A Sleep in a Sterile Zone

Ariella Azoulay

[This military campaign, too, is a part of the same regime]

The familiar sight of a Palestinian room - colorful blankets wrap those sleeping on the floor, crowded against each other. A khaki sleeve caught my eye. A ray of light crossing the frame from the right led to it. Then it became easier to notice a pair of army boots peeking under another blanket, a flexed knee in uniform and an upside-down helmet. These are Israeli soldiers. They are sleeping in a Palestinian home in Gaza. There is no trace of the inhabitants. They must have “fled” once more as refugees.

This photograph landed in my e-mailbox ten days ago with about another twenty. The accompanying letter iterated: "We should all be proud of the IDF… these brave kids defend our country" and, following, provided a recommendation which is also an authorization to distribute these images. This e-mail was signed by the CEO of the Israeli branch of a large European firm. His full personal data were prominently noted at the bottom of the letter. This is the most abstract photograph of a very harsh series, the last two of which come with a warning: these are not to be viewed by children. According to the sender, the rest may apparently be shared with them as a part of this war's booty.

Images similar to the one of soldiers asleep in a Palestinian home were disseminated to date only by soldiers who are members in Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence) as a part of their sobering-up process from the missions the army had required them to carry out for the sake of 'state security'. Their photographs are not made public in the press but are exhibited in alternative venues. In Israel, at least, the occupation of a Palestinian home to provide soldiers with a place to sleep is not a media item. Were a press-photographer to shoot such a frame, the editor would not print it for 'lack of public interest'. But now the press has been kept away from Gaza, and it has a very meager supply of images of the ongoing horror there. Israel allows press-photographers to set themselves up on a hill adjacent to the Gaza Strip and shoot – long distance - the smoke billowing over the horizon, thus screening the inferno within. The hill overlooking Gaza is open to local tourist-visitors. For their convenience, someone has placed benches there as well as site-scape information booths. In the last few weeks, people have been arriving with children and binoculars to show their kids and watch Gaza being bombarded, and to take pleasure in Israel’s might. When the man standing with his back to the camera returns home, he will download the photographs he took and distribute them to family and friends. He will show them that he, too, was there, holding his fingers in a victory sign for the camera, while Gaza goes up in flames in the background. From time to time, this screen that insulates us from Gaza is ruptured by photographs transmitted via e-mail by Gazan photographers – unbearable images of severe harm to civilians and their immediate environment. Very few of these are printed in Israeli daily press. Those that are published are provided by Reuters (whose Gaza office was bombed yesterday) or AP. Some probably reach these news agencies by the Gazan agency Ramatan that currently employs 150 journalists and photographers in Gaza and has become a major supplier of news photographs worldwide (except to Israel). The person who proudly forwarded the photograph at hand did not see in it that which the soldiers of Breaking the Silence saw in the images they published in the past. They, or others like them, have refused to go to war this time around. Those who refused have been tried and incarcerated. The Israeli press has not reported this at all. The media's silencing their refusal joins the similar silencing of demonstrations by Jewish Israelis against the war, or the arrest and incarceration of dozens of demonstrators. No one will prosecute the soldiers in this picture or the one who photographed them, all having invaded a home and removed its inhabitants in order to have a place to sleep. Theirs is an 'act of state'.

The photograph I have chosen is a not particularly harsh sight. It shows soldiers asleep in Gaza. Even in the midst of battle soldiers need their sleep. The difficulty arises when one recalls that these colorful blankets in which the soldiers are curled up are not their own, that the dwellers of this home where they now sleep have been made homeless. One of the soldiers, wakened by a first ray of morning light before his mates, is taking pictures - for them, for their families, a souvenir – an image of a night's sleep in Gaza.

But, after all, this is Gaza. How can Israeli soldiers who participated in the destruction of Gaza – the devastation of entire neighborhoods, public buildings, fatal ruin of vital infrastructure, wounding thousands, bombing hospitals, civilian shelters, schools, killing of over one-thousand human beings – how can these soldiers who are "not exactly welcome guests" in Gaza, how can they possibly afford to sleep so peacefully in the midst of the inferno they have produced without sensing any immediate danger to their own lives? The answer lies in one of the Occupation's practices, most common since its inception – creating a 'sterile zone'. What is a sterile zone? An area emptied of Arabs so that the military can carry out its missions. In this image we are most likely witnessing the heart of the sterile zone. We have no knowledge of its range, its perimeter, but for these soldiers to sleep so serenely, so safely, not only the dwellers of this house had to be removed from the sterile zone, but the residents of the entire area.

For the Israeli soldier, a Palestinian home is a violable space. This point has not been born in the recent Gaza campaign. The history of this violability goes back slightly over sixty years-old. At that time, the voices opposing the expulsion of Palestinians were hushed by another that overtook the military and political leadership of the Jewish public, making expulsion a fait-accompli. This leading voice stammered in its official declarations but was none the less determined in its practical aspects and managed to expel 750,000 Arabs from the areas of British Mandate Palestine. For a whole year Jewish soldiers went from village to village and, when called upon, from home to home, tearing the Arabs away from their dwellings and lands. At times they used indirect means - rumors and truck convoys – and at others, violence and direct threat. Ever since, the Palestinian home has not ceased to be threatened by the very thinking and operating pattern that to the Israeli public (as well as to world public opinion) presents that very home as an existential threat.

The residents of the Arab towns of Ramle, Bir Al-Saba, Majdal and Isdud, occupied by Israeli forces in the 1948 war, either escaped or were forcibly expelled and most of them were removed to Gaza and tripled its population at once. At the end of the war the Egyptians controlled Gaza and instated their own military administration. Israel did not manage that last "military victory" – the conquest of Gaza – before signing the ceasefire agreements with Egypt in 1949, thus giving birth to the narrow, troublesome 'strip' at the edge of the State of Israel. A 'strip' is a military-political term that expresses temporariness and designates a region that must be dealt with as undetermined, its situation to be solved. 'The Gaza Strip' was born as a problem. Since this birth, Israel has never ceased proposing 'solutions to the problem'. In 1949 Israel proposed a 'political' solution, aiming to annex the strip along with some of the refugees it harbored. But this political 'solution' with its military scent was rejected by the parties involved. In the 1956 Sinai campaign, the Strip was occupied along with the entire peninsula and Israel imposed its military administration. This did not last long for under American-Russian pressure Israel was forced to retreat from the territory it conquered. In 1967 Israel managed to re-conquer the Strip and take control of the 1948 refugees yet once again. Since then, for over forty years Israel has controlled the Palestinian population in Gaza. At least ever since the general closure Israel imposed upon the Gaza Strip in 1991 during the first Gulf War, such control entails cutting off the Strip from the West Bank as well as strict control over any entry and exit from it. By means of administering the crossings, Israel regulates life in Gaza. Since the Second Intifada, and ever more tightly since its 'disengagement', Israel has been managing a measured, chronic disaster, ever-watchful not to cross the fine line of a 'humanitarian catastrophe', enabling or preventing the flow of goods, people and means.

Since 1948, the Palestinian home is never the private domicile that shelters its dwellers from invaders and strangers. Israelis do not conceive of themselves as invaders or strangers, and the Palestinians are not regarded as home-owners in the simplest sense of the term. Their homes are vulnerable to nightly incursions, bulldozer activity, bombs dropped upon them from the skies, missile barrages or simply shootings that make them uninhabitable, expropriate them to create army outposts, positions and headquarters, all given to changing circumstances and the increasing 'security necessities'. The explanation given for these ritual actions is that they are crucial in order to 'flush out the terrorists from their nests', 'suppress resistance' or 'destroy insurgent infrastructure'. Thus the Palestinian home is presented as a military outpost of the enemy, calling for military intervention. The Palestinian home constitutes a problem, and military intervention its solution or at least a means to 'solving the problem'. More precisely, the home becomes penetrable and violable because it has been perceived by some local Israeli commander as a 'security problem' or its solution, but it tends to be regarded again and again as a problem because it is always seen as penetrable.

Israel usually manages to carry out its destruction with a public silencer, without reverberating in Israeli or international public discourse, maintaining the status quo. Whenever its operations were intensified and expanded and the Palestinians persistently resisted Israeli military might with the meager means at their disposal, Israel has turned to 'the world' for help, to halt the self-same campaign it initiated and bring about a 'ceasefire' agreement. Usually, while conducting these negotiations, it manages to grab the chance for some more destructive actions and invades more homes. Any such military campaign renews the state of emergency, re-justifying its permanent validity since 1948, mobilizing one and all and helping to forget the preceding emergency. Most importantly – it prevents citizens from identifying the source of this state of emergency: the regime itself. This regime needs the state of emergency. It cannot survive without it. To this end it has been mobilizing its citizens for the past forty years and more to continue fighting its non-citizens subjects. The source of the real state of emergency is the existence of a regime that denies all of its subjects - both citizens and non-citizens – the viable possibility to build for themselves joint frames of living in their area; it does not let them exorcise themselves of the language of occupation in which any Arab is a potential member of the 'killer gangs' as they were termed in the 1940s, 'infiltrators' in the 1950s, 'militants' in the 1960s and 1970s, and 'terrorist organizations' ever since the 1980s.

"A ceasefire is enough for us", Ben Gurion wrote in 1949. "If we chase peace – the Arabs will expect us to pay a price – either borders or refugees, or both. Let us wait a few years." Ben Gurion wrote this in the very year the State of Israel was accepted as a member nation in the UN. In spite of its mass expulsion of Palestinians and the devastation of their habitat, Israel was recognized as a 'peace-seeking' state.

Within this pattern of suspending the final solution – be it peace, war or mass expulsion – the current campaign, too – constitutes colonial expansion and violent suppression of resistant people who have been made refugees. This recognition, namely the alliance of sovereign nation-states that back each other up in the wars they conduct against civilians who have been made refugees in their own land or outside, continues to condone Israel's countless military campaigns in the territories it has occupied.

Amnesty International in its Public Statement Appeals the Moroccan Authorities to Investigate the Death of a Migrant Killed at the Border

The organization also called for the respect of the rights of migrants who are often ill-treated and summarily expelled from Morocco. The calls follow the killing of 29 year-old migrant from Cameroon, known as Alino and the arrest and arbitrary expulsion of 14 other migrants at the beginning of January 2009.

