual security, economicopportunity or property orland ownership. The largestnumbers of trafficked womenare from South-East andSouth Asia and the formerSoviet Union nations. Manyvictims are kidnapped or soldinto slavery by their own fami-lies.
An estimated 45,000 house-holds in Rwanda are headedby children, 90 percent ofthem girls.
An estimated 1.3 billion peopleworldwide, 70 percent ofthem women, live in absolutepoverty on less than $1 per day.
The world of refugee women at a glance
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THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF THE 1951 GENEVA CONVENTION DID NOT DELIBERATELY OMIT PERSECUTION BASED ON GENDER—
IT WAS NOT EVEN CONSIDERED.
ÃContinued on page 10
8 R E F U G E E S
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It was a terrible ordeal for thousands of boys and girls-but each group
Remember The Lost Boys of Sudan?Well, what about The Lost Girls of Sudan?The amazing odyssey of thousands of youths ripped from their
homes in the late 1980s by fighting in Sudan and forced to wanderfor years across the East African savannah became the stuff ofAfrican legend.
They eventually reachedKenya where they languishedin flyblown camps for years, be-coming known as The LostBoys of Sudan, intriguingrefugee officials by their verysurvival, before the UnitedStates eventually agreed to re-settle nearly 4,000 whose par-ents were dead or missing.
As they flew in small groupsto all parts of America, the boysbecame instant celebrities, in-terviewed endlessly in the me-dia about their amazing sur-vival, their reactions to seeingsnow, washing machines andskyscrapers for the first timeand their thoughts about start-ing brand new lives.
Forgotten in all of this hooplawere the fates of several thou-sand girls aged between eightand 10 who had undergone similarordeals.
Achol Kuol (not her real name) wasseven when she, her mother and fourbrothers fled their southern Su-danese village because of viciousfighting between rebels and govern-ment troops. They trudged first toEthiopia, returned to Sudan and thenheaded south to Kenya in a trek that lasted for years.
“There was little water to drink, we survived on leaves andwild fruit,” the teenager recalled. “Some of the girls were eatenby lions.” Somewhere in the bush she lost touch with her mother,who is still missing.
Another girl, Adeu, recalls crossing the River Gilo on the Su-danese-Ethiopian border: “I can remember being held by two ofmy uncles who were helping me across. One of them was sweptaway and that was the last time I saw him. I was later told he hadbeen eaten by a crocodile” as had other civilians trying to crossthe river.
The Sudanese youngsters, girls and boys, reached Kenya’sKakuma refugee camp in the early 1990s.
The boys remained a rea-sonably identif iable groupwhich f inally caught theattention and sympathy ofresettlement countries.
UNCERTAINFUTURE
Following Sudanese culturaltraditions, many of the girlswere absorbed into fosterhomes and left to a very un-certain fate, overlooked andforgotten by the outside world.
Achol Kuol has already sur-vived one brutal attempt tokidnap her back to Sudan andinto a forced marriage. ThreeSudanese men tried to abductthe 17-year-old from therefugee camp, but she wassaved by the intervention of lo-cal social workers and otherrefugees who chased the at-
tackers away.The girl believes this will only
be the first of repeated attemptsto marry her off. Arranged mar-riages, after all, are big business.Her first suitor had offered herfoster parents 50 cattle, whichrepresents a huge sum in Sudan,as a dowry.
Yar Jok (not her real name) was nine years old when she left hervillage. She does not even know where and when she lost her par-ents during her wanderings.
When she arrived at Kakuma she, too, was adopted by fosterparents.
Forgotten in the hoopla aboutSudan’s Lost Boys were the fatesof several thousand girls agedbetween 8-10 who had undergonesimilar ordeals.
Man-eating lions, crocodi
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faces a very different future
The ‘Lost Girls of Sudan’ have lived for years in a dusty camp in northern Kenya.
les, famine…
One night, a man entered her hut, stuffed her mouth with apiece of cloth and raped her. Initially, she kept the assault a secret.As in many societies, the victim of a rape among Sudanese is of-ten judged as a guilty party and Yar Jok worried that “if peoplegot to know I had been raped, no man would want to marry me.”
However, she was also now pregnant and her secret becameobvious. She was rejected by both her foster parents and therefugee community but eventually moved in with a woman fromher mother’s clan.
She named her baby Monday Riak--riak meaning ‘war’ in herDinka language.
Like Achol Kuol, she is a worried woman. She fears no manwill want to marry her, because her rapist may one day returnand claim her daughter Monday who, among other things, wouldeventually be a source of wealth when she is ready to marry. Lifeon the fringes of Sudanese society can be very harsh.
At home both girls, like many others, are little more than un-paid servants, cooking, cleaning and collecting firewood.
Yar Jok joined a school for dropouts but cannot attend regularlybecause she must look after her baby. Other girls attend Kakuma’ssecondary school.
Education, no matter how limited, offers a sliver of hope, butnone of the girls have yet been given the opportunity to board agleaming aircraft, learn to use a computer and plan a new life fullof hope in a strange country.
There is a final small irony in this tale of two groups who sharedthe same tragedy but ended up with very different futures.
At one point in Kakuma, the boys were offered dry rations to eat.Out of tradition they refused to attempt to cook the food. Thatwas women’s work. Sudan’s Lost Girls ended up preparing themeals. B
One night a man entered her hut andraped her. She kept the assault asecret, worried that “if people got toknow I had been raped, no manwould want to marry me.”
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olution asking member states to considerwomen who ran afoul of religious or socialtaboos as a “particular social group” for thepurpose of determining whether theyqualified for refugee status.
