Surfacing vol. 2, no. 1

Surfacing vol. 2, no. 1
An Interdisciplinary Journal for Gender in the Global South
Surfacing is sponsored by the Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s
Studies (IGWS) at The American University in Cairo (AUC). It is published two times a
year—the spring and fall—at AUC, 113 Kasr El Aini St., P.O. Box 2511, Cairo, 11511,
Egypt.
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Vol. 2 ! No. 1 ! May 2009
© Cynthia Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies 2008.
Surfacing
An Interdisciplinary Journal for Gender in the Global South
Editors
Yasemin Ozer
Iman Azzi
Student Editorial Collective
Azita Azargoshasb
Karem Said
Ali Atef
Copy Editor
Karem Said
International Advisory Board
Kamran Ali
Susan McKinnon
Andrea Cornwall
Farha Ghannam
Janet Halley
Barbara Harlow
Martina Rieker
Hanan Sabea
Amr Shalakany
Hania Sholkamy
Mariz Tadros
Surfacing
vol 2., no. 1
Gender and Conflict
INTRODUCTION
Surfacing Contextualized Contours of Gender and Conflict in the Global South
Yasemin Ozer
i
ARTICLES
Engendering Forced Migration: Victimization, Masculinity and the Forgotten Voice
Hebah Farrag
1
Obscuring the Realities of Gender-Based Violence: European Policies on Iraqi
Asylum Claims
Mallory Wankel
Verbal Abuse: Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and Violence Against Women
Sherief Gaber
18
39
Gendered Contestations: An Analysis of Street Harassment in Cairo and its
Implications for Women’s Access to Public Spaces
Nadia Ilahi
56
INTERVIEW
Interview With Anne Marie Goetz
Ali Atef
70
REVIEW
Review of ECWR’s Seminar on Sexual Harassment and Egypt’s Tourism Industry
Azita Azargoshasb
83
PHOTOESSAY
Prison is For Men: Remembering Al-Fara’a
Michael Kennedy
90
Surfacing Contextualized Contours of Gender and Conflict in the Global South
For the second issue of Surfacing, the Student Editorial Collective decided to initiate dialogue on
the concept of conflict – past and present, physical and ideological, political and economic –
using gender as a primary analytical lens. Each of our contributors has interpreted and engaged
with the notion of conflict, creating the lively interdisciplinary conversation we had envisioned.
As Surfacing’s second issue materialized, it became clear that certain themes within the larger
context of gender and conflict had emerged as common sites of interest among our contributors.
Masculinities, nation-state, the liberal and neoliberal regimes of international governmentality
and the inherently gender-biased legal categories they create provide conceptual signposts that
can be used to navigate this issue of Surfacing.
Obscured Masculinities
As the Collective cleared the final stages of selecting manuscripts to include in the Gender and
Conflict issue of Surfacing, the 22-day Israeli military offensive against Palestinian communities
in the Gaza Strip erupted. Appalled by the unfolding of an ethnic cleansing campaign launched
by the Israeli state that further rid the already occupied land of its Palestinian population, we
started a dialogue among ourselves in an attempt to make sense of such indiscriminate
destruction and mass murder. During our conversations, we realized that both Gaza and the
West Bank, inscribed in the mainstream imagination as two of those sites in the South marked by
constant conflict, have problematically come to be associated with the plight of “innocent
women and children,” posed as an undifferentiated backdrop to the actions of a perceived
violent, fundamentalist and exclusively masculine political machinery. When we tried to
approach the Gaza War from a gender perspective, we found ourselves bombarded with media
images of Palestinians as either female victims or male perpetrators, often captioned by the same
set of cliché texts. The Collective agreed that such shallow images and their textual counterparts
prevent important questions about the relationship between masculinity and gender
performance, in armed as well as ideological conflicts, from being surfaced through meaningful
discussion. Thus, we have come to re-appreciate the two submissions in this issue that focus on
masculinities, expanding our analytical imaginations with regard to gender and conflict: Hebah
H. Farrag’s “Engendering Forced Migration: Victimization, Masculinity and the Forgotten
Voice” and Michael Kennedy’s photoessay “Prison is for Men: Remembering Al-Fara’a.”
In her provoking work, Farrag argues there is an urgent need for a deeper scholarly
understanding of the distinct experience of the male survivor and male non-combatant in diverse
sites of conflict and violence, such as the refugee camp, the war zone and the prison. Her
discussion of hegemonic representations of the man/boy victim, the female combatant, the male
non-combatant and the phenomenon of male-male rape during times of ethnic conflict have
immense academic as well as practical saliency for both students of gender studies and mental
health practitioners working in sites of conflict. Farrag reveals the inadequacy of existing
theoretical frameworks for the study and praxis of gender and conflict and urges us to think
beyond the limited set of tools we have been using to approach these highly complex issues.
Going beyond the constrictive conceptual binary of femininity vs. masculinity, as Farrag
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recommends, opens up the possibility of a gender continuum consisting of multiple femininities
and masculinities (e.g. hegemonic masculinity and the marginalized male). Such a continuum
raises new questions, such as: why is the experience of the female combatant so neglected?; can
a woman be empowered through military action, or is she simply “playing the part of a man”?;
do we have the means to even talk about and understand male victimization let alone to provide
male victims with adequate treatment and support?; why is male rape still such a taboo subject?