In the morning of 1 January 2009, at least 50 migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa tried to reach the fence between Morocco and the enclave of Melilla. According to accounts given to Amnesty International, Moroccan law enforcement officials fired once in the air but following shots were directed at the migrants to prevent them from crossing the border. Alino, one of the migrants, was reportedly hit by the second shot and died during his transportation to Nador hospital

For details of the public statement issued by Amnesty pl. click on the link:
http://www.upes.org/body1_eng.asp?field=sosio_eng&id=1410

Morocco will Soon Join the Sea Horse Network – A Communication Satellite to Monitor Migratory Flows Between Sub-Saharan Africa and Spain

"Sea Horse Network is a communication satellite developed by the European Union (EU) and Spain to monitor migratory flows between sub-Saharan Africa and Spain. Regarded as a rear base and base transit of illegal migrants to Europe, Morocco deploys many ways to deter potential migrants to the European Eldorado. Her participation in "Sea Horse Network will monitor real-time departure of boats to the Canary Islands. This system will also be used for monitoring maritime traffic in drugs on the Mediterranean and the Atlantic according to its designers. A system that probably will relieve the Kingdom of Morocco in the efforts already undertaken in the fight against migration. The "Sea Horse Network is already in place between Spain, Portugal, Senegal, Mauritania and Cape Verde. The exchange of information between the focal point of the Canary Islands and the offices of Senegal, Cape Verde and Mauritania are already operational. All this information is processed in the central platform installed in the Spanish capital.

It is time to rethink whether this kind of surveillance mechanisms will lead to more violence to the borders. The securitisation of the borders will lead to policing and control of populations who might be forced to move for several reasons. The international community should join hands to probe these reasons rather than act as the monitoring agencies at the “borders”.

For details click on the link:
http://www.yabiladi.com/article-politique-1654.html

Ten Years of Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (GP10)

Forced Migration Review has launched a special issue on Ten years of Guiding principles. The special issue reflects on the discussions at the international conference on the Ten Years of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (GP10) held in Oslo on 16-17 October 2008.

The conference aimed to assess the accomplishments and shortcomings of the Guiding Principles since their launch in 1998. The FMR special issue includes shortened versions of some of the conference presentations, plus a selection of other articles, most of which present case studies on the application of the Guiding Principles in different countries.

For details click on the link:
http://www.fmreview.org/GuidingPrinciples10.htm

Sex Slaves: The Trafficking of Women in Asia by Louise Brown Published by: Virago Press, 2000 ISBN 1 86049 903 1 Pages—276 Price: UK Pounds 7.99

Geetisha Dasgupta

Louise Brown begins this book with a rather shocking narrative style. In the preface, she introduces the thought behind the book. She also says that research in prostitution is not an easy task; the research methodology cannot involve standard research techniques and information about the real trade is difficult to access. She adds that the Asian stereotype of the woman is a myth. Poor Asian women, though exposed to danger of being trafficked to a huge degree, cannot be said to be weak. Their vulnerability does not prove their weakness. The array of chapters is interesting, and signifies how the author views the industry. The book explores facets like “The Market”, “The Commodity”, “The Agents”, “Seasoning”, “The Customers”, “The Management”, “The Law”, “Life and Death”, and “The Shame”. The following paragraphs try to throw some light on these.

Relating minute details of the social behavioral pattern of the Asian commercial sex industry, she speaks of the very basics of the mode on which the flesh trade subsist. She begins with the case of Sahana, a young illiterate Nepali woman, who was violated because of her two most valuable qualities, that of being pretty and that of being young. Her family earned a good fifty pounds for her face. She ceased to be in the trade after a while because she contracted HIV and rapidly lost her physical beauty that was the key to her survival in the market. In the first chapter, the author talks about the sexual attitudes of the Asian men and counter poses it to that of the western men. Notions that mark the understanding are hypocrisy and contempt for women, fidelity and virtue, abhorrence for and fear of divorce, etc. Prostitution for these women is not a forced occupation always. The link between poverty, prostitution and trafficking is a pretty confused one. Often, money earned out of prostitution enables one to earn the respect of the family, and in turn, it is the family itself that expects a pretty daughter to join prostitution if that is a standard mode of income in the society in reference.

Though the Asian sex industry underwent considerable changes following the Second World War, the essential social mores were never altered, nor was the attitude towards the women. Brideprice and dowry are both ways that convert a woman into a non-person. In case of the failure of families, it is the women who are more vulnerable. Social hierarchies are confirmed in terms of access to and control over the women. This is in a way manifested in the exchange of women in marriages. Rape is often an entry ticket to flesh trade and the perpetrator in this case, becomes the trafficker as well as the pimp. The author explores the concept of Devadasi in Hindu religion and says, it is a kind of religious prostitution where, girls are sold pre puberty and on the occasion of reaching physical adulthood, sold off to the highest bidder. Thus restricted to the profession for life and her daughters also follow suit. Hinduism makes space for prostitute castes, like the Badis in Nepal. Islam, though equal to women in religious terms, creates huge levels of gender power differences in the social realm and therefore perpetuates violence. Brown analyses the Purdah as a social tool to harness the women whom the men seek to control. This notion, when violated, would inflict consequences like honour killings. Newspapers in Sindh have reported 66 honour killings in the province in 1996 alone. Prostitution in such societies, are never overt. Often, the uninitiated customer would not realize where to approach in search of “free women”. In countries like Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal, Philippines, there would be covert concubines, which, would not be recognized from outside. Globalization and liberalization pushed more and more women to flesh trade. They are being increasingly commodified, and often the buyer would sort through an array of choices made available to him by the agent. In Thailand, two million young children and women from Burma have become sex slaves in the past few years.

In traditional societies, where illegitimate sexual experience is a great no-no, there have to be agents who usher the women into the trade. Agents function in almost all kinds of ways that one might imagine. More often than not, the daughter is culled out from the family through lucrative offers of a better life through a sanitized job in a big city. Many a time, romantic liaisons are fabricated. In countries like Bangladesh for example, marriage, rather than employment is a better avenue towards flesh trade. The story of Rupchand, a rickshaw puller from Dhaka, is a case in point. He had three daughters to marry off. When he married one of them to an unseen Indian man through a known Indian woman, the daughter vanished forever. Rupchand died and his widow has suspicious of what had happened to Fatema, the daughter. But there were never any way to find out. Some sex workers in Asia however, make a conscious choice to enter the market, though such women are very few in number. Girls are recruited at an early age. There are even pick up vans that assist them for the travel.

In the rest of the chapters, the author speaks of the ‘qualities’ that are sought in a prostitute by a potential buyer and how the trade which is increasing by leaps and bounds is ‘managed’. Every industry has its laws, and so does the commercial sex industry. The author points out the significant dissimilarities that the Asian market has, when compared to the west. The book is marked by an on your face narrative style that often takes aback the uninitiated, but also would create more interest to the reader who wants to begin in this particular study area. This summarizes the reason for using not too much figures, but more field experiences, stories and descriptions.

Geography of Mass Incarceration

Oren Yiftachel

[Prof. Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba]

"We have a great opportunity now in Gaza to smash and flatten them… we should destroy thousand of houses, tunnels and industries, and kill as many terrorists as possible…". So declared Eli Yishai, Israel's Deputy Prime Minister, a few days ago. On the same day Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni promised "to topple the Hamas Regime", and Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert demanded in every forum to "hermetically seal" the Gazan-Egyptian border.

These, and many similar statements by Israeli leaders, sketch in painful clarity the ‘political geography of mass incarceration’ increasingly evident in Israel/Palestine. Under this regime large populations are locked into specific areas against their will, and often against international law, and are then subject to the mercy of their wardens. Typically, when the conditions of imprisonment become unbearable a rebellion erupts, and is suppressed by violent collective punishment, which in turn sets the conditions for the next uprising.

This is how Israel is now treating its rebelling prisoners in Gaza. As the leaders’ statements show, it seeks to lock them in the tiny strip and punish them with enormous force. At the same time Israel is further institutionalizing the geography of incarceration and with it the likelihood of future uprisings.

This is not a new phenomenon: European colonialism widely used mass incarceration of indigenous groups, condensing them in reserves and Bantustans, to enable Whites to freely exploit land, minerals and labor. Today too, racist governments attempt to deal with the existence of 'unwanted populations' by applying methods of spatial containment and violent ‘punishment’, as evident in the cases of Chechnya, Kosovo, Kashmir, Darfur and Tamil Elam in Sri Lanka. The key to this spreading political order is the prevention of the rebelling region from gaining state sovereignty, leaving it ‘neither in nor out’ of the state’s control system. As a non-state entity, resistance of the jailed to colonial power is often criminalized, leading the state’s righteous claim that it has 'no choice' but to further oppress the anti-colonial struggle.

Importantly, the mass incarceration strategy is usually not the preferred option. It is typically employed only when the colonial power has lost some of its ability to settle and control the land by other, softer, means, and when the option of ethnic cleansing has become untenable. Much to the regret of racist regimes, this is the situation today under international law. Hence, mass incarceration remains one of the main policy options for colonial states aiming to dominate indigenous populations.

Back to Israel/Palestine: Gaza turned into an open air jail already in the late 1940s when over 150,000 Palestinian refugees were driven by Israel into the small region (covering just 1.7% of British Palestine), joining its 60,000 previous residents. The refugees were never allowed to return to their lands and homes which were confiscated and destroyed. Ironically, it was during the 'peace process' that the incarceration of Gaza intensified, with a sequence of closures, movement restrictions and the construction in 1994 of a massive barrier around the Strip. Following the 2005 disengagement and the election of Hamas, Israel's illegal siege over the area was notched up with a near total blockade of movement and trade.

Gaza is a severe case, but it’s not unique. Since its establishment, Israel's ethnocratic regime has worked incessantly to Judaize the country by confiscating Palestinian lands, constructing hundreds of Jewish settlements and restricting the Palestinians to small enclaves. This began with the military government inside the Green Line until 1966, and the establishment of a 'fenced area' for the Bedouins in the south, which operates until today. Since the 1990s, the ghettoisation of Palestinians continued with the marking of areas A-B-C in the occupied territories, with the advent of closures and checkpoints, and finally with the construction of ‘the wall’ – all helping to fragment Palestine to dozens of isolated enclaves.

