Trauma and the Rehabilitation of Trafficked Women

The Experiences of Yazidi Survivors

S. Behnaz Hosseini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000078695
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Based on research in camps in Iraqi Kurdistan and among refugees in Germany, this book addresses the challenges, strategies and support systems that exist for the rehabilitation and reintegration of Yazidi women recovering from human trafficking. Through in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and case studies, it gives women trafficked by ISIS their own voice to express their experiences during captivity, whilst offering an overview of the forms of support and protection available and necessary for survivors. An examination of the experiences and needs of refugee women who have undergone traumatizing experiences, Trauma and the Rehabilitation of Trafficked Women will appeal to scholars and policy makers with interests in gender studies, feminist thought, sexual violence during war, human trafficking and trauma recovery.

1
The enslavement of women

With the reduction of slavery in the Muslim world since the second half of the twentieth century, Islamic fundamentalism has been on the rise in many Muslim countries and reached a peak in both Iraq and Syria in 2013. After these extremist groups – which included the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – dominated large cities and huge swathes of the two countries, many sections of society became their victims, chief among them women. Women under ISIS in Iraq are a good example of the practices of religious fundamentalism, as they are exploited for sexual slavery through trafficking. This chapter covers the methodological issues pertaining to the research as well as a brief discussion of the main themes within the analyses included in this research.

Introduction

This chapter will provide an understanding of the term ‘trafficking’ and will review the literature that has studied women in slavery, particularly in Iraq. The chapter proceeds by defining slavery and the background of slavery in Iraq before discussing the motives and factors leading to slavery. While the full extent remains to be seen, the developments outlined in this chapter contribute to a gradual but definitive evolution of the legal definition of slavery. This definition reflects a more contemporary and nuanced understanding of the elements of ownership, with trafficking portrayed as a form of exploitation that is regularly represented as a species of slavery (Quirk 2007). The following definition debuted in reference to trafficking and will be analysed in detail. It refers to movement, through various means and circumstances, for the purpose of utilization. These include the exploitation or the prostitution of others, or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery, or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the removal of organs (Gallagher 2010).

The goal of ISIS was to remove every sign of the Yazidis’ presence in Sinjar. The Yazidis are an indigenous ethno-religious group who live in Nineveh Province, in the northern part of Iraq (Abdullah 2014). The Yazidi religion, like many other religions, sees Adam as the first man created by God. In another variety, this role has been taken by an angel, Malek Tawus, the Peacock Angel instead of God, because God has a clear role in shaping the world and protecting Yazidis (Lescot 1938; Guest 1993). If the Yazidis were to leave northern Iraq, they would be more likely to be eradicated. Their struggle has existed for thousands of years. People were escaping and running away because the roads outside Sinjar were full of military trucks with soldiers who ordered the Kurdish Peshmerga fighters used by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) to fight ISIS instead of retreating. About 50,000 Yazidis escaped to Mount Sinjar. ‘After the withdrawal of the Peshmerga forces, Turkish Kurdish guerrillas, many of them women, arrived and several thousand people from Yazidi settlements around the mountain, were led through a part of Syria and to safety in Iraqi Kurdistan’ (Arraf 2018b).

This was the result of a decisive victory for the Kurdish forces that fired militants from Sinjar and cut off vital support routes that the Islamic State provided for the transfer of fighters, weapons and oil and other illicit goods that funded them.

(Cockburn 2015, p. 53)

Most experts believe that ISIS’s main motive for attacking the Yazidis was religious persecution, which is evident by the forced conversion to Sunni Islam and the destruction of the Yazidi holy sites. ISIS justified these attacks with their interpretation of Islam. ISIS’s research agency has stated that, ‘Unlike Christians or Shiite Muslims, Yazidis have been a Coptic minority’ (Krajeski 2018). Sex trafficking/sexual slavery was used to raise money, but mainly to humiliate and harm the Yazidis: ‘the human rights of women were taken away, all their human rights, and rape is an important part of it, they have been eliminated from their societies and their communities have been effectively destroyed, ethnic groups are completely eradicated’ (Barnett 2016).