Michael Kennedy’s photoessay speaks to Farrag’s concerns in numerous ways and
contributes to discussions on the neglected issues of masculinities, male-to-male violence and the
gendered nature of victimization during armed conflict. Experimenting with a narrative method
that combines visual images with personal testimony, Kennedy traces the evolution of the AlFara’a prison in the West Bank city of Nablus: from a military camp the British government
established in 1932, Al-Fara’a would be used as an Israeli detention center for Palestinian youth
in the 1980s, then converted to a full-blown and highly specialized Israeli prison where various
techniques of mental and physical torture were deployed against Palestinian young men, only to
finally emerge as a youth center under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority. Based on his
fieldwork in Nablus and the ethnographic accounts he assembled from the narratives of former
prisoners of Al-Fara’a, Kennedy presents a novel way to conceptualize conflict in Palestine,
where Israeli violence, masculine performance and nationalism merge to produce a peculiar
collective memory. Kennedy’s photographs, captioned by Palestinian narratives, ultimately
resituate Al-Fara’a prison from merely a site of incarceration to a shared male experience,
whereby a young boy attains his “badges of honor” in order to become a “father of the
Palestinian nation” and a “protector of the Palestinian motherland.”
Women as Specific Targets of Armed Conflict
While advocating sustained engagement with issues of masculinity, the Collective believes there
are specific instances whereby women become the principal targets of violence perpetrated by
multiple actors involved in armed conflicts. In “Obscuring the Realities of Gender-Based
Violence: European Policies on Iraqi Asylum Claims,” Mallory Wankel addresses the woman
refugee’s experience of gender discrimination in the specific context of the Iraq war.
Focusing on Iraqi asylum cases in the UK, Wankel examines how European states have
managed to produce a very narrow and highly specific interpretation of the 1951 Refugee
Convention, which allows them to disregard the pleas of the majority of the Iraqi women asylum
seekers fleeing the conflict. She problematizes legal categories such as “refugee,” “ethnic
minority” and “individually-targeted victim,” as well as notions like “comparative approach,”
“well-founded fear of persecution” and “generalized violence,” through which states make “just”
decisions about whom to save and whom to turn away. Dissatisfied with facile explanations as to
why European states adamantly refuse to recognize the myriad forms of gender-based violence
Iraqi women suffer, Wankel dissects discursively-informed trends in which women are granted
asylum to reveal discriminatory assumptions about gender and Islamic cultures. Her discussion
of the Western tendency to “identify gender-based violence as persecution only when it is
committed by a cultural Other” and the failure of European states to recognize as well-founded
claims for asylum the less sensationalized kinds of violence against women, which occur across all
countries and cultures, has relevance for the larger issues of persisting stereotypical images of the
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Muslim woman in Western imagination; neo-Orientalism and the legal categories it creates; and
most importantly, the repeated injustices to which women in armed conflict are subjected.
At the international level, “Women and Security” has become a field of study and
practice in its own right, especially after the passing of two United Nations Security Council
Resolutions (UNSCR 1325 and 1820) specifically addressing the issue of women’s physical and
mental well-being in armed conflict and in post-conflict contexts. Surfacing’s own Ali Atef
interviewed Anne Marie Goetz, the Chief Advisor for the Governance, Peace and Security
program at UNIFEM, for her expert opinion on the women, peace and security agenda, regarding both
its historical development and its future goals. The interview with Goetz contributes to the
dialogue on gender and conflict by providing us with an alternative conceptualization of sexual
violence against women – one that frames the issue as a “security problem” that requires a
unique set of actions tailored to preventing and dealing with it. Based on the argument that
“some wars are fought on women’s bodies,” Goetz makes a compelling case for approaching
sexual violence against women during times of armed conflict as another method of warfare on
par with cluster bombs or landmines.
Intervention as Violence: Who May Intervene and Who Must be “Saved”
In his essay “Verbal Abuse: Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and Violence Against Women,” Sherief
Gaber calls for a critical reassessment of Western liberal discourse as a framework for
conceptualizing and contextualizing sex trafficking in the global South. Gaber exposes the
discursive mechanisms by which a plethora of hegemonic anti-trafficking forces (through their
“liberating” rhetoric and “humanitarian” praxis) legitimize their existence as well as intervention
raids carried out against the bodies of female sex workers. Focusing on New York Times
columnist Nicholas Kristof and his special series on “adventures” in Cambodia between 2004
and 2007, where Kristof documented the tragic lives of “21st century slaves,” namely two female
sex workers whom he later purchased to “liberate,” Gaber opens up a much needed discussion
on how the Western liberal political project produces “victim bodies” stripped of agency that
require saving by the nation-state, the police force, the humanitarian NGO or by Nicholas
Kristof himself. Gaber suggests approaching anti-trafficking discourse as “a frame that marks the
organization of certain values and ideologies – many of them expressly pertaining to
structure/agency – that are then operationalized to produce violence against sex workers and
women migrants.” As Gaber states at the start of his essay, his work is not concerned with
constructing an alternative framework for “solving the problem of sex trafficking” or even
producing “a better definition of trafficking.” Instead, Gaber’s essay is interested in critically
engaging with dominant anti-trafficking interventionism and in deconstructing its foundational
rhetorical devices – such as the notions of freedom, victim and liberation – in order to “address
alternatives to those values and ideologies that motivate anti-trafficking interventionalism.”