The long-term geographical impact of the Judaization policy has been dramatic. -- the Palestinians in Israel, for example, constitute 18% of the population, but control less than three percent of the land. In the entire area between Jordan and Sea, the Palestinians constitute just under 50%, but control only 13% of the land. Critically however, Judaization seems to have reached its limits, and since the Oslo period Israel has been re-arranging its colonial geography to fit realization.

The difference between Gaza and the other enclaves is the depth of its isolation and its persistent rebellion. The Hamas leadership never accepted the Oslo illusion, or the promise of 'two states for two people' enshrined in the 'roadmap' or the 'Annapolis process'. They have realized that the promise has become an empty rhetoric which enables the on-going colonization of their lands. The promised Palestinian state has become in the meantime fragmented, suffocated and impoverished. And what has been Israel's response to this crisis? The deepening of mass incarceration, 'necessitated' to protect Jewish settlement, and at the same time maintaining a campaign of massive personal incarceration, during which Israel has arrested over 10,000 prisoners who are now jailed without trials, including dozens of Palestinian parliamentarians. The incarceration policy has thus resulted in the creation of prisons within prisons.

While the geography of incarceration is typically explained as a security measure, its appeal is also increasing for economic reasons. During the current age of globalization, personal, commercial and financial movement has become essential for development and prosperity. The geography of mass incarceration helps to keep the ‘unwanted’ outside the riches of this process. Therefore, the on-going fortification around Gaza, including the current invasion, also put in place a system of protecting Jewish economic privileges.

Indeed, Palestinian violence plays an important part in the creation of this geography, through the hostile dialectic between colonizer and colonized. For example, the shelling of Israeli civilians by Hamas and suicide bombing of previous years are clear acts of terror, which gave legitimacy within Israeli society to carry out the incarceration policy. But Palestinian violence, and particularly the shelling from Gaza should also be perceived as a prison uprising, currently suppressed by the use of state terror, which kills many more civilians and creates infinitely more damage than the initial act of resistance. This dialectic means that the very maintenance of a geography of incarceration already sews the seeds for the next prison uprising...

It is important to note, however, that the option of rebellion only intensifies the punishment and killing, but not the basic geography of imprisonment. Hence, even after the current invasion is over, Israel will undoubtedly continue to use this strategy in both Gaza and the (non-rebelling) West Bank, and in softer forms inside the Green Line, where Israel's Palestinian citizens are also contained in small enclaves. I have termed this process 'creeping apartheid' – an undeclared yet powerful political order, which creates vastly unequal forms of citizenship under one ruling power. Rights under such regimes are determined by a combination of ethnic affiliation and place of birth. This cannot be illustrated more vividly than by noting the differences in mobility and property rights – Jews are free to move and purchase land in almost the entire area under Israeli control, while Palestinians are limited to ‘their own’ separated enclaves -- Gazans in Gaza only, Jerusalemites only in Jerusalem and so on.

This type of political geography tends to result in a chain of absurdities. Here is one: the invasion and destruction of Gaza is carried out by an ousted Israeli government, and is actively supported by a defeated US administration. The two governments which lost power are violently attacking in their dying days the democratically elected government of Palestine. This leads to the next absurd: instead of condemning and placing sanctions on Israel, which has placed Gaza under siege for the last two years, the world has imposed sanctions over the Hamas government. The occupied are punished twice: once by the brutal occupation, and a second time for the attempt to resist.

Sadly, these absurdities are not surprising, being part of the geography of mass incarceration, under which the colonial power will recognize the prisoners’ leadership only if they refrain from rebelling against their incarceration, as is currently the case with the Abass regime in the West Bank. In the case of a rebellion, however, its leaders are likely to be oppressed are often eliminated.

What may be slightly (but not entirely) more surprising is that Israeli leadership and society have not learnt from history that a geography of mass incarceration exists on borrowed time. Such as geography can never receive legitimacy, and hence cannot create security for the jailing side. On the contrary, instability and constant rebellions are likely to undermine the incarcerating regime itself.

Against the reality of mass incarceration, it may be advisable to listen to Mahmoud Darwish’s wise advise to his prison warden: “I shall still teach you how to wait/ at the gate of my postponed death/ slowly slowly/ perhaps you will have enough of me/ and will rid yourself of my cross/ and enter your night liberated/ from my ghostly shadow."

Returning Time to Gazans

Oren Yiftachel

[Prof. Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography and urban planning at Ben-Gurion University, Beersheba]

The sights of death and destruction from Gaza are devastating, and the residents of southern Israel are under on-going bombardment. The situation is suffocating, saddening and infuriating. In such a time it may be difficult to look beyond the violence, but this may be necessary to understand what is transpiring in front of our eyes.

An aboriginal author once said, during the struggle for native rights in Australia: "wherever national territory advances, our time is killed, but it also has a strange habit of returning after death."

It may seem far removed, but this insight can help us fathom the war on Gaza. Beyond the carnage, brutality, and screaming children, we can also see it as the continuation of the Israeli territorial project which has adopted a consistent and cruel goal – the erasure of Palestinian time, that is, the full recent history of this land. This erasure, needless to say, is aimed at destroying Palestinian space, in what Palestinian professor Sari Hanafi calls ‘spaciocide’. With this destruction comes the annihilation of political powers, those existing by right, and not as a result of some Israeli 'generosity'.

Accordingly, one may look at the current invasion to Gaza not only as an 'operation' to stop Hamas' rockets; a pre-election effort to boost popularity by cynical Israeli leaders; nor an attempt to re-establish Israel's deterrence following the failure of the second Lebanon War of 2006. This invasion and destruction of Gaza is neither only a colonial attempt to 'create a new political order' among neighboring nations, or an imperial (American-Israeli) push to control insurgent Arab societies. The current attack on Gaza is of course all these, but also – and most importantly, another step in the long-standing project of silencing, fragmenting, breaking and annihilating Palestinian history and collective existence. The erasure project is conducted by nearly everybody in Israel – politicians, artists, the media, university researchers and intellectuals.

Against these efforts of collective forgetfulness, let us remember that history: the Gaza Strip is a small region covering only 1.7% of historic Palestine. It was created as an entity following the 1948 war, known as the Nakbah (Palestinian disaster), during which some two thirds of Palestinians refugees were driven out from what is now Israel, with 150,000 of them joining the 60,000 Arabs already residing in the area. The armistice lines were drawn between Israeli and Egypt, with the refugees trapped on the 'wrong side', and prevented from returning to their villages. In the meantime, Israel destroyed nearly all Arab villages from Jaffa to Beersheba, appropriated all Palestinian land and allocated it to the dozens of Jewish towns and settlements built around Gaza.

The refugee population in Gaza today amounts to more than a million (over two thirds of the Strip's population). Its spatial conditions have worsened dramatically, with overcrowding, poverty, lack of services and a growing regime of geographic constraints. Israel's conquest in 1967 eased for a while the sense of siege, but following the first Intifada, and further since the Oslo Agreement, Gaza was cordoned once more, cut off from the rest of the Palestinian Territories and the world, and surrounded in 1994 by a massive 'security fence', ironically as part of the 'peace process'. Gaza became a large Palestinian Ghetto, or as notable Gaza Eyad el-Sarraj quipped: "the largest jail in the world.".

This is the background for the rise of Hamas, which offered an alternative to the failed Oslo accords under which the promise to peace turned into a Palestinian 'Via Dolorosa'. Hamas refused to believe the promise of 'two states for two nations', which has become an empty slogan, enabling the endless continuation of Jewish settlement and Israeli colonial occupation. Hamas also gave voice and political weight for the refugees by appointing Ismail Haniya - - resident of the Shati Camp, as its first Prime Minister. This move was conducted against a corrupt Palestinian political elite, trapped within the Oslo framework, which prevented it from dealing with the refugee issue, thereby silencing again the recent history of this land.

True, the shelling of Israeli towns by Hamas should be condemned as an act of terror, and as a disastrous political strategy with grave consequences to the Palestinian people. But beyond this, we should understand it as a desperate attempt to remind the world, Israel, and even the Arab world, that the refugee problem is still alive – an open wound awaiting to be healed by the forces that created it -- first and foremost Israel.

Against this on-going cry, Israel typically decided to escape engaging with the issue, and is now conducting a campaign of state-sanctioned terror, against Gazan society. Hence the brutal violence that aims to divide, cut, kill and injure. But even tones of bombs and piles of 'cast lead' cannot silence the echo of history. Israel's mighty military power is weak politically and morally and will not prevent the return of native time, even after its pronounced death, as predicted by the Aboriginal author.

The moral is clear: the genuine cessation of violence must pass through the return of time to our public and political life, that is, the opening of a genuine debate over the history that created and maintained Gaza and other Palestinian ghettoes controlled violently by Israel. Without that, we may realize time and again that our enormous military power buys no genuine security. During such a debate, the refugee issue will be foremost on the agenda, but it will also have to engage with the Jews' own history of dislocation and disaster, and the making of a safe Jewish place in an Arab Middle East.

The return of Palestinian time, therefore, is necessary for the recognition of Jewish time, and for the two nations to find a way to coexist in their common homeland. Hence, we must replace territory with history as the core of Palestinian-Jewish engagement, and thereby enter, perhaps, a time of reconciliation.

A Look at the Uganda Situation: Conflict, Displacement and Return

Geetisha Dasgupta

Northern Uganda has for long suffered from internal conflicts resulting in huge number of displacements. The conflict stems from reasons long drawn: under the British, the north was the labour reserve for the plantations in the south. However, following independence, power in government was progressively consolidated among politicians of northern origin. This was due, partially, to the fact that most Ugandans have come to identify themselves with their ethnic group rather than with citizenship of the Ugandan nation state. Though most of Uganda has been pacified with the passage of time, places like Acholiland continue to remain outside the peace bubble. There have been displacements in Acholiland, Lango and Teso regions, especially in the Lira district.

Karamoja is one of the principal problem areas, where there is no one single identifiable reason for the skirmishes. The Karimojong have had long, intermittent, unpredictable conflicts amongst themselves. The principal cause however continues to be underdevelopment, perpetual poverty and insecurities. All these factors re-inforce each other. Lawlessness and human rights violation, food deficits, poor governance, break with traditional governance and inadequate consolidation with modern governing practices, unbridled arms sale, depletion of productivity, recurrent drought and famine, together with cultural, economic and social factors trigger the violence.