Canada, the United States, Australia, theUnited Kingdom and other countries fol-lowed suit with their own specific guide-lines.
The Statute of the International Crim-inal Court was adopted in 1998, giving itpower to adjudicate a wide spectrum of of-fenses including rape, sexual slavery, en-forced prostitution and forced pregnancy.Last year, the U.N. War Crimes Tribunalfor the former Yugoslavia handed downits first conviction for rape as a crimeagainst humanity against three BosnianSerb officers (Refugees N° 122).
Early in the new millennium a U.N. res-olution committed governments to pro-tect women from the abuses of war and in-clude them in subsequent peace talks.
A follow up Security Council statementreaff irmed its strong support for theinclusion of women in “negotiations andimplementation of peace accords, consti-tutions and strategies for resettlement
and rebuilding.”
VOICES: “When a rebel broke into ourhouse (in Sierra Leone), my mother wasasked to give one of her children up or else
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The issue of peacemaking has as-sumed special importance in to-day’s world. Why?
The wars we now experience are moredangerous, with weapons whose power todestroy spirals beyond our imagination.But our untapped resources—the leaderswithin more than half the world’s popu-lation who have been excluded in thestrategies of international security—arealso immense.
We must create a new paradigm in ourforeign policy, a model of inclusive security.It must become unthinkable not to havewomen integrally involved in every stageof the peace process: whether conflict pre-vention, resolving the conflict, or post-con-flict stabilization.
A U.N. official told me that warlordsdon’t want women on their teams becausethey’re afraid they’ll compromise. Isn’t that
the point? For lasting stability, we needpeace promoters, not just warriors, at thenegotiating table.
And there are at least six reasons womenare valuable to peacemaking:
F I R S T , women are generally adept atbuilding relationships that bridge ethnic,religious and cultural divides due to theirsocial and biological roles as nurturers.This notion has been ferociously chal-lenged by some feminist theorists, but thewomen I have spoken to in conflict areasrepeatedly say they are motivated by theneed to ensure security for their families.
SECOND , they have their fingers on thepulse of the community where the agree-ment has to be lived. How odd that we havedeveloped a way of reaching peace agree-ments that excludes these experts from thetable. In 1994, I hosted negotiations duringthe Bosnian war and was amazed that the
60 or so people involved were only men.They divided the political positions amongthemselves but created no mechanism forindicted war criminals to be rounded up.Years later, towns still have officials wholed the atrocities and millions in theBalkans are still displaced.
The THIRD reason women are particularlycompetent in the peace process is that theyusually weren’t the ones behind the guns.They tell me they don’t have to go throughthe psychological process of converting aperson into prey—like their husbandsmust—so they have less psychological dis-tance to go in the reconciliation effort.
FOURTH, women—as second-class citizens—are not considered powerful enough to bedangerous. Palestinian Sumaya Farhat-Naser, of the Jerusalem Center for Women,says this feminine identity has deflectedsome of the daily violence in the Middle
Six reasons Women in peacemaking
In the past, the vital distribution of food was often controlled by men and female refugees sometimes suffered.
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why women must be included in talks on international security
East and aided women to reach out to othercommunities in ways denied men. Still,because women are outside the powerstructure, the impact of their work is alsolimited.
But—F I F T H —precisely because womenhaven’t been allowed a place within powerstructures, they are adept at finding solu-tions “outside the box,” especially at thegrassroots. Though under-funded, over-looked and often dismissed, innovative lo-cal leaders can mobilize and set their ownagenda outside the close scrutiny of polit-ical parties or official establishments.
A S I X T H reason for having women in-volved throughout peace processes is thatthey have a remarkable ability to cross con-flict lines. In 1977, nonsectarian womenorganizers in Northern Ireland won theNobel Peace Prize for their public demon-strations, and a few years ago the North-
ern Ireland Women’s Coalition was cre-ated, a political party that crosses the lines.
In response, there’s progress on the pol-icy front. The European Union, the Groupof Eight largest industrialized nations andU.N. Security Council have issued grandstatements insisting on the inclusion ofwomen throughout the peace process.Words are good. Implementation would bebetter.
For example, there were compelling rea-sons to integrate women in the U.N.-spon-sored Afghan peace process, but only threewomen among over 60 men selected aninterim government for Afghanistan; andonly two women chosen to head 29 min-istries. Hardly a rousing success in a coun-try where, in the past, 40 percent of gov-ernment officials were women.
Kada Hotic is a Bosnian refugee fromSrebrenica, a town overrun by Serb forceswho raped massive numbers of women
and killed some 8,000 unarmed men andboys, including her son and husband. Evenas a refugee, she built an organization tolearn the truth behind the worst atrocity inEurope since World War II. But she alsotalks consolingly about those who de-stroyed her life: “That soldier who killedmy son believed he was doing good for hispeople and for his religion.” She recentlytold a Belgrade audience: “I am not here tosay you’re guilty. I wouldn’t want what hap-pened to me to happen to anyone of you.It’s time to move on.”
The next morning she received calls fromother Serbian cities asking her to comespeak. “Now I know I’m not alone,”she said.“I can work with these people. Together, wecan create a new future.” B
Swanee Hunt is on the board of the USA for UN-HCR, directs the Women and Public Policy Programat the John F. Kennedy School of Government andchairs Women Waging Peace (womenwagingpeace.net).
the entire family would be killed. Mymother gave me up. The rebels took mewith them and on our way to their camp Iwas raped by seven of them. I was held forone year. After I escaped, I asked myself‘Who will help me now?’”
