A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Jane Freedman, Zeynep Kivilcim, Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu, Jane Freedman, Zeynep Kivilcim, Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138693722
• eBook ISBN: 9781315529639
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The refugee crisis that began in 2015 has seen thousands of refugees attempting to reach Europe, principally from Syria. The dangers and difficulties of this journey have been highlighted in the media, as have the political disagreements within Europe over the way to deal with the problem. However, despite the increasing number of women making this journey, there has been little or no analysis of women's experiences or of the particular difficulties and dangers they may face.

A Gendered Approach to the Syrian Refugee Crisis examines women's experience at all stages of forced migration, from the conflict in Syria, to refugee camps in Lebanon or Turkey, on the journey to the European Union and on arrival in an EU member state. The book deals with women's experiences, the changing nature of gender relations during forced migration, gendered representations of refugees, and the ways in which EU policies may impact differently on men and women. The book provides a nuanced and complex assessment of the refugee crisis, and shows the importance of analysing differences within the refugee population.

Students and scholars of development studies, gender studies, security studies, politics and middle eastern studies will find this book an important guide to the evolving crisis.

1 Introduction

Gender, migration and exile

Jane Freedman, Zeynep Kivilcim and Nurcan Özgür Baklacıoğlu

The ongoing war in Syria has led to the forced migration of nearly seven million people. With little hope for any immediate end to the war in Syria, and with the continuation of other conflicts and violence in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the question of refugees has become one of the most pressing regional and global issues of current times. The majority of Syrian refugees are located in neighbouring countries including Turkey (with over 2.5 million registered Syrian refugees), Lebanon (over one million Syrian refugees), Jordan, Iraq and Egypt.¹ This massive displacement clearly poses serious questions for the host countries, as well as for the human rights and security of the refugees themselves. There have been many reports of violence against Syrian refugees, both inside and outside of refugee camps, as well as exploitation in the labour market, gender-based violence, forced marriages etc. Although the majority of refugees have stayed in neighbouring countries, many have also tried to reach the European Union, leading to what European political leaders as well as the media have described as a refugee “crisis”, with thousands of refugees drowning in their attempts to reach Europe and others suffering violence and insecurity on their routes and on arrival in the destination country.

Conflict, violence and gender in Syria: regional responses

The Syrian refugee crisis has had massive impacts in a region where there are already a large number of refugees from Palestine and Iraq. Access to resources, food, health care and education are a major problem both for internally displaced people (IDP) and refugees, and increasingly for refugees’ host countries (Zetter and Ruaudel, 2014). A Regional Response Plan (RRP) has been put in place by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to coordinate the efforts of various UN agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in response to the crisis, but the scale of displacement, and the pre-existing political and economic tensions in the regions, have limited the efficacy of this response. As Zetter and Ruaudel explain: ‘The overall picture, then, is one of chronic vulnerability which is both deepening and becoming more entrenched’ (Zetter and Ruaudel, 2014: 7). Refugees who are not registered with UNHCR, or who have lost their registration status 2and have thus become irregular residents in neighbouring countries, are particularly marginalised and vulnerable. Women with irregular status are increasingly vulnerable to sexual and gender-based violence as they cannot rely on the local authorities for protection.

Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon allowed Syrian refugees to cross into their territories during the first years of the Syrian war. However, since 2014 the governments of these countries have gradually closed the formal and informal border crossing points, built walls at their frontiers and strengthened border control with military actions that target refugees. They also introduced legal barriers to Syrian refugees by imposing visa requirements or legislation that exclude new refugees from the legal right to legal stay. In December 2014 Lebanon closed its borders to refugees fleeing Syria’s civil war with exceptions for “humanitarian reasons”. And in 2015 the Lebanese government announced new restrictions on Syrians entering Lebanon, requiring all refugees to apply for visas before entering (Amnesty International, 2015). Jordan allowed Syrians to enter its country through all of its informal border crossings in the east and the west, although it refused entry to many single Syrian men and to Palestinian refugees from Syria. Since May 2014 several border closures, restrictions on informal border crossings and refoulement cases that hinder Syrians crossing into Jordan have been reported (Amnesty International, 2015). In addition, in January 2016 the Turkish government terminated the Syria–Turkey Visa Waiver Agreement that was allowing Syrian nationals to cross into Turkey without visa requirements. It is reported that since early 2015 Turkey has closed its land borders to Syrians (Human Rights Watch, 2015, 2016; Amnesty International, 2016). Turkey has also decided to physically hinder the crossings by constructing a 550 mile concrete wall along its border with Syria; half of this wall was completed by May 2016.