In her essay “Gendered Contestations: An Analysis of Street Harassment in Cairo and its
Implications For Women’s Access to Public Spaces,” Nadia Ilahi walks us through the central
academic as well as public debates surrounding the issue of sexual harassment in urban Cairo,
and maps out the context-specific details of these debates. She provides us with a dynamic and
complex blueprint of the economy of debate that constitutes the various competing discourses
on sexual harassment in Egypt. Ilahi manages to extract street harassment from the universalistic
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abstraction of “the classic social predicament of a developing Middle Eastern/Muslim country”
by shifting the focus from what street harassment is and why it happens to more productive
questions, i.e. how does street harassment happen?; in what ways is it manifested in the everyday
lives of various social groupings of Cairene women?; and how does street harassment prevent
women from participating in public life, significantly limiting their mobility and their safe
enjoyment of public spaces? Ilahi’s discussion of street harassment, violence against women and
the Egyptian state’s ambiguous stance regarding these gender-specific issues is especially worth
highlighting. The state’s passive condonation of the widespread treatment of sexual harassment
on the street as a “normal,” customary practice, instead of marking it as criminal behavior as is
done with theft, murder and (even) political dissent, prompts Ilahi to ask, “As women vie for
basic rights within human rights frameworks, where do they belong as citizens within the
Egyptian nationalist project?” Ilahi problematizes not only the blatant lack of intervention on the
part of the Egyptian state – specifically its unwillingness and inability to conceptualize sexual
harassment on the street as misogynistic criminal behavior that puts women in immediate bodily
and psychic danger, as well as its resistant stance on hearing the witness accounts of women,
pursuing sexual harassers and prosecuting them – but also the very nature of its interventions
when it chooses to take notice and action.
In Azita Azargoshasb’s review of the August 2008 seminar “Sexual Harassment and its
Impacts on the Egyptian Economy,” co-hosted by the NGO Egyptian Center for Women’s
Rights (ECWR) and the Egyptian state, as represented by the Ministry of Tourism and members
of the national parliament, she offers a critical reading of one kind of state-sponsored
intervention, whereby the sexual harassment of Cairene women gets debated by various civil
society and state actors. Reflecting on the implications of such a particular framing of sexual
harassment – posed as a serious detriment to Egypt’s tourism industry and its economic growth
– Azargoshasb urges us to reassess the merits and larger ramifications of various interventions
within gendered social conflicts. What kinds of issues critical to women’s well-being are being
eclipsed by the Egyptian state’s desire to achieve neoliberal economic goals? Also, as
Azargoshasb provocatively poses, “does the strategic entanglement of macroeconomic objectives
and globally-funded ‘gender’ advocacy for the purpose of altering sexual harassment trends at
home imply a surrender of the critical distance necessary to critique those economic objectives in
and of themselves?”
The Surfacing Student Collective would like to thank all our contributing authors for
their hard work and dedication. We are also indebted to the members of Surfacing’s
International Advisory Board for their valuable feedback and support during the peer review
process. The faculty peer reviewers from several different universities who assessed this issue
should be commended for their role in surfacing essays of such value and contemporary
relevance. Finally, we owe tremendous thanks to Martina Rieker, Hanan Sabea and the Cynthia
Nelson Institute for Gender and Women’s Studies for sponsoring Surfacing as the journal
develops networks of contributors and readers throughout the global South.
Yasemin Ozer
iv
Heb ah Fa rrag is a proje ct ma nager a t the Ce nter for R eligi on a nd Ci vi c Cul tu re a t the
Uni ve rsi ty of S ou the rn C alifornia (U SC ) in Los A ngel es. She is a gra dua te o f The Am e rican
Uni ve rsi ty i n Cai ro , whe re s he re cei ve d a n M. A. i n Mi ddle E ast S tu dies a nd a Gra dua te
Di pl om a in Fo rce d Mi grati o n a nd Re fu ge e S tu dies. S he hol ds a B. A. i n Poli tical
S cie nce/ Interna ti onal R ela tio ns fro m U SC. Heba h is inte reste d in issue s co nce rning
religi on, the politi cs o f i de ntity , na ti onalisms and migra ti on a nd has wo rke d fo r a nd wi th
o rganiz a tio ns i nclu ding the You th P oli cy I ns ti tu te , Huma n Ri ghts W atch a nd C asa
Del P ue blo , tra veli ng o n del e ga tio ns to co ndu ct res ea rch in Cu ba , Le ba no n, J o rdan
and C hia pas , M exi co.
Engendering Forced Migration:
Masculinity and the Forgotten Voice
Victimization,
by Hebah H. Farrag
Political violence, armed conflict and aggression, in general terms, are often conceived of as the
sole domain of men. This assumption has crept into much of the scholarship today, with many a
researcher citing the now famous “statistic”: “war is largely created and fought by men” (Clark
and Moser 2001, 3).1 The identification of aggression and war as male has biased not only the
image of men, but women as well, impacting the way researchers, academics and practitioners
view violence and conflict, as well as the way they respond to victims of such violence. The
simplistic division of gender into roles where men are perpetually the perpetrators and women
the victims falsely relates women to peace, and thus passivity, and men to war, and thus
aggression (Clark and Moser 2001, 3). This polarized view of conflict and its aftermath creates a
worldview where men are never victims and women very rarely anything other than oppressed.
It is this misrepresentation of the gendered causes, costs and consequences of violence that has
resulted in not only the insufficient recognition of women’s involvement in conflict, as Clark
argues, but also the marginalization of the male survivor and/or non-combatant (Clark and
Moser 2001, 4).
