Refugees, Race, and Gender: The Multiple Discrimination against Refugee Women

Refuge

Volumn 19, Issue 6, 2001, Pages 21-32

  Pittaway, Eileen ^a   Bartolomei, Linda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 85143208652     PISSN: 02295113     EISSN: 19207336     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.25071/1920-7336.21236     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. All Africa News Service, “Racism to Blame for Growing Number of Refugees, Says Top UN Refugee Official (2001) on-line: UNSW Library Expanded Academic ASAP Int’l Ed. (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
2. UNHCR, “Refugees by Numbers” (2000) on-line: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (date accessed: 11 June 2001).
3. “When Is a Refugee Not a Refugee?” Economist (US), 3 March 2001.
4. Ronald Kaye, “Defining the Agenda: British Refugee Policy and the Role of Parties,” Journal of Refugee Studies 7, no. 2–3 (1994): 144–59; Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, “International Law and Human Rights: Trends Concerning International Migrants and Refugees,” International Migration Review 23, no. 3 (1989): 526–46. Theodor van Boven, “United Nations Strategies to Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination: Past Experiences and Present Perspectives,” UN Doc. E/CN.4/1999/ WG.1BP.7, para 56 (1999). UNHCR, “Asian Preparatory Meeting for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance 2001: Declaration and Plan of Action” (2001) on-line: WCAR Homepage (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
5. Justice Marcus Einfeld, “Jesse Street Memorial Address” (20 April 2001) on-line: ABC Radio (date accessed: 6 June 2001), and Refugee Council of Australia, “Refugees and Unemployment” briefing paper (Sydney: RCOA, 1993). This paper prepared by the Refugee Council of Australia refugees suggests that the worst-case scenario is that refugees have a neutral impact on the economy of the host country, but, more likely, they have some positive economic effect.
6. UNHCR, “Guidelines on Preventing and Responding to Sexual Violence against Refugee Women” (Geneva: UNHCR, 1995).
7. Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin, The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis (Manchester: Juris Publishing, Manchester University Press, 2000).
8. Ibid., 17.
9. Pirkko Kourula, Broadening the Edges: Refugee Definition and International Protection Revisited (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1997).
10. Ibid., 132.
11. Cases include the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal decisions on February 5, 1999, and July 30, 1999, in which “young women in Somalia” were considered as members of a particular social group, and rape was deemed to be persecution. The case of Fauziya Kassinga, an asylum-seeker from Togo fleeing female genital mutilation, documented in Fauziya Kassinga and Layli Miller Bashir, Do They Hear You When You Cry? (Bantam Doubleday, Dell Publishing Group, 1998).
12. ICERD, “Gender Related Dimensions of Racial Discrimination” (2000) General Recommendation 25, International Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, UN Doc. ICERD/C/56/Misc.21/Rev.3.
13. UN, “Gender and Racial Discrimination,” (2000) Report of the Expert Group Meeting 2000, on-line: United Nations (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. “Othering” can simultaneously be traced to the Western philosophical tradition of dichotomous thought. Such thought had its origins in Descartes’ mind/body dualism, and continues to provide the metaphysical foundations of liberal discourse and theory today. Dichotomous thought is characterized by the representation of ideas as a pair of mutually exclusive and exhaustive opposites. In Western thought, dichotomies traditionally privilege one pole, defining it in absolute terms and the other merely relative to it, as in A and not-A. Descartes’ substance dualism established a system of thought that gave privilege to mind, reason,†and culture over body, passion, and nature. Feminists took up the critique and asserted that this philosophical tradition also created the dichotomy between man and woman, and this has more recently been extended to explain the Western relationship to other cultures, races, and species. See Marianne H. Marchand and Jane L Parpart, eds., Feminism/Postmodernism/Development (London and New York: Routledge, 1995).
18. van Boven, paragraph 5 (b).
19. R. Coomaraswamy and R. Seifert in Charlesworth and Chinkin, Boundaries of International Law,13, 254.
20. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, “Women’s Rights Must Be Addressed in South-East Europe,” on-line: International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (date accessed: 15 May 2000).
21. Uli Linke, “Gendered Difference, Violent Imagination, Blood Race, Nation,” American Anthropologist 99, no. 3 (1997): 559–73.
22. UN, EXCOM Conclusions: No. 39 (XXXVI) 1985, No. 54 (XXXIX) 1988, No. 64 (XLI) 1990, No. 73 (XLIV) 1993, and Information Note on UNHCR’s Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women (UN Doc. EC/SCP/67).
23. L. Pope, “Refugee Protection and Determination: Women Claimants” (summary of comments made at the CRDD Working Group on Women Refugee Claimants: Training Workshop for Members, Toronto, Canada, 1990).