This high-level activism spawned hun-dreds of special women’s projects in thefield. Suddenly there was funding, mainlyfrom wealthy western nations and privateorganizations such as the Ted TurnerFoundation. The new money helped pro-vide better healthcare, improved food andwater supplies, increased literacy and skillstraining, programs to study and combatsexual violence and the curse of sexual gen-ital mutilation. Other projects helpedwomen begin their own small businessesand become actively involved in refugeecamp committees or other political, socialand economic groups once they returnedhome.
A particularly effective program wasdeveloped in Central America to help anestimated 45,000 Guatemalans who fled acivil war in the 1980s and sought refuge in
Mexico. When women demanded a voicein negotiations to return home, UNHCRfunded projects to develop women’s rights,combat their illiteracy and improve healthservices and leadership skills.
Women were directly involved in repa-triation negotiations and among the con-
cessions they won was recognition, for thefirst time, of the principle of equal own-ership of both private and communal prop-erty. Although it took a decade of work, itis enshrined in Guatemalan jurisprudence,benefiting the entire population.
A similar law was enacted in the central
The collection of firewood presented a particular hazard for Somali refugees in Kenyan camps.
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African nation of Rwanda in the aftermathof that country’s 1994 genocide, but thatmay have come too late to help many of thefemale survivors of that atrocity in whichas many as one million people were killed.Some male relatives of victims had alreadyclaimed the land under older laws.
In Guinea recently, all adult refugees—men and women for the first time—wereissued individual identity documents, giv-ing the women far greater flexibility insuch areas as food distributions and free-dom of movement. That should becomestandard practice in any refugee commu-nity.
To meet the ‘gender challenge’ withinhumanitarian organizations themselves,greater numbers of women were recruited,specialized posts were created, sensitiza-tion programs developed for all staff andsome budgets were rationalized to movenearer to equality.
VOICES: “Approximately one-third of An-golan households are headed by womenwho bear the burden of generating incomeas well as caring for their children. Theyhave limited access to land, healthcare, edu-cation and other social services. They haveno competitive skills and an increasingnumber of them opt for nocturnal lives onthe streets.”
Most humanitarian administrators, fieldstaff and women refugees agree that morework needs to be done. But that appears tobe the only point of convergence. Thereare sharp differences—often along genderlines—in judging the effectiveness of whathas already been accomplished, how muchmore work is still necessary and what kindof nuts and bolts decisions and programsare needed to attain the lofty goals of gen-uine equality for refugees of both sexes.
One view suggests major strides havealready been made with more effective in-ternational and national legislation to bet-ter protect women from sexual and othercrimes, projects to improve their health,
food and education in refugee camps and togive them a better chance to either winasylum or successfully restart their livesif they eventually return home.
However, while acknowledging the spe-cial problems faced by females, these ad-vocates caution that the overall operationalthrust of a humanitarian organization likeUNHCR could become ‘distorted’ if toomuch emphasis was placed on ‘special’ pro-grams for any particular group. Some highlevel officials believed too that it was ‘pa-tronizing’ and ‘counterproductive’ to con-centrate on women’s projects, because thiswould suggest that women refugees wereincapable of doing things for themselves.Similar arguments infused the debate inthe United States in recent years about thedesirability of affirmative action programsfor black Americans.
Moreover, according to some officials,increased numbers of women had alsobeen recruited into humanitarian organi-zations which themselves had undergonefundamental change toward gender issues.
Serge Malé, UNHCR’s senior epidemi-
Education is often the key to a brighter future. Girl returnees at school in Myanmar. Trying to combatharmful practices such as female genital mutilation in Ethiopia,
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SUDDENLY THERE WAS FUNDING TO PROVIDE BETTER HEALTHCARE,IMPROVED FOOD AND WATER SUPPLIES, INCREASED LITERACY
AND SKILLS TRAINING, PROGRAMS TO STUDY AND COMBAT SEXUAL VIOLENCE…
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ologist, recalls: “Fifteen years ago, refugeewomen were viewed through a one di-mensional lens—as a mother. We did notsee them as ‘complete women’—compli-cated human beings with an array of po-tential problems, not just childbirth. Wehave moved on from there in our attitudetoward women and such problems as sex-ual violence or genital mutilation. Therehas been progress.”
VOICES: “Women are treated as helplessvictims, rather than individuals who shouldbe adequately consulted and informed onall decisions impacting their lives. This is re-flected in political decisions taken by gov-ernments and humanitarian agencies suchas UNHCR.”
The debate can be heated. The contrar-ian view, shared by many uprootedwomen, acknowledges ‘limited’ ratherthan ‘sweeping’ progress in bettering thelot of refugees, criticizes some programsand reforms as superficial and even coun-terproductive, and paints a picture of con-tinued ingrained bias against change.
“There remains a baffling level of re-sistance in the humanitarian communitytowards an approach that seeks genderequality,” specialists Deborah Clifton andFiona Gell wrote in a paper entitled Sav-ing and Protecting Lives by EmpoweringWomen. This stemmed from “a lack of un-derstanding, skills and commitment tochallenge discrimination which funda-mentally reflects an inherent male bias,”in the humanitarian world.
Female refugees can be victims manytimes over. During a long flight into exilethey lose the support of their government,their homes and often their husbands.Women, sometimes illiterate and some-times barely in their teens, overnight canbecome breadwinner, physical protectoror nurse to an entire family. Even whenthey reach ‘safety’ they are often prey tosexual predators or bullying immigrationofficials.
But one of the most insidious and, inthe long term, debilitating approaches intrying to help these women, according tofield specialists, is to over emphasize pro-grams concentrating on basic priorities
like food and shelter. While such projects are praiseworthy
and necessary they come at a price—con-centrating and prolonging the stereotypeof the ‘vulnerable’ ‘hapless’ woman—butcrucially underplaying so-called ‘empow-erment’ projects which could provide themwith better educational, economic andleadership skills and in turn enhance theirroles in a camp or when they return home,rather than continuing to be second-classcitizens.