Until a few days ago, out-migration of Karimojong to neighbouring districts, specifically Pader, was reportedly on the increase, with substantial presences of Karimojong from Kotido District reported in the border sub-counties of Paimol, Lapono and Adilang of Pader District. Population movements now occurred even outside the habitual migration season, in December or January, when people move for work reasons. The primary reason cited for the increased out-migration at this unusual hour was hunger and the lack of food, or employment to earn money to buy food, within Karamoja. Authorities in Kacheri sub-county estimated that 2,000 people have left the sub-county for Pader, while estimates from Rengen sub-county suggest that over 1,000 people have left in a span of three months.

However, of late, improvements in the security situation in northern Uganda have allowed about half of the more than 1.8 million people who had been internally displaced by the conflict to return to their villages, while another quarter have moved to transit sites nearer to their homes. While the peace process has stalled due to the repeated failure by the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, to sign a Final Peace Agreement, the security situation in northern Uganda has much improved since the signing of a Cessation of Hostilities Agreement between the government of Uganda and the LRA in August 2006. Large numbers of internally displaced people (IDPs) have already returned to their villages, while others are in the process of doing so.

For the detailed speech please click on the link:

http://www.internal-displacement.org/idmc/website/countries.nsf/(httpEnvelopes)/6F88DD668CF61CD2C125742C00523EDD?OpenDocument

Women Building Peace Between India and Pakistan. Edited by Shree Mulay and Jackie Kirk. Delhi :Anthem Critical Studies, 2007

Ishita Dey

This book weaves together some of the attempts that the women’s movements have worked towards building peace between one of the most sensitive borders in South Asia. Through a compilation of essays, the editors have attempted to situate and understand how women negotiate, challenge and questions the role women perform in war , as “mothers” both in India and Pakistan. In a nutshell it questions the stereotypes and dogmas that perpetuate “peace” as a “ temporal” concept and tries to link peace with justice, security of the people, position of women not in terms of role-performance but also in terms of their position in relation to nationalistic, religious and other dominant discourses. What is significant and departs from the existing writings on “peace” is the aspect of self –reflexivity and the rich ethnographic roots of the articles. It questions the traditional protests evoking the patriarchal kinship relations of mother, sister and brother specially in times of torture.

There is a need to move beyond victimization and as one of the articles in this volume on Kashmir conflict, Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal suggests that it is important to understand that activities like stripping, mutilating, amputing breasts, molesting and raping is about “male construction of sexuality , it is symbolic representation of “manhood” . Hence “rape” is one of the worst ways to “victimize” women ; to create “shame” leave them marginalized within and outside the group almost on the threshold and is “suffering” the will generate more meaningful dialogues across borders in the recent times.

Any discussion on peace building between India and Pakistan is left answered without addressing the concept of ‘Kasmiriyat’ ; a secular ethnic concept expounded by the Muslim ruler Zain-ul-Abdeen and popularized by a mystic Hindu woman Lal Ded, defining the relationship between the Hindu and the Muslim communities of the valley by this model. Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay in the essay on “Identity and Nationalism : Where are Women in Kashmiri Politics?” argues that though the concept of Kashmiriyat was popularized by a woman the state discourse of nationalism is devoid of any gendered understanding to define “Kasmiri nation”; thus concepts of community, region and religion has taken predominance over nationalist debate.

One constant thread that weaves the essays is the how the building of nation-state in South Asia is based on what Himani Banerjee calls masculinisation of demography; whereby constant attempts to cleanse ethnic and religious minority groups to create political spaces where demography overrides democracy is evident. This results in citizenship based not on rights but on various culturally constructed forms of belonging. According to Himani Banerjee, “the question of demography involving actualities of human reproduction entails the issue of women’s bodies as reproductive sites- and in relation to the Hindu right’s agenda in India, that of Muslim women’s bodies, especially of their reproductive parts”. It is against this background and context she locates the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002.

Some essays reflect on the peace initiatives by women’s groups in Pakistan . Beena Sarwar and Shahid Fiaz in their respective essays discuss in detail about the various peace initiatives namely by Woman’s action Forum and other cross border civil society groups to address demilitarization, intolerance, globalization and Kashmir. Post Kargil there were various initiatives from both ends to continue civil society dialogue through “women’s peace bus” spearheaded by Gandhian Nirmala Despande which was received by Asma Jehangir. While on one hand these cultural exchanges uphold attempts to uphold the unity of the people most of these events as Beena Sarwar says go unreported and unnoticed.

It is significant in this context to understand the role of the media in both India and Pakistan. What do the popular media images portray, symbolize, represent about India – Pakistan relationship in Indian and Pakistan media? While Suhasini Mulay lays down the Indian perspective; through a overview of the popular media discourses on Pakistan in radio, TV and our cinema; Shireen Pasha argues for people to have correct access to information we need stringent media laws.

What follows from these essays is how are these steps significant in the context of peacebuilding efforts and understanding violence in South Asia. The essays by Chris Corin, Daya R Varma, Jackie Kirk and Shree Mulay provides a backdrop and context to the understanding of peace, “securitization” of peace efforts and legal interpretations of the same in their attempts to address the linkages between women, peace and security provided by the brilliant introductory essay on Canada and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) on Women, peace and security which foregrounds the human security approach from a gendered perspective to understand the root causes of conflict. UNSCR 1325 is path breaking and a model for advocacy groups who are working on peace and security agenda.

On the Margins of Citizenship: Cooper’s Camp in Nadia

Ishita Dey

In this essay, we will try to understand one of the unique refugee experience of the Indian Subcontinent; partition refugees through the lens of the transition of one of the largest transit camps “Cooper’s camp” in Nadia District. This essay will reflect on “ the processes and practices by which specific images, meanings, and identities of the refugee have been historically produced, differentiated from other subjectivities, institutionalized, and deployed as effective resources of and for practices of statecraft”.

On 11 March 1950 Cooper’s Camp was established by the West Bengal Government. It was one of the largest transit camps in West Bengal. The camp offered a basic medical facility in the form of Cooper’s general hospital and it functioned till 1977.Acording to Tushar Sinha ( 1999), despite being one of the largest transit camps, which once functioned as a military base had the basic infrastructural facilities of housing people. The lighting facility of the camp was limited to 18 petromax and 1000 hurricane. For every 750 people there were 40 tubewells. The camp was full of open latrines and open drainage system which was hazaradous and was responsible for the decline in health among camp residents. From 21 March 1950 the camp was supported by the central Government. By this time 126 people died after suffering from cholera. On 3 April, 1950, J P Narayan visited the camp.

Gouranga Das’s family was of the 22 families who arrived in Coopers in 1950. Cooper’s Camp was divided into several blocks and huts for administrative purposes. Each resident was registered in the relief office and was registered in the “Ranaghat transit centre records” according to his Ration Card No, Date of admission and Name and family details. After this classification, the displaced was allocated a Hut which had to be shared and Block number.

“We had read in the newspaper about Cooper’s Camp. I was among the first twenty two refugee families to reach the camp. The camp started functioning on 11 March 1950. There were some tents, shops along the railwayline and langarkhana. We were served rice, dal, wheat, clothes and financial assistance of Rs 1.

My family was forced to migrate to West Bengal in 1949. I was eighteen years old. In 1948 Communist Party of India (undivided) was banned. I belong to Sheyalguni village of the Barishal District. We first took a boat from our village to Barishal and then we boarded a steamer and there were 2000-3000 families who migrated with us. We are issued a border slip at Benapole border.

The air of Benapole was filled with dirt and death. But at every step we felt that we will go back. Shree Guru Sangha had set up a camp near the border and various places for refugee. There were various welfare organizations who were organizing relief camps. From Bongaon we reached Sealdah station and stayed there for nearly fifteen days. Almost Lakhs of people were stranded there. We were served free food (rice, dal and vegetable curry) in make shift langarkhana( adjacent to platform No. 8 ) by Marwari Relief Society. We thought it’s a temporary phase. Specially our forefathers believed that we will return to our “desh”/ “homeland”.

There were communal outbreaks at various points of time but the worst of the riots took place in late 1948. Every year we used to celebrate Durga Puja and we had huge brass cooking vessels which were used to cook food during festivals. When the riots broke, we used these brass cooking vessels filled with water for defense purposes. We adopted various tactics to save ourselves from the onslaught of the rioters. When the rioters attacked we often splashed water all over the house to save our lives. When the rioters attacked our house and burned down our puja mandap; we had managed to run away. We were not attacked by anybody. We left our house in the night.

By 1951, one lakh people poured in refugee camp. The refugee movement began as protest against bad quality of food grains that used to be served. Often stale wheat, rice and dal were served. Alorani Dutta died due to lack of medical help. Dijen Dutta organized the movement with the support 70000-80,000 people in Coopers Camp, 25000 in Rupashree pally , 30000 from women’s camp.

The first martyr of refugee movement of 1950 was Paresh Das, resident of 7 No. Godown. From 1950-52 refugee movement subsided after his killing. People were scared.

On 18 Oct, 1952,144 No. House , Jatin Saha and Ratish Mullick spearheaded the refugee movement. Jatin Saha opened up a tea shop and in his tea shop the communist newspaper “Swadhinata” was available for public reading. The tea shop was the base that Jatin Saha used to initiate a communist movement in Coopers Camp. Jatin Saha also distributed leaflets in the night among the refugee households.

In 1952, we planned our communist struggle in 174 No House, G Block currently Ward No. 11. We had twenty one party members. We initiated the refugee movement in the Cooper’s Camp. One of the main demands of the refugee movement was to recognize Cooper’s as industrial colony and B.C. Ray did recognize Cooper’s under the urban scheme. Other demands were to improve the quality and increase the quantity of food grain “doles”. One of the mistakes of the refugee movement I feel was our decision regarding rehabilitation in Dandakaranya and Nainital. People who settled in Nainital are better off. Their land is of much worth than ours. Our slogan was “Lathi khabo, guli kahbo kintu banglar Baire Jabo Naa”. We never wanted to be rehabilitated outside West Bengal. We could never think of being settled anywhere else.