This gap in research, it may be argued, has led to an ineffective approach when it comes
to the treatment of victims of violence in a psycho-social setting. The emphasis on female
victimization versus the reality of male silence and non-reporting has left one group, namely,
victimized boys and men, without a space for healing, treatment and activism. This paper will
explore such gender bias in multiple sites of victimization, focusing on forced migration, while
including refugee camps, armed conflict and prisons. This paper will discuss such taboos as
female combatants and male-male rape in order to carve out a better map for treatment in the
1
Here is one example that could be replicated from almost all works used in this research: “Overwhelmingly it is
men who make war. Men who have the fighting personnel of national militaries, popular militias, political police
forces and the armed gangs of warlords” (Cockburn 2001, 20).
1
realm of psycho-social interventions, with a focus on refugee studies as an international arena
dedicated to understanding and protecting victims of violence and persecution.
The Controversy over Gender
Alison Spalding argues that the division of the human race by gender has introduced controversy
beyond that which has emanated from other social human divisions (1998). “Across cultures,”
she states, “the male-female distinction has been assigned meanings and importance that have
implications for virtually all aspects of society” (Spalding 1998). Though gender distinction is
universal, it must be remembered that, gender is a social construct and to specify one’s gender,
“automatically entails questions about relations of race, class, and political power, whilst war
adds the dimension of conquered and victor” (Meintjes, Pillay and Turshen 2001, 3). Not all men
see themselves as powerful, and not all women feel disempowered. It is safe to say that gender
exists in a sort of continuum of masculinity and femininity, empowerment and disempowerment,
with men and women on both sides of this spectrum (Hague, 1997: 52).
To go even further, in terms of cultural specificity, many people assume that there are
only two sexes, two gender roles, two sexual orientations, however, researchers have pointed out
that there are more than two sexes in many cultural contexts (Kilmartin 2000, 108). Aside from
biological differences that defy traditional gender norms (hermaphrodites/intrasexuality), there
are also cultural exceptions to the two-gender rule (Kilmartin 2000, 108). The berdache of the
north American Indian are anatomically male who behave much like the women of the tribe and
are considered a third gender within the group (Kilmartin 2000, 108). Several other cultures have
third genders or accepted transgender sexes, such as the hijras of northern India and xaniths of
Oman, “all of whom fulfill culturally approved social and sexual roles apart from the usual
masculine and feminine genders,” giving just a small glimpse into the complexity of gender
(Kilmartin 2000, 108).
Beyond the nuanced continuum of gender, there are other reasons to pay close attention
to gender, especially in terms of psycho-social treatment. Today, as violence and armed conflict
become all the more complicated, gender distinctions must be evaluated with an eye towards the
global context of violence and the hierarchies of class, nationality and ethnicity that exist on the
world stage. Amani Al Jack has argued that inequality in the distribution of power and resources
has become more pronounced at the international level. This hierarchy of national power,
coupled with “structural inequalities between and within nations, has led to more regional
conflict” (2003, 8) due to disparity and power differences being extenuated. This paradigm of
power is highly gendered, so that, for example, high unemployment destabilizes relations in the
family, affecting men, women and children differently. On the other hand, in an environment of
militarization, men are forced to violence and those who refuse to fight are often forced into
imprisonment or exile (Cockburn 2001, 18). Gender cannot be considered the sole attribute of
disempowerment; instead global divisions of power must also be brought into play to better
understand how conflict and forms of structural violence impact men, women and children
differently.
2
Gender and Forced Migration
In the world of forced migration and refugee studies, an arena focused on the causes,
consequences, international responses and protection of migrants and victims of political
violence, armed conflict and various forms of persecution, gender and notions of gender bias
have undergone several transformations in the last four decades. Early scholarship in the
emerging field was for the most part gender-blind. The omission of women led to the
confrontation of many a feminist with what was seen as an inherent bias in the refugee regime,
formally instituted with the purportedly male-centered 1951 Refugee Convention and pursuant
creation of an androcentric regime (Adjin-Terrey 1996; Clark and Moser 2001, 3). Since then,
many changes have been made to be more inclusive and responsive to the protection of women
during times of conflict, and efforts have been made to better understand the specific nature of
female suffering and persecution during such times. Unfortunately today, this problem has been
over-compensated for in the field of refugee studies and psycho-social treatment, to the
disadvantage of male victims of violence and persecution.
Engendering violence in areas such as forced migration means much more than simply
bringing women into the picture. It also requires, in part, a reconstruction of masculinity and a
deeper inquiry into how men and women react separately and in dialogue to the violence of life
on the move. After witnessing feminist discourse become a justification for a war where men
and women were impacted indiscriminately and intensely, regardless of their gender
(Afghanistan), and watching various female leaders lead their nations to violent action (Thacher,
Albright, Rice), it would not only be academically unsound but morally incorrect to see
patriarchy and gender simply in terms of oppression to women. Often in the world of refugee
studies, the word gender becomes confused with the plight of women or the imbalance of power
between males and females. A similar complaint has been launched against many gender studies
departments, which have too often been synonymous with western feminist theory. Gender and
gender theory should not merely be a tool used to decode patriarchal power structures, liberate
women from gendered forms or reconstruct the feminine; gender should also be seen through
the scope of power differentials that allow one to see nuance in the continuum of gender.