One Afghan woman called Jamilaechoed the frustration of refugee womenrepeatedly sidelined and overlooked whenshe told the recent U.N. Security Councilmeeting: “When you are looking for lead-ers, look to us. Do not think that becausewomen wear a veil, we do not have a voice.I have often heard that Afghan women arenot political; that peace and security is aman’s work. I am here to challenge that il-lusion. For the last 20 years of my life, theleadership of men has only brought warand suffering.”
“At the height of an emergency, with
“WHEN YOU ARE LOOKING FOR LEADERS, LOOK TO US. DO NOT THINK THAT BECAUSE WOMEN WEAR A VEIL, WE DO NOT HAVE A VOICE.
THE LEADERSHIP OF MEN HAS ONLY BROUGHT WAR AND SUFFERING.”
Training can lead to jobs when women return home—work in a bakery in Chechnya and textile manufacture in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam.
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Grace in Adversity
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perhaps tens of thousands of people need-ing food and water immediately just to sur-vive, we will save more lives and ensurethat our initiatives will continue after theemergency if programs to help women inthe long run are put in place from day oneof a crisis,” Joyce Mends-Cole, UNHCR’ ssenior coordinator for refugee women said.
VOICES: “All the women (at a refugee con-ference in Canada) agreed that immigrationjudges are insensitive to asylum seekers, es-pecially female applicants. Most adjudica-tors are uninformed about issues affectingwomen… and did not have much knowledgeregarding the country of origin.”
Compounding any actual ‘anti-femalebias’ is also the tricky issue of ‘cultural bias’among refugees themselves and amongthe field staff trying to help them.
UNHCR, for instance, employs stafffrom around the world whose approach toany problem will be ‘colored’ to some de-gree by their own upbringing, whateverofficial guidelines are in place.
With the lives of refugees in turmoil, es-pecially in the first days of a crisis, how farshould aid agencies intervene in not onlyproviding them with lifesaving food, waterand shelter, but introducing programswhich might alter the cultural balance oftheir societies?
Should girls and women, who at homemay never have gone to school or mademajor family decisions, be taught to readand write and join refugee councils debat-ing such weighty issues as food distribu-tion, land distribution and returninghome?
As a United Nations rights-based orga-nization, UNHCR’s overall policy is clear,but the ‘bias battle’ continues every day inthe field.
One field supervisor refused to intro-duce a schooling program in one MiddleEastern country with the argument that
educated women would find it difficult toget married and the comment that “I cer-tainly wouldn’t marry such a woman my-self.”
The issue of sanitary supplies to womenhas been a delicate issue, especially formale staff who are often reluctant to be-come involved or are simply ham-fisted.In one African town a male aide handedout supplies to girls in front of a mixed
class. The teenagers were mortified.Though the issue of such supplies has
been official UNHCR policy for years, im-plementation remains patchy. “My God, Ithought this problem had been resolved15 years ago,” one former field officer ex-claimed when she heard that High Com-missioner Ruud Lubbers had once moremade the program a major priority.
In Guinea, home to hundreds of thou-sands of refugees, questions were raised atone camp about the safety and privacy oftoilets and the need for a simple lock.“These women are not Muslims,” one ha-rassed field official said. “Privacy is a lux-ury in crises.”
Following repeated sexual attacks on So-mali women in Kenyan refugee camps,camp layouts and lighting were improvedand security tightened to try to eradicatethe problem.
Such guidelines should be universal, butas Julie Mertus, a senior fellow at the U.S.Institute of Peace and professor at theAmerican University in Washington D.C.noted recently “Nothing really changes.”
In the current Afghan crisis, for instance,“Washrooms, latrines and wells in campsare still built on grid patterns that ignorethe needs of women. They are poorly litand unguarded.”
Echoing the overworked official inGuinea quoted above, a longtime campplanner for Afghanistan commented:“This is an emergency. Everyone will getthe same. There is no time for gender.”
Just how wide the male-female dividecan open was perhaps illustrated in thecase of The Lost Children of Sudan (seeseparate story page 8). In the late 1980smany thousands of youngsters fled theirhomes in the south of that country because
COMPOUNDING ANY PERCEIVED ANTI-FEMALE BIAS IS ALSO THE TRICKY ISSUE OF CULTURAL BIAS AMONG
REFUGEES AND FIELD STAFF TRYING TO HELP THEM.
For the first time in years, Afghan women lift their veils in public.
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Sport is good for you, and thatincludes girls and women
Playinggames
by Danya Chaikel
When 22-year-old Helena Ngonga fled her home in theDemocratic Republic of Congo, she lost virtuallyeverything. The young mother of two eventually
reached a refugee camp on the outskirts of the Angolan capital ofLuanda and one day recently she was busily organizing a soccergame for children—a seemingly routine event which neverthelesssignified far more than a mere ‘kick-around’ for the participants.
Working as a coach has been a stepping stone for Helena—to ajob as a pre-school teacher,a decent wage and newlydiscovered self-esteem.And in camps where bore-dom and monotony canbreak the spirit, sports arehelping to teach teamworkand leadership and bolsterthe health of restlessyoungsters.