Women make up the majority of those displaced by the Syrian conflict, but the exact figures are not known. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that about 78 per cent of those displaced are women and children (UNFPA, 2014), but this figure is problematic as it mixes together women and children in a manner which has been widely criticised by many feminist scholars (Enloe, 1993). As with other refugee situations, there is a lack of accurate sex-disaggregated data on Syrian IDPs and refugees. This is partly due to the very difficult and complicated circumstances surrounding data collection, particularly on IDPs within Syria. But, as has also been reported, during the initial stages of registration in several countries, data was collected by a conversation with the presumed head of household who was often a man (Women’s Refugee Commission, 2014). In the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan, it was also reported that data gathering and passing of information was organised through a structure of “street leaders” who were mostly men. Thus women were excluded from the flow of data gathering and information sharing. The lack of accurate sex-disaggregated data clearly hampers efforts to put in place programmes which respond to the needs of male and female refugees.

The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans- and intersex (LGBTI) among Syrian refugees is not known, particularly as many fear revealing their gender 3identity or sexual orientation. However, it is clear that LGBTI have been specifically targeted for violence in Syria and that because of this targeting by all sides in the conflict many LGBTI people flee Syria and seek refuge in other countries. LGBTI refugees may be considered more vulnerable than other refugees as they may not have access to the same emotional and financial support networks. They face persecution from host countries’ citizens as well as from other members of the refugee community, and confront many barriers while accessing basic services. The informal networks that provide support to Syrian refugees in the neighbouring countries that host them often fail to include individuals from the LGBTI community.

Studies on the conditions of refugees in various camps in neighbouring countries have shown that familiar problems regarding gender equality and women’s rights are occurring within these camps. Although the UNHCR and various other international organisations and NGOs have pledged to take gendered needs seriously in their provisions for Syrian refugees, in practice these needs are still not being fully addressed. For example, one study by the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) found that: ‘Certain populations receive less attention and less access to programs, including the elderly, women and girls living outside the camps, people with disabilities and sexual minorities’ (Women’s Refugee Commission, 2014: 1). The evidence seems to suggest that this is a case where once again gender mainstreaming is championed by UN agencies and other humanitarian relief organisations, but in practice this mainstreaming too often stays at the level of rhetoric or of policy and planning without real implementation on the ground.

Several reports have highlighted increasing intimate partner and domestic violence against displaced women, which comes in addition to the sexual and gender-based violence that many of these women have faced in the conflict and during their flight. The WRC’s report on refugee camps in Jordan recounts that:

Intimate partner and domestic violence in homes, particularly targeting women and girls, is becoming more common, while challenges for reporting remain, especially in the case of sexual violence. This kind of violence may be aggravated by the fact that households are socially isolated, suffering from tremendous financial stress and lack of privacy due to overcrowding, which all contribute to increasing tensions that sometimes lead to violence, often perpetrated by a male head of household.

(Women’s Refugee Commission, 2014: 12)

Some research has shown that women have relativised this type of violence in an attempt to show empathy with the situation of men who have lost their traditional gender roles. This may be one of the reasons why such violence is under-reported. Women have also expressed the fear that if they report violence their husbands will send them back to Syria (Masterson, 2012). Charles and Denman suggest that these fears are supported by structural aspects that ‘create the intersectionality of violence that is produced through individual acts and 4institutes’. They explain that in pre-conflict Syria, married women were not allowed to travel outside of the country without their husband’s permission. ‘This law now feeds into the patriarchal control and fear for women of being sent back by their husbands’ (Charles and Denman, 2013: 105). For these reasons, many women do not report violence and, even if they do wish to report it, there are few services for support or trauma counselling. The situation may be even worse for women who are living outside the refugee camps. In an assessment of urban refugees in Jordan, it was shown that nearly half of female-headed households had no income and were dependent on donations (Usta and Masterson, 2013). These women face harassment, including offers of transactional sex and marriage (Sami et al., 2013). The Turkish Prime Ministry Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), one of main institutions dealing with Syrian refugees in Turkey, indicates that almost one-third of Syrian refugee households in Turkey are headed by women or children.² AFAD reports that 80 per cent of out-camp female Syrian refugees live in extreme poverty; they claim that they do not have a sufficient amount of food for the next week.³

Many of the women and girls who have been forcibly displaced have also been victims of rape and sexual violence. A report for the Women Under Siege Project recounts that ‘rape has been reportedly used widely as a tool of control, intimidation, and humiliation throughout the conflict. And its effects, while not always fatal, are creating a nation of traumatized survivors’ (Wolfe, 2013: 1). The report goes on to detail data which shows that:

Eight per cent of our reports include female victims, with ages ranging from seven to forty-six. Of those women, 85 per cent reported rape; 10 per cent sexual assault without penetration; and 10 per cent include detention that appears to have been for the purposes of sexualised violence or enslavement for a period of longer than twenty-four hours.