Like each of the 3.2 million Iraqis displaced by violence since January 2014, the beneficiaries of the Humanitarian Admissions Programme in Germany, which form the subject of this book, all have their own individual experiences and tragic stories to tell, and these include some of brutal abuse. A staggering 3.2 million Iraqis have been displaced within their own country, and hence have become internally displaced persons (IDPs). The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) persecuted ethnic and religious minorities, systematically killing, robbing, and enslaving them (Cockburn 2015; Stern and Berger 2015). According to Amnesty International, thousands of men, women, and children of the Yazidi community have been or are currently victims of ISIS. There are reports (Hosseini 2016) about Yazidi girls who were separated from their families and sold as sex slaves, or given to combatants and forced to convert to Islam. Even if they were lucky enough to be rescued, they are often stigmatized or banished by their families and communities because of what happened to them. Traditionally, the cultural context in Iraq condemns women who have been victims of sexual abuse and victims of their families (Al-Tawil 2012).

Islamic religious fundamentalism (Antoun 2001; Emerson and Hartman 2006) employs the strategic use of religious discourse and institutions to promote views and actions that are absolutist and intolerant, anti-human, and anti-women’s rights, and at their roots, fundamentally patriarchal. The recent appearance of fundamentalism under ISIS has brought the question of women and their place in Islam to the foreground. Even though ISIS claims to act in accordance with the Quran and true Islam, their actions have mostly been condemned all over the world as mere fundamentalism and a narrow-minded, unfavourable interpretation of Islam. Traditional structures were swept away in favour of the scriptures themselves (Yaghi 2014). These Islamic movements have engendered a ‘patriarchal and anti-feminist mindset and social attitude … among those in the region’s religious authorities, bureaucracy, and also among ordinary faithful Muslims.’ Specifically, Yaghi (2014) attempted to explore and understand the reasons behind the emergence of women’s slavery as a centre of contention as the events unfolded. The examination of the discourse and various political and social factors that surrounded or underlaid these events shows that women in Iraq were being pulled into different directions as a result of multiple forces operating in the context of structural violence and ethnic cleansing, specifically by the hand of ISIS. What do women have to say about religious fundamentalism in recounting their individual experiences of captivity and violence? This brings us to our point about ISIS: the leaders perceive ethnic and religious differences as being deviant, ancient, or pre-Islamic, and thus uncivilized. ISIS takes civilization to mean Islamization, and any identity outside the development of ISIS or its view of Islam is to be eradicated (Yaghi 2014).

Forced displacement, or forced migration, is a condition that marks the lives of thousands of people throughout the last several years in Iraq. In 2014, over 400,000 individuals had been displaced, captured, or killed (Hosseini 2018). Gender-mainstreaming in humanitarian programmes with forced migrants is based on a belief that such an approach will lead to greater gender equality, while raising the status of women through their empowerment.

Displacement and the experience of exile not only have disruptive consequences, they also create possibilities for the reconstruction and re-negotiation of gender and other social relations. The specific actions taken by human rights organizations have the potential to help shape changes towards gender equality if the problems facing women are fully understood and addressed by those responsible.

The present research explores the impact of gender-sensitive protection and assistance for refugees in Germany. In the following chapters, I discuss the context of this study and of Yazidi refugees in Germany. I then focus on the programme through which humanitarian organizations introduce women refugees in Germany. I will subsequently present my analysis of how refugee women negotiated, deconstructed, and were influenced and manipulated by humanitarian programming which aimed to support gender equality and women’s empowerment. I conclude with comments on the obstacles to the success of such a programme in the context of forced migration and refugees.

Since 2014, there have been attempts by the UN refugee agency and other humanitarian organizations to recognize the special needs of refugee women. The work initially involved concerns that included protecting women from rape and sexual exploitation because of the insecure situation in Iraq. The policy later evolved into a transformative endeavour. Because female Yazidi survivors experienced violence that was specifically based on the overlap of their gender and religious identity (Chertoff 2016), there is a need to investigate their needs not just as women, but also as women of a particular religious group.