Beyond simply silencing men in the discourse of gender, the depiction of women,
especially “refugee women,” as perpetually the victims of male suppression, domination and
control strips them of their agency, voice and multiplicity. Roberta Julian discusses how refugee
women in Australia rarely represent themselves in public forum; instead, they are typically
spoken about and represented by others (1997, 196). Julian considers this control over the image
of refugee women a political mechanism dependant in part on “a process of ‘victimization’
where in the public sphere such women must be consistently represented as victims: of war, of
persecution, of tragedy, and of state and patriarchal oppression” (1997, 196). Female refugees are
often seen in pictures as the emblem of refugee status, an image that moves beyond public
relations and fundraising to policy, where, as Boelaert describes, gender becomes increasingly
recognized by social scientists as a significant vulnerability criterion in forced migration (1999,
165). Is there not a danger in saying that women are vulnerable simply by being women?
To compound this problem of image, facts are often skewed to accommodate the
perception of women as victims. There is a tendency in the literature on refugees to suggest that
women constitute a disproportionate amount of refugee populations, thus accentuating the
3
vulnerability of such communities (Daley 1991, 254). Scholars such as Daley argue persuasively
that contrary to popular perception, the sex ratio in African refugee settlements is much more
balanced than has been assumed (1991, 248). There is no evidence, she points out, in the
composition of the settlement population of any significant dominance of females over males
(1991, 254). Moreover, there have been volumes of research conducted showing the resilience of
refugee women, some going as far as to say that forced dislocation can be a liberating force
aiding young women and men to escape the confines of patriarchal control (Daley 1991 249).
There is no unitary path to describe gendered behavior. Women do not simply react to the
norms before them; they invent, challenge, and even reinforce the roles they intend to play
through dialogue and participation. Even further, it is women, not only men, who shape
women’s place, be it in a camp, in exile or in the home.
I admit to painting an over-simplified picture. There is a very real actuality of gendered
violence and discrimination that women the world over must endure on a daily basis. However,
there is also a very real history of colonial domination and empire that not only impacts men but
has and continues to create hegemonic categorizations of gender that discriminate and
disempower both women and men equally. As described by Chris Dolan in his study of northern
Uganda, the state often capitalizes on hegemonic and strict definitions of gender roles and in
many ways encourages the rigidity of masculinity as a tool for oppressing and empowering men
against one another. Women are not the only ones raped in times of conflict and yet too often it
is the consequences of women’s rape by men that is discussed in scholarship that ignores and
thus silences the existence of male rape, castration and sodomy,2 and the severity of trauma
created for a refugee or victim of violence. Dominant and violent masculinity affects not only
women but other men, and of course children. Many individual men do not feel powerful; poor
men often feel little sense of control over their lives and men of color alongside gay men are
often systematically oppressed in white-dominated and heterosexual societies (Kilmartin 2000,
15). Engendering violence and forced migration requires the recognition of not only the effects
of such violence on women but on men as well.
Gender and Armed Conflict
It is the effects of violence, instability, war and conflict that refugees flee and most forced
migrants endure, and it is the impact of these events that mental health practitioners must be
aware of. Armed conflict negatively impacts men and women and often results in genderspecific disadvantages that are not always recognized or addressed by the mainstream, genderblind understandings of conflict and reconstruction (El Jack 2003, 3). Amani El Jack argues, and
I tend to agree, that “gender inequalities reflect power imbalances in social structures that exist in
pre-conflict periods and are exacerbated by conflict and its aftermath”; and she further argues
that it is because of, “the acceptance of gender stereotypes that such gender blindness persists”
(2003, 3).
2
Sodomy throughout this paper is referring to forcible sexual penetration with an object.
4
The Female Combatant
Women are typically painted as passive, peaceful victims of aggression and war, discussed as one
of those games women are just not supposed to play. As Rita Manchanda so eloquently points
out:
The dominant image of women in the iconography of war is that of the eternal victim, passive
and without agency, an outsider to the battle-front. Women are visible as the overwhelming
victims, direct and indirect, of violent conflict. Violence consists of rape and the trauma of
displacement, disappearances, torture and killings, as well as the gendered politics of body
searches at checkpoints. In the aftermath of war, women are victims of the fallout in domestic
and societal violence of predatory masculinities and misogyny fostered in conflict. Researchers
are now interrogating this dominant discourse of victim-hood to make visible the complexity and
multiplicity of women’s experiences of conflict (2001, 99).
Why is the experience of the female combatant so neglected? One persuasive reason maybe the
place of the peaceful and peace-loving woman in feminist discourse, as opposed to the
aggression, militancy and violence of the opposing patriarchal structure, characterized by men.
Women’s groups, very often, oppose war, oppose the arms race, oppose violence as a means of
conflict resolution, and the existence of the female combatant not only counters this image but
demands debate on what exactly empowerment is. As Manchanda argues, “the woman militant is
a black hole in feminist discourse on the possibility of empowerment in conflict,” because she
moves beyond the realm of peace, passivity and victimhood and adopts the role of perpetrator
of violence (2001, 114). Can a woman be empowered through militant action, or is she simply
“playing the part of a man”?
Rene Denfeld, author of Kill the Body, the Head will Fall: A Closer look at Women, Violence,
and Aggression, argues very strongly for a woman’s right to fight equally in national militaries as a
path towards empowerment. She argues poignantly that it is the image of the female soldier that
may counter the age old taboo of women fighting men and puts us face-to-face with the fact that
women can fight, not just in passion or anger, but for a cause or simply for the excitement of
combat –
the personal challenge of pitting one’s self against another (Spalding 1998, 149). Women’s
military service and their participation as combatants in guerilla warfare is one of the more
blatant examples of women’s aggression (Spalding 1998, 149). Are mental health practitioners
prepared to handle the complexities of a female ex-combatant? Is there enough research to aid
in understanding how to assist, treat and intervene on such a patient’s behalf? I think not.