After 1954 when passports were introduced, there was huge influx of refugee population. In 1971 with the formation of Bangladesh, Central Government offered relief to the refugees”.

From his narrative we can deduce some common refugee experiences and their transit points. People came with the hope that this is a temporary phase and once things settle down they are going to return. The bordering Nadia District of West Bengal mainly, Benapole and Darshana were the entry points. What is also evident that before the refugees shifted to Government camps they stayed primarily at Sealdah station . There are several accounts relating to the refugee situation in Sealdah station. In one of the newspaper reports in Amrita Bazaar Patrika also quoted in Prafulla K. Chakrabarti’s work, the station is described as dumping ground of people from the eastern border.

As soon as they arrive, they are given inoculation against cholera and such other diseases. Then they are assigned a shelter camp by an officer of the Relief and Rehabilitation Department. An area of 39/ 39 square feet has been designated for the refugees to use before they are transferred to refugee camps. The report mentions that a group of five to six thousand men, women and children had access to three taps for drinking water. Apart from drinking water, there were two latrines for women and about 12 latrines for men.

So what we see here is that the “refugee” is uprooted from his state and is forced to live life in make shift arrangements under most inhuman circumstances. It is at this critical juncture we are left to ponder whether or not “Right to life” is an individual question or a political question? Political responses to the mass displacement has always tried to “negotiate” with the “refugee” who is a stateless, and immediate efforts to classify, regiment this stateless figure by the newly adopted state one hand is embedded in the notion of “care” and on the other is trying to make space for the refugee through statecraft. The earlier one is regimented the better.

These circumstances led to a very active refugee movement within cooper’s camp which initially began with protesting against bad quality of food grains specially rice, dal and wheat flour which was often stale. The refugee movement within Cooper’s was organized by the people who were devoted Communist party activist even when the party was banned in 1948. Gouranga Das proudly informs that he used to work as a messenger to communicate to other workers about meetings. Another cooper’s camp resident informed even in late 1970s the communist party activity was secret in nature and orientation.

On 6 July 1956, Central Government Minister Mr. Arunchandra Guha visited the camp and the camp residents were prevented from presenting their deputation before him. There was police lathi charge and in protest of that there was a public demonstration organized by Nadia District chapter of Bastuhara Parishaad. Police firing was a frequent feature in Cooper’s Camp. On 16 July 1956, police organized a combing operation in Cooper’s and arrested 44 protesters of which 7 were women. Various noted left refugee actvists were arrested. On 11 August, 1956 under the leadership of Amritendu Mukhopadhyay, a protest meeting was organized to release 44 activists which was attended by 5000 people. From 1957, a separate demand was placed before the Government- to recognize and carry out reform activities to convert Coopers into an industrial township. The police declared this meeting as illegal. By early 60’s there was a change in the demands of the refugee movement in itself and one of the prime reasons was the winding up process of various camps.

The West Bengal government Relief and Rehabilitation Directorate initiated a study on the relief and rehabilitation of displaced persons in West Bengal and the report was published in 1957. According to this report, the findings suggested that there were certain camps like coopers which have a large number of refugees and an attempt is being made to convert them into townships”. Various rehabilitation alternatives and schemes were laid down. The Government decided to shut down the transit camps by 1951.After the disbursal to rehabilitation centres in 1949, there was a sudden wave of migration in 1950-51 which swelled the number to 360769. At this time there was a decision to close down all the camps by March 1951 as a result of which camp families were dispersed to rehabilitation sites and the camp population came down to 80000 by the end of 1951.
The next phase of Refugee movement within Cooper’s Camp is to be understood against the following backdrop of the findings of the reports on rehabilitation and economic opportunities. Cooper’s Camp of Nadia district is treated as one of the ex-camp sites. In 1961, The Government asked the refugees in all relief camps either to move to Dandakaranya for rehabilitation or to leave camps on receiving 6 months cash doles. In September 1961 about 10000 families were left in campsites. The Government had already closed the camps. Not only the camp benefits such as doles, medical and educational facilities were withdrawn but even tubewells for drinking water was withdrawn by the Indian nation-state. This marked another phase in the refugee discourse and statecraft. The emphasis of refugee discourse changed from refugee care to economic rehabilitation as the perfect solution to the refugee problem. The Committee of Review of Rehabilitation work in West Bengal appointed by Government of India in 1981 report revealed that 45,000 displaced persons are living at 74 ex-camp sites. Around this time in Cooper’s Camp there were 1068 families awaiting rehabilitation of which 387 were ex-camp site families.

Since 1956 there was a growing concern among the displaced population for the available economic livelihoods and resources in Cooper’s Camp. The then Chief Minister of West Bengal Dr. Bidhan Chandra Ray in a written statement had promised to develop Coopers into an industrial township. This promise was a ray of hope for most of the families who stopped receiving financial assistance or doles from Government after 1961. The camp residents lived with the hope that they will receive proper economic rehabilitation through the development of small cottage industry and spinning industry in RIC scheme. Most of the refugees were waiting for almost 20-22 years in Coopers Camp for economic rehabilitation. Community Party of India Activist Ashok Chakraborty observed 10 days hunger strike in 10 June, 1978 and again in 19 October, 1981 to appeal for economic rehabilitation and securitisation of livelihood.

The hunger strike was called to declare Coopers Camp as a notified area and to appeal to the government for industrial development as most of the persons had no source of income after the Government ceased to support any refugee apart from those in Permanent Liability camps. There was also an appeal to recognize the marketplace and to renovate the Cooper’s Hospital. The Cooper’s hospital the protesters claimed was suffering from adequate doctors, nurse and medicine and thus the people from Coopers had to travel some miles to reach the general hospital.

The demands of the Communist Party of India according to party pamphlet were: -

1. Government should restart the scheme of doles for the 385 families who refused to rehabilitate in Dandakaranya and encourage small cottage industry, which will help in economic rehabiliation. Increase in loan assistance for the rehabilitable families from Rs 10000-Rs 15000 and single unit family should receive Rs 10000. Coopers Rupashreepally Women’s Camp residents should be rehabilitated after proper planning.
2. The government should immediately live up to its promise of declaring Kirtinagar Colony, Coopers Urban (RIC), Colony, Rupashree, Women’s Camp and Coopers should be given the recognition of Cooper’s Camp notified Area. The Government should also initiate a spinning mill in RIC industrial area, it should take steps to re-open the ceramic industry as it will meet the demands of increasing unemployment figures among the youth and old in camps.
3. The cooper’s camp hospital should be renovated. It should introduce specialized departments. 100 beds should be introduced in the hospital. A new Secondary Girls School should be established and the Coopers Junior School should be upgraded to Senior Secondary School and appeal to establish 5-6 primary schools in RIC colony, Rupashree Colony and Coopers.

According to Gouranga Das, “Cooper’s Camp never saw the light of industrial development. In the name of RIC, land was traded between the central and state Government and leased out to private players. This did not survive for along time”. The struggle from Cooper’s Camp to Cooper’s camp Notified area was marked with violence, killing, Panchayat vote boycott. Finally after several years of vote boycott under the Nagarik Committee, which was comprised of all party leadership Cooper’s camp was declared as a Coopers camp Notified Area in 1997. Coopers Camp Notified Area has a separate municipality and people who dreamt of an “industrial township” are yet to see any industries in Coopers even after its fight for autonomy.

Infact residents across ex-camp sites are the “most distressed refugee population in West Bengal”.

The main emphasis on refugee rehabilitation in Cooper’s is issue of Free Hold Title Deed; under which the land allotted to a family cannot be sold for ten years and under certain circumstances like marriage of a girl child, diseases like cancer, AIDS and any unforeseen nature of financial hardship the family has to seek permission from RR& R directorate to sell the land. The status report on refugee rehabilitation in Ranaghat subdivision till 25.2.2008 reveals:-

Total land involved 3280.3 acres
Total no. of deeds (large) to be distributed 16001+(8)
Total no. of deeds already distributed as on 31.03.06 14,205+(8)
Target Fixed for 2007-2008 200
Number of deeds already for registration 100
(Source: Sub divisional OfficeRecords of Ranaghat Subdivision)

Coopers Camp Notified Area Municipality was formed in 1997. For administrative purposes it has been divided into 12 wards. According to 2001 census, there are 17,555 people of which 51% males and 49% females live in Coopers. Almost 70-75% of the camp residents belong to the scheduled castes. According to census data of 2001, 13,533 people belong to SC and 18 people to ST. There is a higher secondary school in Cooper’s camp and there are several primary schools in a number of Wards. The primary school in Ward No 6 houses is one of the largest primary schools. Most of the boys stay away from the school to lend a helping hand in teashops.

These measures demonstrate the changing attitude of the Indian state towards the refugees. The refugee experience of economic development and economic rehabilitation at Cooper’s Camp of West Bengal is an illustration of the state responsibility towards refugees- who were seen as a problem. The constant emphasis to wind up homes and camps across the state speak about the fact that “ refugee problem” is a thing of the past whereas the rehabilitation schemes merely encouraged a shelter and self-employment. In places such as Cooper’s where most of the people are unemployed and women have taken to bidi making and men in adhoc jobs like carpentry it remains a far-fetched dream of Coopers to transform into an “ industrial township”.

A New Report to Understand Urban Displacement

To complement the Guidance on Profiling Internally Displaced Persons, in 2006 IDMC commissioned a study from the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University to develop research tools to estimate the number and distribution of IDPs living in urban settings, and to gather information about their assistance and protection needs. Case studies conducted in Khartoum (Sudan), Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) and Santa Marta (Colombia) between 2006 and 2008 compared the experience of IDPs and other living in the same city.

Please click on the link given on the right column for detailed report
(http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004BE3B1/(httpInfoFiles)/7F6CD51212CC958EC12574DB003F8F56/$file/Urban%20displacement%20May%202008%20-%20Seminar%20report.pdf)

Appeal for $ 17 Million to Help Pakistani Government

UNHCR has appealed for $17 million to help the Pakistani government bring aid to more than 300,000 people displaced by fighting and floods near the Afghan border. Pakistan’s government estimates that 90,000 people who had fled recent fighting remain in North West Frontier Province along the Afghan border, with a similar number displaced due to conflict in the northern part of the province around Swat. In addition, floods have displaced some 84,000 people in August.