Norway’s gold medalspeed skater Johan Kossand that country’s Lille-hammer Olympic Orga-nizing Committee recog-nized in 1994 that theOlympic Games shouldmean more than glitz and
television hype and could be harnessed to the needs of children.Today, a small non-governmental organization, Olympic Aid andUNHCR have programs in Angola and 10 other countries to re-inforce a basic tenet of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of theChild that every youngster has the right to play and that sportingactivities can be just as important as food and shelter for refugeechildren trying to overcome the trauma of war and displacement.
High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers told a specially convenedOlympic Aid forum at this year’s Salt Lake City winter gamesthat “Play and teamwork can help heal emotional scars and re-store at least some semblance of normalcy in the otherwise alienenvironment of a refugee camp.” Hollywood actress AngelinaJolie, a Goodwill Ambassador for UNHCR, shared personal anec-dotes from her visits to refugee camps. In Kibondo, Tanzania she
There is littledifficulty inencouraging boysto participate insports, but theinclusion ofwomen can bemore delicate anddifficult.
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of years of civil war. They wandered thesavannah for years, moving to Ethiopia,returning to Sudan before arriving at theKakuma refugee camp in Kenya.
After their odyssey became widelyknown, the United States agreed to acceptseveral thousand “lost boys” who becameinternational celebrities as they startedtheir new lives.
Girls suffered a different fate. Many wereabsorbed into foster homes where they be-came domestic servants and some enteredarranged marriages. None were offerednew lives abroad.
VOICES: “In 1981 when 452 boats arrived inThailand carrying 15,479 refugees, UNHCR’sstatistics were a study of horror: 349 boatshad been attacked an average of three timeseach; 578 women were raped, 228 womenwere abducted and 881 people were dead ormissing.”
Even well-meaning programs can haveunexpected and, at times, tragic results.During the exodus of millions of boat peo-ple from Indochina following the end ofthe Viet Nam war, women became easytargets for pirates.
The United States earmarked millionsof dollars for programs to improve theirsecurity and ensure that perpetrators werebrought to justice. The results were trackedon what Christine Mougne now calls “thathorrible map” in UNHCR’s off ice inBangkok, Thailand.
Each type of attack ranging from sexualviolence to abductions and then murderswas marked on the map by a different sym-bol. Initially, there appeared to be limitednumbers of killings, but as more pirateswere hauled into court for rape, so thenumber of boat people being abused andthen coldbloodedly massacred and ‘disap-peared’ into the sea climbed steeply. Thesymbols representing killings mush-roomed across that map.
In Kenya, many women were raped asthey scoured remote areas for firewood. Afirewood project was launched in 1997whereby supplies were trucked into camps,with the aim of reducing the vulnerabil-ity of women to sexual predators.
But a recent independent report sug-gested ‘great caution’ in describing the ex-
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met a quiet girl who kept to herself, having recently witnessedthe murder of her parents and older brother. “I cannot imagineanything better for this girl than to be with other people, to playand to feel normal again. Olympic Aid’s work does this,” Jolie toldthe audience.
Under its Coach2Coach program, Olympic Aid recently re-cruited a group of volunteer coaches from Canada, the UnitedStates, Norway and Holland who are spending six months inrefugee camps helping refugees such as HelenaNgonga to organize activities like football, volley-ball, basketball, netball, track and field and evenkarate and gymnastics.
ENCOURAGING WOMENWhile there is little difficulty in encouraging
boys to participate, the inclusion of women cansometimes be more delicate and difficult. Cana-dian coach Michael Hunter, who works in Angola’sMussende camp, said women refugees are oftenseparated from their husbands and must fend forthe whole family in such circumstances “theirphysical and emotional well-being are the firstthings to be neglected.”
There can also be the problem of gender rivalry. When oneyoung girl at Mussende tried to join in a soccer game, she washeckled by the boys. A coach kicked the ball back to the little girland told the boys to include everyone. The game continued.Though the boys were clearly reluctant, one youngster eventu-ally kicked the ball back. This time, she was not chased away.
Abby Schneider encountered similar problems in Pakelle innorthern Uganda. “Outside of school the girls are responsible forhousehold chores, like fetching water and taking care of their sib-lings,” the 21-year-old coach who helps at risk children back homein Saskatchewan, Canada, said. Adolescent girls are also reluc-
tant to join in because they can feel awkward or embarrassed andSchneider first asks them to help out with the games by orga-nizing the younger children, saying that it is “easier for the girlsto make the change from caregiver to group leader, than fromcaregiver to competitor.”
Susie Biro, a coach from Toronto, said it is hard for women andgirls to leave their work for the “luxury of going out ‘to play’” inBenin’s Kpomasse camp. Plus bringing refugees from 22 coun-
tries together can be tricky. But when girlsdecided that they wanted their own foot-ball tournament they found a way. Theycirculated word in the camp about the ap-proaching tournament, divided themselvesinto teams based on age and size rather thannationality and held a spirited competition.
Having female coaches makes a huge dif-ference “As a woman, I have an easier timeencouraging the girls to participate; theysee me as a role model,” says Marian Scullywho coaches Liberian and Sierra Leoneanrefugees living around Danané, Côted’Ivoire, approximately 800 kilometers westof the capital, Abidjan. “In one football game
with our coaches everyone was impressed to see females playing.One girl said it was the first time she had ever seen a girl trapand control the ball.”
Another Quebecois coach in Danané, Louise Hamelin, saysgirls are just as eager and creative as the boys, but “they havemuch less free time.” The idea of females doing sports, especiallyalongside males, is a novelty in many refugee communities—andmuch of the world. But slowly, people are getting used to it. “Thereis no doubt about it,” says Hamelin. “The men see us as strongand athletic.” Bit by bit, the presence of Olympic Aid’s coaches ischanging the way that refugees see sport and gender. B
Somali refugee women take a break for volleyball at an Ethiopian refugee camp.