Male Non-Combatant
The topic of male non-combatants, and the effects of war and armed conflict on their human
rights, has long been avoided. Adam Jones’ article “Straight as a Rule: Heteronormativity,
Gendercide, and the Non-Combatant Male” is the first to tackle this issue head on. Jones argues
“the most vulnerable and consistently targeted population group, through time and
internationally today is non-combatant men of ‘battle age’ roughly 15 – 55 years old” (2003, 1).
According to Jones, it is this group of men that have been and continue to be nearly universally
perceived as posing the greatest danger to a conquering force and are the group most likely to
have the repressive apparatus of the state directed against them (Jones 2003, 1). These men,
5
subordinate to other stronger forces, what Dolan would call hegemonic masculinity, have little
means to defend themselves and can be detained and exterminated by the thousands or millions,
and invariably have been represented, once silently killed, as heroes, fighters and warriors, but
rarely as victims (Jones 2003, 1; Dolan 2003). Jones goes further and estimates that it is not just
men within these ages that are at risk: “Elderly males are probably more prone than women to
be caught up in war, and modern warfare extends further down the age ladder in the hunt for
child soldiers and street thugs” (2003, 1). While a UN Principles for Older Persons exists, it is
not a legally binding charter. For many years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have
argued on behalf of this cause, arguments that are centrally motivated by the fact that ageing is
increasingly a major aspect of female experiences in the refugee world (Canny 2000). This is due
in large part to the reality that “elderly female refugees and IDPs (Internally Displaced People)
coming from or currently in conflict zones are even more likely to be widowed than the elderly
female population at large due to military service, war losses, and human rights abuses which
often target and include the elderly male population” (Canny 2000). It seems elderly men
themselves should be legitimate subjects for concern and intervention by human rights
organizations, governments and NGOs (Jones 2003, 2).
New research finds that men are as likely as women, and maybe significantly more likely,
to be persecuted or targeted for violence during times of conflict or unrest. This violence and
persecution, as argued by Jones and Dolan separately, is due to the fact that non-combatant men
violate the rules of a hegemonic masculinity, which dictate what a man is supposed to be. Dolan
locates the source of the problem with the state and its control of mechanisms of violence,
arguing that “states benefit from a disempowered male population which turns violent on itself
not the state and maintains a context of violence to justify a continued military force” (2003, 1617). Jones focuses on what he calls “subordinate masculinities,” often male non-combatants, and
argues that hegemonic masculinity depends on the presence of this stigmatized subordinate
masculinity for its existence (2003, 3). Jones calls this phenomenon “gendercide,” a pattern of
gender abuse and atrocity aimed at gender-selective extermination strategies. These arguments
all point to the fact that a majority of men forced to migrate often come from a category dubbed
“the marginalized male.” Often potentially large number of men are non-combatants, forced
combatants or ex-combatants, yet there remains a significant gap in research concerning
persecution and non-combatants, as well as on this phenomenon of violence targeting other
types of masculinity.
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees does not grant, in most cases,
refugee rights to men who flee from military service, and as such, male non-combatants are not
afforded international protection. Despite this fact, it is important to consider how such an
environment may impact men’s mental health. When men invariably cannot live up to
expectations of hegemonic masculinity, they in turn experience violence, humiliation, a perceived
or real loss of status and victimization. Sometimes this scenario may lead to violence. It may also
result in much self-violence: suicide, drug abuse, alcoholism or violent behavior against one’s
self. Either way, it is important to realize the effects of repressed and unachievable gender
aspirations within a social context and how that may impact the identity, resiliency, and coping
mechanisms of men, be they forced migrants or not.
6
The Vulnerable Male: A Case Study Quiz
Do you believe that men can be victims? While many would like to answer this question with a
resounding yes, there are powerful taboos in society that paint men as impenetrable and
impervious to loss and pain. Many actions we would find abhorrent for women to endure we
find perfectly acceptable for men. Many believe subtly that men should have the strength to
overcome and survive, while women should be forced to make such sacrifices.
Below you will find a list of short case studies. Ask yourself if you find them violent or
persecutory of men, if not, replace the men involved with a woman and see if you would still
find the practice acceptable. Should these boys be considered refugees if fleeing from some form
of these violent acts? Which acts do you find empowering or conversely disempowering and
how can such actions affect the mental health of those involved?
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Samburu (East Africa): Adolescent boys go through a bloody circumcision rite to
which they must submit without so much as flinching under the pain of the knife. If
he does, he and his family’s lineage is shamed. The cutting may last four minutes or
more.
New Guinea Highlands: Boys must endure whipping, flailing, beating, and other
forms of terrorization by older men.
Tewa (native peoples of New Mexico): Boys are taken from their homes and
undergo ritual purification and are beaten by Kachina spirits (fathers in disguise) by a
whip that leaves permanent scars.
Sambia (New Guinea): Boys undergo blood letting ritual where glass is stuffed into
nostril until it bleeds copiously.
Thonga (South Africa): Youths are continually beaten during a three month
initiation ritual. They are also denied water and forced to eat unsavory foods, and are
made to sleep naked on the floor on cold nights, to be bitten by bugs.