(For the detailed news pl. click on the link in the right hand column
(http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004D31AA/(httpIDPNewsAlerts)/0C26CE9E6D565DE5C12574CF0057CA5A?OpenDocument)

On 21 September 2008, Thousands of Tamil Sri Lankans were Ordered to Register

Thousands of mostly Tamil Sri Lankans who had fled from the country’s war zones to Colombo and its suburbs were ordered to register by Sri Lankan authorities on 21 September. The order applies to all those who fled five war-affected districts in the last five years and comes as the army intensifies an offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) rebels in the north. People arriving from the north have long had to register with police when they move to Colombo, but last week the police said that they needed to update their records to ensure security in the capital and that all the people who have made the move in the last five years must register again. The police said earlier that the order would affect more than 100,000 people.

For the detailed news pl. click on the link in the right hand column
(http://www.internal-displacement.org/8025708F004D31AA/(httpIDPNewsAlerts)/0C26CE9E6D565DE5C12574CF0057CA5A?OpenDocument)

Women and Migration in Asia: Volume IV ; Migrant Women and Work edited by Anuja Agrawal;Series Editor: Meenakshi Thapan

Geetisha Dasgupta

Familial gender based division of labour has been produced and reproduced even after women migrated out of the private spaces and tried joining the mainstream workforce. While states have benefited from the remittances sent by women migrant workers from across the globe, they also continued blaming the “absent mothers”, and never actually acknowledging the economic benefits effected by women on the same scale of regard as that sent by men. A woman’s dilemma continues to be one of earning a good livelihood for her family and her children and that of being present there for taking care of them personally by remaining with the family.

In the series introduction, Meenakshi Thapan begins by familiarizing us with the theme of the Conference, from where this book series comes up. She comments, it is time that we go beyond characterizing women as a part of the baggage when men move and reckon the fact that women can, and all over the world, do move from one place to another as independent migrants. Even when women move in tandem with the principal or male migratory in the family, they have a completely independent set of experiences to share and their coping mechanism is also unique to their gender identity. They are individuals with characteristic subscriptions and judgments, and that is evident from their adjusting processes.

Movement opens up a plethora of choices. With the challenges of settling and setting up in a new land, there definitely comes chances to explore, there come encounters that could make life better or worse. Therefore, migration, though generally conceived of as a misfortune, is often taken with the hopes of a better life in an unseen world altogether. Thapan quotes from Jolly Bell and Narayanswamy to remind us that Asia sends out the maximum number of international migrants and every year the number of women migrants have been on a rise. Despite that, women have not been given equal status as migrants; let apart the recognition of their individual agency. Visa policies and work permit rules bear this contention out.

Women migrate both associationally, i.e., for marriage or with the family; as well as independent agents, i.e., for work etc. In the volume introduction, Anuja Agrawal picks up from that point by commenting that when studying in terms of destination and work options, the individual mode of migration sets off interesting patterns of societal displacement in course of the transition from the parent to the host community. For example, one of the papers shows, the global increase in demand for domestic labour is a major factor in the feminization of migration. Sexual division of labour, hitherto restricted more or less within the private quarters, is thereby carried forward to the public space. It becomes paid work, but only when the requisite amount of displacement in terms of work station has occurred. Agrawal quotes Ehrenreich and Hochschild and says that there comes about a revival of domestic work for women, but is responsive only to a ‘care deficit’ in the developed countries, which in turn gives birth to a similar kind of deficit in the parent communities. Back home, these women might hire domestic workers for themselves. In the process, ethnic and class divisions merge as certain occupations become the mark of some ethnic identities.

There are interesting viewpoints, especially about cases of countries like Philippines, Japan, Singapore, the Middle East or Bangladesh that prefer sending or receiving for particular purposes. For example, Japan had a steady demand of women entertainers, specifically for filling up as prostitutes or courtesans. Philippines offered its women for these professions, which later drew much criticism from both the sending and the receiving countries. Filipino women went to Japan under tourist visa to provide such services. Gulati, in her chapter explains, this kind of demand sprung from a decay in the Japanese tradition of ‘geisha’s and Japanese men’s age old habit of seeking release from work pressure by indulging in sexual entertainment; so much so that, Japanese embassy in Philippines came up with the idea of introducing a special short term entertainer’s visa. Gulati further pints out that certain states take exporting workers as an industry altogether. For example, the Governments of Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka encourage migration of women workers for the same reason for which they encourage male migration, viz., source of foreign remittances and maintaining a pressure valve internationally.

Parvati Raghuram, in her chapter called “Gendering Medical Migration: Asian Women Doctors In The UK”, says, while most Asian women labour migrants move to take up jobs as domestic workers, sex workers and nurses, professions that are defined by notions of feminity, there are many who move to take part in the less feminized sectors of the labour market, such as Information Technology, where gender exclusivity and male domination are the standard norms. Such highly skilled migration has received much less attention than its other counterparts. Collating and analyzing secondary data available from the Department of Health, The Medical Workforce Standing Advisory Committee and the General Medical Council, the British Medical Association and several other individual sources, health consultants and international recruitment consultants, she reveals that in spite of increasing feminization of labour force and women forming sizeable section of UK’s medical force, women never came up to be a recognized as such in the current literature, for it falls between the interstices between the debates on female migration, women and medicine and medical migration.

In a very interesting chapter, Anuja Agrawal discusses the case of the Bedia community in north India. She explains how prostitution is one of the pivotal preconceptions of women’s migration for work. Women engaged in flesh trade have had to move away from their families. While the family would not acknowledge the kinship relation with the prostitute, economic benefits are accepted, often in a camouflaged manner. Agrawal discusses familial factors in the Bedia community that facilitate the women to go for prostitution. This community is largely dependent on the earning of the female members who make a living out of prostitution. Commercial prostitution is an accepted way of survival and even the entire family is seen to migrate to urban areas temporarily for that purpose. The Bedia community that Agrawal studies, show a classic case where the family members reside in situ of prostitution is carried out by the female members and therefore bears evidences of critical conditions of familial adjustments.

The book provokes interesting thought bubbles for both first time encounterers with the theme of women’s migration as well as those who would like to have an overview studies into women’s migration for work. However, there is an over focus on some countries like Philippines or Thailand while some others also needed to be discussed in more detail, like Bangladesh or Pakistan. The book is a pleasure to read for its quality of propelling the reader to study in greater detail about women in migration.

Fate of the Bakassi Returnees

Brenda Ofunne Ogosi

The resource rich Bakassi Peninsula on the Cameroun-Nigeria border, at the SE end of the Gulf of Guinea. The swampy peninsula and associated small islands controlling access to the Nigerian port of Calabar, the surrounding waters are rich in fish and submarine oil deposits. The traditional inhabitants are mainly Efik fishermen with ties to Nigeria

Among the many border disputes that Cameroun and Nigeria have had in the years since independence, the Bakassi Peninsula stands out as the most serious dispute of all because the peninsular is very rich in oil and gas. In 1961, the south British Cameroun [a former German colony] became part of Cameroun while the northern potion joined Nigeria, the control of the peninsula has been in dispute and this culminated in mounting hostilities and sporadic military clashes in the region.

The dispute between the two countries was brought in 1994 by Cameroun to International Court of Justice [ICJ] also known as the world court to settle the dispute over its boundary with Nigeria, especially the question of sovereignty over the Bakassi peninsula and over island in Lake Chad, to specify the course of the land and maritime boundary between the two countries. On 10 October 2002, the ICJ awarded the disputed area to Cameroun, the judgment was largely based on the 1913 Anglo-German Agreement that defined the borders of those nations colonies.

On June 12, 2006 in New York, Nigeria and Cameroun signed the ‘Green Tree Agreement’ under which Nigeria agreed to cede the peninsula to Cameroun in compliance with the verdict of the International Court of Justice at the Hague which held that the territory belonged to Cameroun and that Cameroun was to assume full sovereignty over the peninsula.

In Article 3 of the Green Tree Agreement, both countries agreed that Cameroun after the transfer of authority to it by Nigeria guarantees Nigerian Nationals living in the Bakassi Peninsula the exercise of their fundamental rights and freedom enshrined in international human rights law and in other relevant provision of international law, in particular Cameroun shall

a.Not force Nigerian Nationals living in the Bakassi Peninsula to leave the zone or to change their identity.
b.Respect their culture, language and beliefs
c.Respect their rights to continue their agricultural and fishing activitie
d.Protect their property and customary land rights
e.Not levy in any discriminatory manner any taxes and other dues on Nigerian nationals living in the zone
f.Take every necessary measure to protect Nigerians living in the zone from any harassment or harm

Against this background the rights of the Bakassi people ought to be paramount in the territorial dispute between the two countries because the characteristics of a state in political science includes the people or population and not limited to possession of a mapped out territory.

Due to the hostilities and killing of some Nigerians by the Camerounian Gendarmes, no fewer than 37,000 Nigerians have been displaced from the disputed Bakassi Peninsula and are being resettled in Ibaka in akwa Ibom state. In makeshift camps, very poor sanitary conditions, no proper resettlement centre, poor health care and no basic needs for these displaced persons.

Finally On August 14, 2008, Bakassi peninsula went to Cameroun bearing in mind that the Bakassi people do not share anything in common with the people of Cameroun, that they have been forcefully merged with, like language, educational system, culture etc. this could tend toward wiping out the entire Bakassi race because obviously the Camerounian government prefers the Bakassi oil to the people and has tried on several occasion to quiet the people from that area through their gendarmes , on the other hand the Director General of the Nigerian Boundary Commission Mr. Sadiq Marafa Diggi, said that Cameroun was not happy with what they got as the area did not cover our oil reserves. Sincerely, ‘Oil is all that matters’ to the two countries in the disputed Bakassi Peninsula.