“As a woman, I have an easiertime encouragingthe girls toparticipate; theysee me as a rolemodel.”
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tremely costly project as a success. Whilethe number of rapes of women collectingwood dropped dramatically in some cir-cumstances, sexual violence in other loca-tions and contexts had increased evenmore. The report said the program “doesnot address all rape, nor does it contributeto the improvement of the overall secu-rity situation in and around Dadaab.”
Problems extend beyond the refugeecamp—into areas where women try toclaim asylum or to re-establish their lives
when they return home. Women are often reluctant to describe
deeply personal experiences such as sex-ual violence, even though such testimonymight help them receive asylum. Male in-vestigators and judges often admit theirown ignorance of women’s problems.
Some wives are not given a chance totell their own stories. There is still great
uncertainty about how to respond towomen who are victims of domesticabuse—the major cause of injury to womenworldwide.
When they do return home, women areoften expected to ‘revert’ to the culturalnorm of housewife and mother, whatevertheir wider refugee experiences.
Bosnian women who had travelled to
MANY PROGRAMS TENDED TO FOCUS ON WOMENTO THE EXCLUSION OF MEN...
FAILING TO PROMOTE SOCIAL CHANGE.
Despite an increase in the number of women joining humanitarian agencies in the field, few reach high-level posts.
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Europe and other countries as refugeesduring the Balkan wars found great diffi-culty in returning to the cloistered worldof an isolated farmstead after the shootingstopped. All of the good work accom-plished in Guatemala was threatened bymale machismo and the attitude that:“Those special programs happened in ex-ile. We’re home now. I’m the boss again.”
VOICES: “Masked gunmen broke intoNatasa’s Bosnia home and proceeded torob, beat and gang-rape her. She and hermother were thrown out of their home andlived for months in a basement without wa-ter or electricity, under constant bombard-ment. She found asylum in Europe, butwishes only to go home one day, when it istotally safe.”
The upheavals of refugee life offer botha chance and a challenge for improvingthe lot of women. “Lives have been shat-tered, and we must recognize that funda-mental changes have already taken place.Livelihoods have been lost, women areshouldering new responsibilities,” saidMends-Cole. “We must support changewhich is beneficial to women. We must lis-ten to women and they will tell us whatchanges they want.”
Judging an opportune time to introducechange is always tricky, but equally the de-sire for progress even among the most con-servative cultures should not be underes-timated. When Soviet forces invadedAfghanistan in 1979, many traditional fam-ilies fled, partly out of fear that their wom-enfolk could be ‘forced’ into new ways, in-cluding being sent to school. Today, manyof these same families welcome that veryopportunity for their daughters.
What is the way forward?Two methods have been tried—estab-
lishing ‘special programs’ to address dis-crimination and inequality, and ‘main-streaming’ the results of such women’sinitiatives into the general operationalstructure of an organization. Neitherapproach has fully succeeded.
Instead, a Catch-22 situation developed.‘Special programs’ are often left only to spe-cialized staff operating them and ignoredor downgraded by other members of anorganization. Introducing them into gen-eral programming can mean they ‘sub-merge and then suffocate.’
There has also been only limited suc-cess in hiring more women for humani-tarian organizations and then using theirtalents effectively to offer a more balancedand wider variety of views.
UNHCR in the last few years made adetermined hiring push and while morewomen now fill more slots at lower levels,80 percent of all senior and policy makingposts at U.N. agencies are still dominatedby men.
One recent report suggested, “Employ-ing women fills a gender quota and is apalliative for those who criticize, but thewomen have no power to do anythingwithin an organization or project.”
American University’s Julie Mertus out-
lined four major roadblocks to more ef-fective assistance for women refugees: acontinuing gap between policies formu-lated at a headquarters and field imple-mentation; a failure to address the needsof millions of internally displaced personsin addition to bona fide refugees; the con-tinued inability of women to obtain asy-lum; and the failure of ‘gender programs’to address the situation of male refugees.
She suggested that many programstended to focus on women to the exclusionof men and as a result of this neglect theyfall short of their aims of ‘promoting so-cial change.’
Ideas to improve the situation includeboth ongoing and new projects: the greaterinvolvement of women in designing andrunning refugee camps and programs; fur-ther projects to halt sexual violence; con-tinued counselling and emergency reset-tlement of victims and the employmentof more female protection officers.
After travelling to West Africa recently,High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers said,“I promised women refugees we would domore to help them” and he responded withfive commitments.
They include a target of 50 percent fe-male participation in all camp, rural andurban refugee management and leader-ship committees; the individual registra-tion of all adult male and female refugees;the development of further strategies tocombat sexual and gender based violence;the direct participation of women in aiddistribution and the provision of sanitarysupplies on a regular basis.
“Women must be at the heart of the so-lution to crises around the world,” theHigh Commissioner said.
In 1995, Wairimu Karago, the thendeputy director of UNHCR’s Departmentof International Protection said in an in-terview “We have everything. We have abeautiful policy on women. We have guide-lines. But all this is only as good as the im-plementation.”
That remains as true today as it wasthen. B
“WOMEN MUST BE AT THE HEART OF THE SOLUTION TO CRISES
AROUND THE WORLD.”
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With her frosty blue nail polish, confident smile, and almostflawless American-accented English, 20-year-old Fahriachallenges most stereotypes of Afghan women. She took a
break from surfing the web at Mars Computer Center for refugeegirls in the Pakistani city of Peshawar to describe her dream ofreturning to Afghanistan to become either a computer pro-grammer or a doctor.