24. This case study was undertaken by Eileen Pittaway 1991–8 and builds on her previous published work, Women Still at Risk in Australia (Canberra: Bureau of Immigration Research, 1991).
25. Nicole Hercus, Nandini Ray, and Eileen Pittaway, “The Women at Risk Program: An Evaluation Proposal” (Sydney: Centre for Refugee Research, UNSW, 2000).
26. Research data, WaR Project ANCCORW, interviews conducted by Pittaway in Hong Kong refugee camps in March 1991 and in Thai refugee camps in September 1991. Interviews in Australia were conducted by Pittaway and Sylvia Winton in September 1991.
27. Research data, WaR Research Project 1991 (ANCCORW Archives, Sydney, Australia).
28. Research data, WaR Research Project 1991, interviews by Pittaway with refugee women in Whitehead Refugee Camp, March 1991, and with ISS Director, Hong Kong, March 1991 (ANCCORW Archives, Sydney, Australia).
29. At the time this research was conducted, apart from a few Amnesty International reports, very little written material was available on the sexual torture of women. The researcher had to wait until much later, following the Beijing Conference and the Rwanda War Crimes Tribunal, before significant research and literature became available to support the evidence that she had collected. In fact, the researcher was told several times that she was “overreacting.”
30. Diane Hayes and Sylvia Winton, “An Evaluation of the Women at Risk Scheme” (Sydney: ANCCORW, 1991); Jacqueline R. Castel, “Rape, Sexual Assault, and the Meaning of Persecution,” International Journal of Refugee Law 4, no. 1 (1992): 39–56; Jacqueline Bhabha, “Legal Problems of Women Refugees,” Women: A Cultural Review 4, no. 3 (1993): 240–9; Nasreen Mahmud, “Crimes against Honour: Women in International Refugee Law,” Journal of Refugee Studies 9, no. 4 (1996): 367–82.
31. Reference available but not included, in order to protect the privacy of those involved.
32. Research data, WaR Research Project 1991. Interviews by Pittaway with determining officers (ANCCORW Archives, Sydney, Australia).
33. Castel, “Rape, Sexual Assault, and the Meaning of Persecution,” 39.
34. Human Rights Watch, The Human Rights Watch Global Report on Women’s Human Rights (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1995).
35. From a presentation given by Donna Sullivan, International Human Rights Watch, AWHRC HR Training Course, Jakarta, 1994.
36. Research Data, WaR Research Project 1991, ANCCORW. Recorded conversation between Pittaway and Juliana Nkrumah, 1993 (ANCCORW Archives, Sydney, Australia).
37. Lepa Mladjenovic, Rape in War: The History of the Universal Soldier (London: Third World Network Features, 1993).
38. “Refugees, Migration and Trafficking,” Caucus documentation from the NGO preparatory meetings for the World Conference against Racism, held in Chiang Mai, Thailand, 24–6 January 2001, and Kathmandu, Nepal, 27–9 April 2001, and the APWLD Lobby Document, Women’s Human Rights: Engendering the Agenda of WCAR (Thailand: APWLD, April 2001).
39. UNHCR (2000) “Migration and Trafficking,” on-line: (date accessed: 6 June 2001), and the APWLD Lobby document, 53–4.
40. COMTEX (2000) “US under Fire over ‘Racism’ against African Refugees,” East African, 6 January 2000, on-line: All Africa Global News Service (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
41. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, “International Law and Human Rights: Trends Concerning International Migrants and Refugees,” International Migration Review 23, no. 3 (1989): 526–46.
42. Ibid., 545.
43. Cynthia Enloe, The Morning After: Sexual Politics at the End of the Cold War (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), and UN (2000) “Gender and Racial Discrimination,” Report of the Expert Group Meeting 2000, on-line: United Nations (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
44. UNHCR (1998), “Meeting New Challenges: Evolving Approaches to the Protection of Women-at-Risk” (Resettlement Section, draft in progress, April 1998).
45. Elinor Caplan, “Canada’s Refugee Policies,” Migration World Magazine 28, no. 1 (2000): 19–24.
46. Eileen Pittaway, Women Still at Risk in Australia (Canberra: Bureau of Immigration Research, 1991); Eileen Pittaway, “Protection: The Solution or Part of the Problem?” (paper presented at Gender Issues and Refugees: Developmental Implications, York University, Toronto, Canada, 1993); Robyn Iredale, Colleen Mitchell, Rogelia Pe-Pua, et al., Ambivalent Welcome: The Settlement Experiences of Humanitarian Entrant Families in Australia (Canberra: Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, AGPS, 1996).
47. “Asian Preparatory Meeting for the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance 2001: Declaration and Plan of Action,” on-line: WCAR Homepage (date accessed: 6 June 2001).
48. UNHRC, World Conference against Racism, Preparatory Committee, Second Session, Geneva, May 21 to June 1, 2001.
49. “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (Preparatory Committee)” (UN Doc. A⁄CONF.189/PC.2/L.1/Add), paras. 31, 32, 36, 37, and 38.
50. Ibid., para. 56, bis 2.
51. Charlesworth and Chinkin, Boundaries of International Law, 333; and Geoffrey Robertson, Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice (London: Penguin Books, 2000).
52. International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).
53. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).