What we legally owe to the displaced persons is captured under Article 15 of the universal declaration of Human rights which states that:

Everyone has the right to a nationality

No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality and also in Article 12:2 of the African Charter on Human and peoples right which guarantees the right to Nationality, it states that “ every individual shall have the right to leave any country including his own, and to return to his country” because the Bakassi people have been forcefully lumped with Cameroun it has created untold hardship for the displaced persons who are going through the trauma of losing their loved ones and properties and to compound their problems they are yet to be resettled in Nigeria

The Situation of the Iraqi Refugees

Arij Bou Reslan [Terre des hommes ]

The displacement of Iraqis has been identified as the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world . The UN estimates that over 4 million Iraqis have been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which have fled since the 2003 war in Iraq and its ensuing insurrection. Over 2.3 million have vacated their homes for safer areas within Iraq while some 2 million have sought refuge abroad. The figures regarding the exact number of Iraqis living in the neighbouring countries are disputed among the different stakeholders. This issue sheds light on the numerous gaps regarding many aspects of the refugees’ life in these countries. Of this 2 million, an estimated 450’000-500’000 are in Jordan and 50’000 are in Lebanon ; mainly concentrated in the capital cities. In Syria, estimations of the total number of Iraqi refugees are disputed and vary from 300’000 to 1’5 million with the vast majority residing in Greater Damascus. However, as these three countries are not signatories to the UN convention on Status of Refugees, Iraqis have few rights and face difficulties in accessing adequate assistance and services, many are in critical situations.

This massive arrival of Iraqi refugees in Syria is mainly due to its geographical proximity and because the Syrian Government was considered as tolerant among other countries in the region. But Iraqis arriving in Syria are now required to have a visa issued from the Syrian Embassy in Bagdad. Many, who arrived earlier, are now residing in Syria with expired visas and are fearful of deportation. In 2008, to obtain a visa for Syria, an Iraqi needs to be a doctor, engineer or a merchant with a commercial license. Iraqis without visas are no longer permitted to enter Syria . Those who need medical treatment can also be eligible to seek a visa. Iraqi families that register their children in Syrian school automatically obtain one year’s residency renewed on a monthly basis.

With regard to Jordan, the country has hosted an influx of Iraqi refugees since the early 90’s, some of whom conform to the local perception that Iraqis in Jordan are of prosperous backgrounds. A less-affluent flow, however, began after the 2003 US led invasion, whose peak took place during 2004 – 2005. Since this period, Jordan experienced a notable increase in the movement of the Sunni minority often fleeing sectarian violence, such as the bombing of the Samara Mosque in 2006. From the 1st of May, the Iraqis willing to travel to Jordan must request their visa in Bagdad through a private agency (TNT) responsible for the forwarding of applications to the Jordanian government.

Compared to Syria and Jordan, Lebanon hosts a relatively small number of Iraqi refugees. But the Lebanese population already hosts 250’000 Palestinian refugees while being confronted by a plethora of internal conflict and political instability. As the Human Rights Watch report states: “Lebanese are wary of hosting another refugee population whose prospects of returning to their home country in the short term are remote. The situation is further complicated because many Lebanese perceive that the sectarian tensions that plague Iraqi society might feed into, and amplify, the sectarian tensions that are ever present in Lebanon itself.”

The Iraqis who have left Iraq come primarily from urban areas and represent diverse sectarian backgrounds, including Sunni, Shi’a and Kurds as well as minority groups of Christians (who are over represented as refugees in Syria and Jordan compared to their numbers in Iraq), Sabean- Madeans and Palestinians. In Jordan, 77% arrived after 2003 and among them, 68% of the Iraqi refugees are Sunni Muslims; in Lebanon 50% are Shi’a Muslims. In Syria, 52% of the Iraqi refugees are Sunni Muslims.

Iraqis reported numerous reasons for leaving their country. Many left as a direct result of conflict and violence, mostly from the rising sectarian unrests but also from fighting between the insurgents and the Multinational Forces (MNF) allied with the Iraqi military. Many made the personal and family protection decision to leave due to the real and perceived risks present. Some of the reasons for this decision were based on: their employment with the former regime or for the MNF, their ethnicity or religious grouping and/or the lack of financial stability because they could no longer make a living in Iraq or their homes and assets had been taken.
The current situation and the profile of the Iraqi refugees are not heterogeneous and have evolved with time. While some arrived early after the beginning of the war, some have just arrived a few months ago. Some arrived with good personal savings allowing them to set up and live in relatively good conditions, some arrived without money and assets and have immediately faced particularly precarious conditions. However, progressively, with the long lasting situation and work restrictions, many people with medium savings have seen them quickly evaporated, and they are now in need of basic material, financial, social and medical assistance.

A key factor for many male Iraqi refugees is related to their previous status in Iraq. Iraqis who were involved in the Iraqi Army or connected to the previous government are afraid of being identified and targeted and are often reluctant to register for assistance delivery.

The majority of refugees interviewed described themselves as “existing between two situations or two worlds.” They are “standing by:” fleeing from the horrors and destruction of war and consider their residence in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon as ‘transitional’ before being assisted to immigrate to a western country. The reality is that many western countries are not accepting the numbers of Iraqis rumoured within the Iraqi refugee community. This reality, once realised, generates understandable stress and anxiety when families and individuals face the hard question of: What now? Compounding this lost and unwelcome positioning is that most people and families do not plan to return to Iraq, the UNHCR/IPSOS report states 89.5% of those interviewed held this view.

Because of non-recognition by host governments, most Iraqis are illegal or have/had only a tourist visa; therefore they are ineligible for employment in Jordan, Syria or Lebanon and have few or even no sources of income. For many of those who had savings, the situation is deteriorating or has deteriorated through these resources drying up. Some families receive money from relatives abroad or in Iraq, but this rarely allows for a comfortable life and is often sporadic and unreliable.

The basic cost of living is increasing in all three countries. Prices for basic items such as rice, bread, cooking oil and vegetables have been increasing and apartments are clearly highlighted to be expensive; many families are struggling to meet the rent payments. Household visits confirm the signs of urban poverty where Iraqis are more reliant on the informal economy and the underground ‘black’ market. They are moving from one area to another in search of cheaper accommodation. Families live in very small and crowded accommodation, often shared with relatives or other Iraqi families. In some cases, it was reported that housing difficulties caused some children and adolescents to avoid contact with their family and to remain on the streets late into the night. All of these factors compound and heighten the risk for children to be exploited and made vulnerable to exploitation, violence and/or abuse.

Precarious housing and difficult access to basic services and care contribute to increase most of the Iraqis’ emotional burdens, such as: stress, lack of hope for a better situation and a loss of dignity. All of these factors add layers of tension within the family unit and heavily contribute to deteriorating family relations and jeopardize the coping process, for both children and adults.

With respect to “Children and Youth”

Children, like adults, have been affected with the events in Iraq. In many cases, they witnessed or were direct victims of particularly dreadful events. They feel and share the distress of their parents. They recognize and suffer from the loss of their previous life and from their current living conditions. Some can not go back to school and have to work to increase family income. Many are in classic ‘child labour’ situations and are open to or are experiencing exploitation.

Children, like adults, have the feeling of living in a “stand-by” or “in-between” situation and do not invest their time in the host country. Manly citing they wish or feel this situation will remain temporary and unstable. The difficulty to integration within the host community contributes to make things more difficult.

Children and youth cited incidents of violence, prejudice, discrimination and aggression directed towards them by their host communities . The most vulnerable Iraqi refugees are often in lower-socioeconomic areas due the affordability of the rent. These host community members have a low understanding of the plight and experiences of Iraqi refugees and are also facing issues of political and ethnic/religious violence, unemployment, low education and difficult living conditions themselves. All of these factors assist in the easy labelling and targeting of Iraqi children and community members to be ‘the’ problem. Understandably the Iraqi children, youth and family members are selective in their movements outside of the home and who they socialise and communicate with.

Parents who themselves are in difficulty find it challenging to adequately care for their children and to have appropriate responses to meet their needs, especially psychological needs, because they are in distressed as well. Some parents expressed feelings of guilt and stress. They shared their difficulty in understanding and dealing with their children’s reactions and needs, but did recognise these needs are high. Sometimes they complained about the bad behaviour of their children and worried about losing influence and/or control over them. This is particularly complex and impacting for women headed households, given the traditional patriarchal role of men and boys in Iraqi and Arabic culture. Often this is leading to frustrated and/or angry parenting of children and youth, such as: negative discipline, over protection, verbal and/or physical violence.

Many children have not attended school for a number of years. When children have missed school for over three years they cannot be re-enrolled in the formal education system . Also, through not wanting to be identified, some families fear sending their children to school and to disclose their children’s and family identity. School remains expensive despite the support provided by some organisations and UN agencies. In some cases, because of the financial situation, families decide to send only some of their children to school. Some families prefer, or are compelled, to enrol children in private schools but cannot afford them . Moreover, differences in curricula and language of education in Iraq and the countries of relocation are additional impediments. Some children refuse to go to school through fear of failure because the curriculum is different, or they fear being teased by children or teachers. Some children are also a victim of their parent’s resettlement dreams and are not enrolled in school because their parents believe it will only be for a temporary period.

Youth are especially at risk. They are at a vulnerable stage of their development, but also since many of them have missed school for extended periods, they cannot be enrolled again unless they accept to be in classrooms with younger children. They have no possibility to enrol in Universities and vocational training opportunities are limited. Many have lost contact with their friends in Iraq and spend most of their time at home. This makes it quite challenging for parents to deal with them, especially for mothers alone. In addition adolescent boys are not really considered as “children” by their families and are often sent to work in order to support the household financially.

Notes
1.UNHCR/IOM 2007: Refugees International http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679
2.UNHCR/IOM 2007: Refugees International http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/9679
3.Fafo November 2007: International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/13/africa/ME-GEN-Jordan-Iraqi-Refugees.php
4.Danish Refugee Council (Beirut), Iraqi Population in Lebanon: A Report, November 2007
5.ICMC report, Iraqi Refugees in Syria, February 2008
6.Fafo November 2007: International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/13/africa/ME-GEN-Jordan-Iraqi-Refugees.php
7.Human Right Watch, Rot Here or Die There, bleak choice for Iraqi refugees in Lebanon, November 2007
8.Fafo November 2007: International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/13/africa/ME-GEN-Jordan-Iraqi-Refugees.php
9.Danish Refugee Council (Beirut), Iraqi Population in Lebanon: A Report, November 2007
10.UNHCR/IPSOS report, Assessment on Returns to Iraq Amongst the Iraqi Refugee Population in Syria, April 2008
11.UNHCR/IPSOS report, Assessment on Returns to Iraq Amongst the Iraqi Refugee Population in Syria, April 2008
12.In Lebanon one particular case involved the situation where an Iraqi boy was becoming friendly with a Lebanese girl. The Lebanese family severely beat the boy and threw rocks at him and his house. The result is the boy now is afraid to go out of the house too often and fears his host community. This is a common story and is faced by children in schools and while they move about their host communities. Youth also state they have been vilified for community problems and made to feel excluded and are exploited because of their ‘illegal’ status.
13.Current policy in practice in Jordan and Syria
14.It is the case for Christian families in Jordan for example, because they are not comfortable with the local schools.