Papua New Guinea: Adolescent boys in some tribes are expected to perform oral
sex on the older men of the tribe as a rite of passage into manhood.3
United States: Routine Infant Circumcision is practiced on all males born with
parental approval. The foreskin is opened after measurement and the inner lining of
the foreskin is then bluntly separated from its attachment to the glands. A device is
then placed (this sometimes requires a dorsal slit) and remains there until bleeding
stops. Finally, the foreskin is amputated (Task Force on Circumcision 1999).
North America: Hazing rituals, where men and boys are ritually beaten and/or
abused mentally or physically in order to join a sports team, fraternity, military group
or any other type of club, are exceptionally common. Hazing very often involves
large amounts of alcohol consumption and may result in death.4
It has been said that while femininity is attained naturally, masculinity must be achieved, and
these are just a few of the many cultural rites that socialize men into their masculine roles
(Kilmartin 2000). Female circumcision or cutting is just one cultural rite of passage, albeit one
3
4
All examples found in Kilmartin, 2000
http://www.stophazing.org/fraternity_hazing/index.htm
7
that has received much attention as an issue of human rights, female oppression and brutality.
How do you think male rites of passage compare?
When Men are Raped
Antjie Krog discusses the effects of male rape on victims in her work on the gendered effects of
the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She writes, “Male victims of rape don’t
use the word when they testify. They talk about either sodomizing or about iron rods being
inserted in them. By doing so, they make ‘rape’ a women’s issue. By denying their own sexual
subjugation to male brutality, they form a brotherhood with rapists that conspires against their
own wives, mothers, and daughters” (2001, 208). While Krog is right to point out the male
inhibition to self-disclose when it comes to sexual abuse, the reasons she presents stand as a
testimony to the misperceptions surrounding male rape and the needs of survivors. A survivor
of rape, whether man or woman, should not be assumed to have formed a “brotherhood” with
their victimizer.
The issue of male-male rape is rarely discussed in any context and yet it is a form of
violence and victimization that occurs all too often without recourse or action. As Krog’s
statement exemplifies, rape, even when it is done by a man to a man, remains seen as a women’s
issue, a men’s conspiracy against wives, mothers and daughters, even though “clearly not all men
are rapists, or are likely to be” (Hague 1997, 52). Thus the traditional feminist problematic that
views rape soley as a system for maintaining male supremacy and patriarchy is insufficient
(Hague 1997, 52).
A discourse on violence and protection that includes male-male rape is a necessary step
but not an easy one. Today, as one researcher puts it, “male-male rape is a cause without a
voice,” with very few, be it survivors or activists, who are willing and able to speak on its behalf
(Sivakumaran 2005, 1276). Secondly, male-male rape involves sexual activity between two men, a
social taboo, which amounts to a “taint” on the part of the victim of the rape (Sivakumaran
2005, 1276). There are many assumptions that persist in society as to the realities of male-male
rape that must be addressed before survivors can feel safe enough to report. Moreover, there are
rarely places where survivors can go to receive specialized attention for their specific needs, such
as male counselors, which makes access to support a huge problem for men who are raped.
Before a discussion about protection and treatment may take place, it is necessary to
breakdown some basic assumptions about male-male rape. It is estimated that one in eight men
are sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, with the incidence of prison rape ranking much
higher (Kilmartin 2000, 259). Historically, such male-male rape has been referred to as
“homosexual rape,” due to the perception that the rape of a man is a homosexual act, posed as
either perpetrated by or inflicted against homosexual men.5 Furthermore, most countries do not
have gender-neutral rape laws, and thus, do not even recognize that the sexual victimization of
an adult male is possible (Kilmartin 2000, 259). In some places, those who do report are at risk
for being charged with a crime, such as sodomy (Kilmartin 2000, 259). The reality is that most
5
The phrase “homosexual rape,” for instance, which is often used by uninformed persons to designate male-male
rape, camouflages the fact that the majority of the rapists are not generally homosexual (Donaldson 1990) (NCVC).
8
men who rape other men consider themselves heterosexual, while the majority of victims also
identify as heterosexual (Sivukumaran 2005, 1285). The sexuality of the survivor has very little to
do with motivation of the crime, as for that matter, the sexuality of the rapist. Like the rape of
women, the rape of men is an expression of power, not sexuality (Kilmartin 2000, 259). And yet,
due to strong bias associated with the “taint” of male-male rape, it has been estimated that 90
percent of male survivors never report the rape and 70 percent never tell anybody at all
(Kilmartin 2000, 260). It is this aspect of male rape, a reflection of rampant homophobia in
societies, which is particular to male survivors and not women.