This research focuses on the services that have been provided to women who were victims of trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation. It aims to provide an outline of the activities carried out by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to facilitate either the integration process in the host countries of those women who have sought asylum, or the reintegration process in the countries of origin. It also lists the services and activities of NGOs and inter-governmental organizations working to address the social exclusion of victims of trafficking. It brings up the factors that must be considered in developing future services and activities to emphasize empowerment. Many attempts have been made to help trafficked women, as a lot of international awareness has been raised on the occurrence of sexual slavery. But these women also need further assistance from national and international legal frameworks in expanding the capacity of structures to shelter women and to propose opportunities for them to make some kind of living.

These women have had to cope with heavy losses: they have lost their livelihoods, the anchors of their lives, and their home countries. In many cases, their cities and villages have been destroyed. All the things that made them feel safe are now gone. Their families and friends were left behind or killed, and their communities often reject them because of what ISIS did to them. They have no support, and it is often extremely difficult for them to trust people or rebuild emotional strength. They would not feel safe in their home countries and, in any case, there is insufficient treatment available for their mental and physical conditions. Coping with all the losses and trauma will only be possible away from home, in a place where they feel safe and where the necessary infrastructure for appropriate medical treatment and psychosocial support is available. Many of these women consider themselves lucky because they only had to flee their homes, while others were victims of brutal acts of violence, rapes, forced marriages, enslavement, and forced conversions. Most often, these women are members of religious minorities, and the majority of these minorities are Yazidis.

The State Ministry of Baden-Württemberg (2015) in Germany, with the cooperation of the Iraqi Kurdistan government, decided to provide specialized psychosocial support for victims in Germany, as there are no suitable treatment options in Iraq. However, only a few refugees have been able to access and benefit from this generosity, compared to the number of those who need the aid. Most of them remain in camps, in their modest dwellings, with little opportunity to overcome their painful experiences. At the same time, many of these people do not have great ambitions. They are happy to have been saved; they need safety and a home, but they do not have the strength to think about the future. Because so many women were raped and humiliated, victims face an additional challenge beyond their personal trauma: they have to cope with the fear of being rejected by their community because of their painful experiences. Thus, for some of them, relocation to Germany is tantamount to salvation.

Some of the victims are the only survivors of families that they saw killed before their eyes. Theirs are the horror stories we read in the media, the ones that underscore the brutality of the current conflict in Iraq. Through their stories, one can easily understand why many millions leave everything behind to flee for their lives. Survivors of extreme circumstances require extreme assistance. Those who are still at risk must be moved to safe places. Through the generosity of the people of Baden-Württemberg, more than 1,000 vulnerable Iraqis have moved to Germany since the beginning of the programme in March 2015. They receive shelter, cash, assistance, free health and psychosocial care, free education, and the opportunity to receive German citizenship. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) provides cultural orientation, clothing vouchers, medical care, transportation, and accompaniment to Germany.

Using feminist and gendered perspectives, this research examines the role of gender in displacement, focusing on women’s experiences and the different ways in which gender identities, roles, and relations are influenced by the processes of and responses to forced migration. It begins with a brief historical overview of gender-based analyses of slavery and forced migration. It then explores the causes and experiences of forced migration by drawing on gendered evaluations of individualized persecution and experiences of conflict-induced mass displacement. It also explores the nature of the refugee status determination process, highlighting emerging sensitivity to the interconnectedness between sexual orientation, gender identity, and asylum. Furthermore, it considers developments in response to sexual and gender-based violence in mass displacement contexts, along with the paradoxical implications of policies aimed at promoting gender equality and empowerment in the context of shelters.

The book is structured in the following way: In this chapter, I briefly address how patriarchal values are reinforced through religious, cultural, and political structures under the Islamic State. In doing so, I explore the experiences of survivors during captivity and the challenges they encountered while fleeing back to Iraqi Kurdistan. My examination of the discourse and various political and social factors that surrounded or underlaid these events sh...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 The enslavement of women
• 2 Understanding women trafficking in Iraq
• 3 Strategy of shelters in the reintegration process
• 4 New life experience in the host country and the underlying challenges
• 5 Concluding remarks
• Annex
• Index