Reflections on Anti – Trafficking Interventions

Pascale McLean

At the end of 2000, the UN Convention against Transnational Organised crimes and two of its supplementary Protocols; the Protocol against the smuggling of Migrants by land, air and sea (which refers to the practice of helping people cross the border illegally in exchange of remuneration) and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, Punish trafficking in Persons, especially in women and children (hereafter the UN trafficking Protocol) were signed. The article 3 of this Protocol defines trafficking in persons which refers to three distinct elements:
1. Some actions that involve “recruitment, transportation, transfer,” etc.;
2. The means of those actions more precisely “the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power”;
3. And a purpose, that is forms of exploitation for which people are recruited or moved including “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”.

The focus of the UN trafficking Protocol is based on bringing to justice those responsible for this crime. It refers to anti-trafficking measures that can be taken by the States:
1. Law enforcement measures to detect, prosecute and punish traffickers.
2. Preventive measures to reduce the likelihood that trafficking occurs in the first place.
3. Protection measures, along with various forms of assistance, for individuals who have been trafficked.

The influence of this approach is present throughout most, if not all, the national plans that were concluded since 2000 (Flynn, 2008) and the anti-trafficking measures have grown up in number at the international level.

A few years later, the Global Alliance Against Trafficking of Women (hereinafter referred as GAATW) wanted to study the impact of anti-trafficking interventions. Therefore, in 2007, a report called Collateral Damage: The impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights around the World was published. It provides us an overview of the experience of eight countries: Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, India, Nigeria, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States. More specifically, it attempts to assess the impact of anti-trafficking measures for people living and working there, or migrating into or out of these countries. On August 6-9, 2008, the GAATW organised a forum to that effect.

In the Collateral Damage report, GAATW mentions that there are laws and policies that have negative consequences on the people they want to protect and there are three groups who are affected. Firstly, when the assistance for trafficked persons is made conditional on cooperation with law enforcement officials. Secondly, the anti-trafficking measures affect the migrants specially labourers and workers, and thirdly the concept of ‘trafficking’ has been appropriated to further the political agendas of governments, which refers also to the impact of a prevention campaign, conducted since 2001 in countries throughout the world by the United States government.

The Collateral Damage report also points out that trafficking is a multi-dimensional phenomenon including issues such as social, economical and criminological ones linked with issues like gender, health, migration, development and economic, more specifically in the informal sector.

Concerning India, the anti-trafficking measures came mostly around the debates on the question of legality or illegality of prostitution. In fact, two years after the adoption of the UN trafficking protocol, a regional convention was adopted by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution which restricted the application of trafficking to the purposes of prostitution. The SAARC Convention, to which India is a signatory, defines trafficking as “the moving, selling or buying of women and children for prostitution within and outside a country for monetary or other considerations with or without the consent of the person subjected to trafficking” (Article 1(3)).

Ratna Kapur wrote an article concerning the anti-trafficking framework in the country and reviews the legal aspects of trafficking which focuses more on the method of rescue and rehabilitation of women and girls who have been trafficked for the purpose of prostitution (GAATW, 2007). She mentions that the primary response to victims of trafficking is detention, whether in a protective home or a corrective institution which would drive those women and girls back into sex work. Concerning the brothel raids, she affirms that they could be politically motivated by anti-migrant groups since most sex workers are from lower casts, tribal groups or neighbouring countries. The laws and policies do not address the issues of trafficking within the framework of migration. She mentions that under the name of protection for women, particularly unskilled women, India has imposed some restrictions on their emigration, which have pushed the ones who are really seeking to migrate to do so through clandestine forms. Ratna Kapur points out the issues of inter-state migration in India and refers to the Inter-State Migrant Workmen Act (ISMWA) that is there to protect the rights and safeguard the interests of the migrant workers inside the country. The National Commission for Women suggested some changes in the interest of women including that a women recruited in another state could be accompanied by a family member to their place of work at the employer’s expenses.

As a strategy for anti-trafficking prevention, Kapur suggests to address the underlying causes of trafficking and to make a distinction between facilitating the migration for more wealthy people and those who are less well off, for whom a migration policy is needed to ensure safe and legal passage. She states (GAATW, 2007:137):

The anti-trafficking laws in India display a profound misunderstanding of the phenomenon of human trafficking. Failing to make a distinction between human smuggling, irregular movement, illegal migration and trafficking, denies the agency of those who choose to migrate for better life opportunities and undermines the gravity of the abuses suffered by trafficked persons. Criminalising various aspects of prostitution in order to prevent trafficking, as is the case with the existing law or criminalising the purchase of sexual services, as is being proposed by the government penalises those trafficked for sexual exploitation rather than their traffickers. It renders persons trafficked for sexual exploitation more vulnerable to their traffickers, their clients and the police. Finally, failing to expand the application of anti-trafficking legislation beyond cases of trafficking for sexual exploitation has the effect of denying the harm done to persons who experience similar abuses but who are trafficked for other purposes.

The preliminary research findings of Lyons and Ford (2008) presented at the Forum of 6-8 August 2008 on the impact of the anti-trafficking measures on policy making and civil society organisation activism concerned with labour in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore they argue that most States have responded to the trafficking Protocol by establishing a legal framework that restrict immigration and prosecute illegal entries when they have to deal with unskilled or semi-skilled labour migrants because it is difficult to make a clear distinction between smuggling, trafficking and temporary labour migration. The authors also point out that trafficking and smuggling are linked with measures to combat terrorism. Governments are then encouraged to be tough on irregular migration through tighter border controls. On the other hand, many NGOs in this region are attracted to the anti-trafficking framework because of the positive outcomes for the migrant workers in the absence of effective national labour laws. In fact, the migrant women working mostly in domestic services sector or sex industry, face problems in relation to labour laws and citizenship rights. This includes low wages, high debts repayments to employment brokers, difficult working conditions which are worse if the migrant’s status is not regular. Lyons and Ford come to the conclusion that what is needed is an approach that focuses on addressing the human rights violations and abuses perpetrated amongst all migrants, without equating all forms of exploitation with trafficking.

In a briefing paper presented at the forum of August 2008, Rebecca Napier-Moore from GAATW states that if you combine labour and migrants rights you can see globalized structures. She refers to the fact that when an economy has a large need for labour, usually cheap labour, and does not have enough national capacity to fulfill that, the market needs the migrant’s labour. The findings show that there is a large mismatch between immigration laws and economic and migrant realities. The industrialised countries develop with attracting permanent or temporary migrants whom are divided into several categories to establish some control over their number and their characteristics. It follows that the official demand criteria for labour migrants for instance, do not always fully reflect the real demand of national economic agents (Tyuryukanova 2008). Less people are then able to migrate by official, legal and safe channels. Therefore, the migrants unwanted by the official immigration system, but attracted by the real demand for their work and skill, try to enter in the receiving country without the chance to be legalised. The more restrictive immigration control renders more migrants to stay in a vulnerable position where they are subject to exploitation, human rights violations and what can lead to trafficking.

One of the ways to respond to the trafficking issues is to move to the migration framework. It would put emphasis on the fact that people have the right to migrate. It would move away from a crime focus and show stronger empowerment for women. But in the Asian context, the legal migration does not guaranty safe working and living conditions for migrants. Also, to put the focus on transborder movements might overshadow internal movements.

It is also suggested that if we move to the labour rights framework it would improve labour conditions and proceed towards labour rights for all migrant workers. This argument locates trafficking through a labour framework situates the migrant as the victim of labour rights violations. The problem with this framework could be that unions might be reluctant to engage with migrant labour, women are less likely to be involved in unions and there are problems around the informal sector in which many migrants are employed. Also some sectors into which people are trafficked are not called “work” by society.

For all the above reasons, the link between gender, migration, labour and trafficking needs to be established. We have to ask ourselves if the anti-trafficking framework meets the needs of trafficked women and to wonder on the impact on human rights on other groups. From the GAATW interventions, it seems that the UN Protocol respond to trafficking by criminalizing traffickers rather than by ensuring migrant’s rights.

GAATW suggests that gender, migration, labour and trafficking should not be separated because migrant women are not seeing all their rights met by the state; and restrictions on their movement, on the sector they can work, as well as obstacles to their access to justice are not making it easy for migrant women to fully realise their rights. It should not be forgotten that many migrants initiated this movement with the hope to find better living conditions and to find solutions to problems.

Under these circumstances, GAATW is looking for a new combination of women’s rights, rights for trafficked people, migrant’s rights and labour rights and also legal, cultural and social assistance structures to support them.

References

FLYNN, D. (2008) “Managing (ir)regularity: trafficked persons and undocumented migrants on the spectrum of global migration”. Discussion paper prepared for the GAATW Roundtable on Gender-Migration-Labour-Trafficking Linkages, Bangkok, 6-8 August 2008, unpublished.
GAATW, (2007). Collateral Damage: The impact of Anti-Trafficking Measures on Human Rights around the World. http://www.gaatw.net/
LYONS, L., FORD, M. (2008). “Anti-trafficking Programs and their gendered implications for Temporary Labour Migrants”. Paper prepared for the GAATW Roundtable on Gender-Migration-Labour-Trafficking Linkages, Bangkok, 6-8 August 2008, unpublished.
NAPIER-MOORE, R. (2008). “Briefing paper: GAATW Roundtable Linking Gender-Migration-Labour-Trafficking”. Bangkok, 6-8 August 2008, unpublished.
TYURYUKANOVA, E. (2008). “Faces and interfaces of Migration, Labour and Trafficking in Human Beings (THB)”. Paper prepared for the GAATW Roundtable on Gender-Migration-Labour-Trafficking Linkages, Bangkok, 6-8 August 2008, unpublished.