Fahria had fled three years earlier when the Taliban capturedher hometown of Mazar-i-Sharif and barred girls from going toschool. Her family promptly packed their belongings and movedto Pakistan so that Fahria and her sisters could continue theirstudies—a reason many other families gave for leavingAfghanistan.
Refugees often lose everything, but one of the ironies sur-
rounding the exodus of millions of Afghans in the last two decadesis that huge numbers of girls were able to receive an educationin exile—primarily in Pakistan and Iran—they would have beendenied at home. This twist of fortune could play an importantand positive role in the pending reconstruction of the shatteredcountry.
“The education opportunities are good for Afghans in Pak-istan,” Fahria said, and she personally has excelled. Most girls at-tending primary school complete only three years, but Fahria hasnow enrolled in a college diploma course in information tech-nology and is also studying to become a doctor at the Afghan Uni-versity in Peshawar, along with 900 other Afghan women. In herspare time she teaches English at the Iranian Council, earningsome money to support her studies.
Like Fahria, 18-year-old Mahmooda and her sisters abandonedtheir education in the capital, Kabul when the Taliban came to
Girls who fled Afghanistan received an unexpected bonus like this youngster in neighboring Iran: an education they would nothave received at home under the Taliban.
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Educating Fahria…Refugee schooling has been an unexpected bonus for many Afghan girls
by Michelle Brown and Veronika Martin
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power. “I was forced to stay at home and do nothing,” she recallsnow. “Day by day, my life became worse.”
Her father had lost a leg in the army and so four years ago theyalso headed to Pakistan where the women could work to support thefamily and the girls could continue school.
Unlike Fahria, whose excellent English allows her to earn amodest salary, the shy, 18-year-old Mahmooda struggles to payschool fees of $1.20 a month. Each day she weaves carpets and em-broiders shawls in a dimly lit room until two o’clock in the morn-ing. Four hours later, she must prepare for school.
A BRIGHTER FUTUREIn some respects, this experiment in girls’ education has been
a remarkable success. In the last five years, the number attendingUNHCR-sponsored primary schools in Pakistan increased five-fold and UNHCR community services officer Anne Siri said,“There are no girls who are reluctant to learn. They love it.” InIran, the picture has been the same, with girls making up nearlyhalf of primary school students.
In Afghanistan itself, there is an ‘educational buzz’ in the air.Rebuilding from scratch, the government promised to reopen3,500 schools for 1.5 million boys and girls as soon as possible.Classrooms which have already opened, though bare and cold,are packed. At one school in Kabul, girls sit in neat rows on piecesof cloth on the freezing concrete floor, eyes glued to the teacher.The school’s principal returned to her post after teaching girlsin secret during the Taliban rule.
For five years, 16-year-old Khalida and 30 other students at-tended one of these underground classrooms only a stone’s throwfrom Taliban headquarters in Kabul. “We were scared to go toschool, we did not carry our books and we studied in secret,” Khal-ida recalls. Her new school is housed in a bombed-out buildingwith a shattered roof on the edge of Kabul. “We have no chairs, nobooks, and the teachers have no salary,” she said. “When it snowswe use only those classrooms that have a roof, but learning is im-portant. One day I want to be a doctor.”
A fellow student, 17-year-old Parnyan, echoes her enthusiasmabout her school’s reopening: “I have been looking forward to thisfor more than five years. I can’t explain it. I was so happy. Ithought I was dreaming.”
DIFFICULT TIMESDespite these encouraging signs, there have been earlier
disappointments and the prospect of future problems.Hundreds of thousands of young people were educated in
exile, but because of a shortage of international funds andother problems, several million youngsters were deniedthe opportunity of even a basic education. When they even-tually return home these disenfranchised students will doso with few skills or opportunity to earn a living in a na-tion which is trying to rebuild itself from scratch and needsall the expertise it can find, including an estimated 100,000new teachers.
There are still an estimated 3.5 million Afghan refugeesin Pakistan and Iran and their decision on whether to re-turn home will be influenced not only by economic and se-curity conditions, but also on the availability and level ofschooling.
For those who have already returned, there has been a
rude awakening. After spending eight years in Pakistan, Latifarecently went back to Kabul and like many others, was appar-ently shocked at the state of the educational system. “In Pakistanwe had many facilities,” she said, “but it is different here. Thereare no chairs and no supplies. The teachers do not receive a salaryso they often come late. I hope that I can begin to study in a schoolthat has chairs, carpets and good teachers.”
There is also the ur-ban-rural divide, andlong held assumptionsthat daughters in farmfamilies do not want orneed an education. That,according to Sima Samar,the interim Minister ofWomen’s Affairs and aleader in rural develop-ment, is outdated.
“In one rural village agroup of conservative el-ders, all ordinary men,came to me to ask if Icould start a school forgirls,” she said. “Before,there was no school, but
now they want one. They want their daughters to be educated.They see education as an opportunity.”
Eighteen-year-old Mahmooda will return home soon, ac-knowledging that she will probably have to continue to embroi-der scarves to help her family survive, but she has faith in thepower of education.
“Uneducated people are like blind people,” she said. “When theytravel to a new place, they can’t even read signs and they don’tknow where they are. I hope that people won’t feel like they areblind for much longer.” B
The authors are staff members of the American humanitariangroup Refugees International.
With a new government installed in Kabul, school’s open again.
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One of the ironiessurrounding theexodus of millionsof Afghans… isthat huge numbersof girls receivedan education theywould have beendenied at home.
Three weeks and three days after myfamily left the shores of Latvia, mylittle sister died. We buried her by the
roadside, but we were never able to returnor put a flower on her grave,” Vaira Vike-Freiberga remembered. “And I like tothink that I stand here today as a survivorwho speaks for all of those who died by theroadside, some buried by their familiesand others not.”