(Wolfe, 2013: 1)

Clearly it is very difficult, or virtually impossible, to obtain accurate data on levels of sexual violence in the Syrian conflict because of the problems in accessing and reporting on the conflict, and also because victims of such violence often do not report for fear of stigma and marginalisation. However, these reports tend to support the idea that sexual violence is a huge problem in this conflict. As argued above, women are reluctant to report sexual violence because of the stigma attached, and even if they wish to seek medical or psychological help to recover from this trauma, the provision of such services is severely limited. One researcher who visited Syrian refugees in Lebanon to assess their health needs reports that:

Here, there are no viable comprehensive medical options for survivors of rape. Considered taboo and seen as a family issue, rape survivors are left with nowhere to go to seek clinical care. Life-saving treatments to prevent HIV, unwanted pregnancy, or sexually transmitted infections require 5immediate action, such as the limited window of 72 h for HIV post-exposure prophylaxis. This lack of access to care has emerged as a humanitarian crisis all of its own.

(Ouyang, 2013: 2165)

A further threat to the security of young women and girls is posed by the practice of early or forced marriage which, reports have shown, is common in Syrian refugee camps across the region. The reasons for this prevalence of forced/early marriage are complex. For some families it provides a form of security for their daughters in that they believe marriage will protect them from sexual violence and assault from other men. Marrying their daughters can be seen as a way of protecting their family honour, and girls who have been victims of rape or sexual violence inside Syria may be married after they become refugees in order to save the family honour. For other parents who do not believe that they will live long enough to protect their daughters, marriage is a way of making sure that the daughter will be provided for after the death of her parents (Charles and Denman, 2013).

For other families, marrying their daughters is a way of generating income in a situation where they have no other access to resources. The forced marriage may take place within refugee communities or with men from outside the refugee community in the host country. The “marriage” is often an informal marriage, with no real legal status, sometimes amounting to little more than forced prostitution. As one report recounts:

In Jordan, hundreds of Syrian females have been affected by an informal trade that has sprung up since the start of the war in Syria, where men use “agents” to source Syrian refugees for sex. Often this is done under the guise of “marriage”.

(Sherlock and Malouf, cited in Jessen, 2013)

Another report describes how young Syrian women in Turkish border towns are marrying older men out of desperation and fear for their future. As most of these women do not have legal status in Turkey the marriages are not legally registered, thus leaving women without any protection or any rights if the couple separate, or if the husband dies (Letsch, 2014). One of the problems in dealing with this issue is that it is sometimes assumed that the practice of early marriage is a cultural practice that has been imported by the refugees from their rural communities in Syria. This assumption that certain forms of violence against women are “cultural” practices which cannot or should not be questioned, rather than the products of particular economic, social and political contexts, means that the practices in question are not properly addressed by those organising interventions to protect refugees.

The legal measures relative to early, forced and polygamous marriages are developed within the immigration legislation of European countries for dealing with the practice of these marriages among refugee and migrant communities. 6The approach adopted is characterised by the conception of a “clash” between Western and non-Western cultures and victimisation of ‘imperilled Muslim women’ by her own backward culture (Razack, 2004: 135–150). Feminist scholarship has criticised this approach and highlighted the fact that forced, early or polygamous marriages are based on imbalances concerning gender and sexuality rather than simply being a reflection of culture (Dauvergne and Millbank, 2010: 57–67). Feminist authors point out that the answer lies in the commitment to ensure women’s sexual and social agency (Razack, 2004: 162) and demonstrate that otherwise lega...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on contributors
• 1 Introduction: Gender, migration and exile
• 2 Destabilising gender dynamics: Syria post-2011
• 3 Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) Syrian refugees in Turkey
• 4 The violence of tolerated temporality: Syrian women refugees on the outskirts of Istanbul
• 5 ‘Trust no one, beware of everyone’: Vulnerabilities of LGBTI refugees in Lebanon
• 6 Gender, social class and exile: The case of Syrian women in Cairo
• 7 Death at sea: Migration and the gendered dimensions of border insecurity
• 8 Women’s experience of forced migration: Gender-based forms of insecurity and the uses of “vulnerability”
• 9 Gender performativity in diaspora: Syrian refugee women in the UK
• 10 Agent, victim, soldier, son: Intersecting masculinities in the European “refugee crisis”
• 11 Conclusions
• Index