By general consent, the speech by thePresident of the small north European na-tion of Latvia was the most poignant mo-ment at a recent summit meeting inGeneva attended by 156 countries whichpledged to strengthen global efforts to helpmillions of today’s refugees.
Vike-Freiberga, together with her par-ents, fled Soviet-occupied Latvia in 1944when she was seven years old. The family
meandered throughPoland, Germany andFrench Morocco before,by a simple twist of fatewhich can radically altera refugee’s future, headedtoward Canada.
“We were 20 people toa room in double-tieredbunks” in one camp, sherecalled. “You get toknow people very inti-mately in such circum-stances. Friendships arekept up and our fellowrefugees wrote us saying,‘Life is hard in Canada.But if you work hard,you can get ahead. Sowhy don’t you comehere?’”
She did. She becamea leading academic, trav-elled the world as a lec-turer, returned to herhomeland to head anewly launched Latvian
Institute and within a yearbecame the country’s pres-ident.
Millions of women havesurvived ‘the refugee expe-rience.’ The great majorityeventually return home tocontinue unheralded, oftenharsh existences. Vike-Freiberga’s experience un-derlined that with the righthelp, a little bit of luck andlots of resilience, anythingis possible.
DEPORTATION OR FLIGHT“When the moment comes to leave your
home, it is a painful moment,” Vike-Freiberga told the Geneva delegates. “Myparents had a choice to stay behind and risk
the deportations they had already wit-nessed… being put into cattle cars after hav-ing been awakened in the middle of thenight and shipped off to Siberia or to justwalk out of their homes with what theycould carry in their two hands, walk offinto the unknown.”
A harrowing experience awaited. “It isalways a painful condition not to knowwhere you are going to lay your head, tolook at the lights shining in distant win-dows, to think of people living their nor-mal lives, sleeping in their own beds, eat-ing at their own table, living under theirown roofs.
“And later when you come to refugeecamps… you are living outside of space andof time, you have no roots, you have nopast, you don’t know whether you have afuture. You have no rights, you have novoice, you have nothing to participate in,you are not a citizen, you have no papers,sometimes you haven’t even got your name.You have to pinch yourself to reassureyourself that, yes, I am alive, I am me, I ama human being, I am a person.”
Millions of civilians continue to suffertoday. “They areout there in thetents, by the road-sides, starving,freezing, waiting,hoping for some-one to extend ahelping hand,” theLatvian presidentsaid, hovering be-tween “being ahuman beingwith dignity or be-ing less than thebeasts of the field,
trodden under in the dust of this world.“I don’t know whether we can do it in
the next five years or 50 or 100, but I doknow we have no choice,” she said. “Wemust act. We must do something.” B
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From exile to the presidency…
Latvia’s President, once a refugee, with HighCommissioner Ruud Lubbers.
She escaped the Soviet deportation trains to become leader of her country
“You are livingoutside of space andof time, you have no roots, you haveno past, you don’tknow whether youhave a future.”
31R E F U G E E S
“I have the toughest job inAfghanistan. But I have nobudget, no staff and littlesupport from colleagues ingovernment.”Sima Samar, Minister forWomen’s Affairs inAfghanistan’s interim govern-ment.
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“Parting with my baby washard. But watching myfamily die slowly fromhunger is even worse.”An Afghan farmer explainingwhy he sold his four-day-oldson to a more prosperous familyfor the equivalent of $60.
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“I don’t know whether wecan do it in the next fiveyears or 50 or l00, but I do
know we have no choice.We must act.”Vaira Vike-Freiberga, once arefugee, but now the Presidentof Latvia.
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“We have no chairs, nobooks and the teachershave no salary. When itsnows we use only thoseclassrooms that have aroof. But learning is impor-tant.”A young Afghan teenager de-lighted to be back at schoolafter years of being denied aneducation.
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“Whenever I look into theeyes of a refugee child, Isee something of myself. Ifcircumstances had been
different and time hadstood still…”Former U.S. Secretary of StateMadeleine Albright, recallingher own days as a refugee.
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“There was little to drink,we survived on leaves andwild fruit. Some of thegirls were eaten by lions.”One of the ‘Lost Girls of Sudan’describing an ordeal which lastedyears in the East African bush.
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“Fifteen years ago, refugeewomen were viewedthrough a one-dimensionallens—as a mother. We didnot see them as compli-cated human beings withan array of potential prob-lems, not just childbirth.UNHCR senior epidemiologist
Serge Malé on changingattitudes toward refugeewomen.
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“The current situation ofchange of power andinstability in Afghanistanmay lead to increasedviolence against women inan atmosphere ofimpunity.”U.N. Secretary-General KofiAnnan warns about theuncertain situation for femalesin Afghanistan.
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“I will respect the rightsand freedoms of theUnited Kingdom. I willuphold its democraticvalues. I will observe itslaws faithfully and fulfillmy duties and obligationsas a British citizen.”A proposed oath that would-beBritish citizens, includingrefugees, would swear in future.
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States should “includewomen in the negotiationsand implementation ofpeace accords, constitu-tions and strategies for resettlement andrebuilding.”A U.N. Security Council state-ment supporting the greaterinclusion of women in majornegotiations on such issues aspeace talks and resettlinguprooted populations.
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“There’s been nothing likeit in history. We areembarking on rebuilding acountry from scratch.”Regional U.N. coordinatorLeslie Oqvist on internationalefforts to begin rebuildingAfghanistan.
“Women must be at the heart of the solution to crises around the world.”U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers.
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