While non-reporting is always a part of the rape trauma, regardless of gender, the reasons
for silence are gender-specific, as are the impacts of the trauma (Sivakumaran 2005, 1288). For
example, in male-male rape, like the rape of a woman, the biological response of the body to the
rape often confuses the survivor, arousing feelings of shame, guilt, and culpability that are
difficult to overcome. When men are raped, the rapist frequently gets the victim to ejaculate for
the specified purpose of confusing them sexually, and making the victim feel as though they
enjoyed it (Sivakumaran 2005, 1291). This is in part to deter reporting of the crime, a tactic that
works as many law enforcement agencies assume that if a man was raped it had to have been
consensual, wanted or asked for by a homosexual victim; ejaculation frequently proves this point
in the eyes of the law (Sivakumaran 2005, 1293). Stephen Donaldson, president of Stop Prisoner
Rape (a US-based education and advocacy group), says that the suppression of knowledge of
male rape is so powerful and pervasive that criminals such as burglars and robbers sometimes
rape their male victims solely to prevent them from going to the police (National Center for
Victims of Crime, NCVC). As a female survivor will often question her chastity, honor and
dignity after the rape, a man will often question his sexuality, something that is often noted as
“more negative.”6
Complicating the societal “taint” of male-male rape is the notion that men cannot be
victims. A study analyzing interviews with survivors of male-male rape on what it means to be
“masculine,” and how they have been influenced by the experience of being abused found that
many participants expressed concern regarding their invisibility as male survivors, noting that
contemporary discourses on violence typically position men as its perpetrators, rather than its
victims (Atwood 2005). The discourse on male victimization has both practical implications for
male survivors and theoretical implications for critical work on hegemonic masculinity (Atwood
2005). Practically, it is useful to begin by looking at how a male survivor may react to experience
of rape by a man. Male-male rape frequently involves higher levels of violence, weapons, and is
also more likely to involve multiple assailants (NCVC). Male rape victims are also at greater risk
for committing suicide after being raped (NCVC). While male rape victims do not run the risk of
getting pregnant, anal rape does have a much higher risk of internal tearing and damage, and
with that comes a higher risk of possible HIV transmission (NCVC).
6
“The united nations high commission for refugees guidelines on sexual violence against refugees notes that ‘it is
suspected that the reported cases of sexual violence against males are a fraction of the true number of cases.’ HRW
reports from Eastern Congo documenting one case of male rape, noting, ‘rape is considered even more shameful
for male victims, and is less likely to be reported.’ There is a perceived added stigma attached to victims of malemale rape, that does not attach to victims of male-female rape” (Sivakumaran 2005, 1293-1294).
9
Many times, survivors experience similar responses to female survivors, with symptoms
including PTSD, anger, shame, relationship difficulty, suicidal thoughts, sexual problems, sleep
disturbances and increased alcohol use, as well as psychosomatic symptoms (Kilmarting 2000,
259). Men may also experience difficulties that are somewhat unique to male survivors, such as
doubts about their masculinity and sexuality, extreme isolation, and even fewer resources for
treatment and support (Kilmartin 2000, 259). What is essential on a practical level is the absolute
need for neutral rape laws, more information tailored to male survivors, increased training of
staff to deal with the unique character of male victimization medically and education campaigns
aimed at informing the public about the problem (Kilmartin 2000, 260). Male victims need to
receive empathy, but more importantly, many need to accept that men can experience trauma as
well.7
The Sexual Abuse of Men in times of Conflict
According to the US-based National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC), the rape of males
was more widely recognized in ancient times. Several of the legends in Greek mythology
involved abductions and sexual assaults of males by other males or gods. The rape of a defeated
male enemy was considered the special right of the victorious soldier in some societies as a signal
of the totality of the defeat. Ancient murals show plates piled high with enemy penises, and for
centuries, men and boys captured became body servants of western warriors or brides of
Mesoamericans (Jones 2003, 7). And further, the gang rape of males was known historically in
many places as the ultimate form of punishment and, as such, was practiced by the Romans as
punishment for adultery and by the Persians as a punishment for a violation of the sanctity of
the harem. According to Jones, the issue of male-on-male sexual violence in wartime has barely
begun to receive sustained attention despite the fact that this practice, along with the
confiscation of feminine spoils, is as old as history itself (2003, 7). If many cultures have
supported the claim that one aspect of conquest involves the emasculation of men through a
variety of sexually violent acts, then why do we only read about women as victims of rape during
war (Jones 2003, 7)?
According to Dubravka Zarkov, one of the few scholars who has worked on this subject,
“while sexual violence against men has been a fact of war for hundreds of years, in contemporary
wars however, it is a rather well-hidden fact; experts may know about it, but war rape of a man
has never been a major story in the press, nor is castration in a war camp on the evening news”
(Zarkov 2001, 71). Ronald Littlewood describes how difficult it is to deal with a phenomenon
such as male military rape. Littlewood describes how standardized forms of sexual violence in
societies involves not just individualized rape and sexual killing but is often used as an
instrument of public policy (1997, 7). Men are clearly vulnerable during armed conflict due to
sexual abuse and torture and it is time that the other half of this gendered story is explored.
Zarkov, in one of the few articles about male rape in war, focuses on how media sources
in the former Yugoslavia will not discuss male sexual abuse during war due to the implications of
such a crime for notions of nationalism, masculinity, potency and power. “It may be a surprise to
many readers,” he begins, “that men were victims of sexual violence during the wars in the
7
See appendix I for specific information regarding male-male rape form the NCVC
10
former Yugoslavia, which became notorious for making the rape of women one of its most
effective weapons… In most wars, and in times of peace,” he continues:
The reality is that men are rapists of women. However perceiving men only and always
as offenders and never as victims of rape and other forms of sexual violence is a very
specific, gendered narrative of war. In that narrative, dominant notions of masculinity
merge with norms of heterosexuality and definitions of ethnicity and ultimately who can
or cannot be named a victim of sexual violence in the national press (2001, 69).
Zarkov discusses the findings of the United Nations Commission of Experts’ Final Report
(referred to as the Bassiouni Report) in depth in his article and sets out to describe sexual
assaults against men. Some of these violent acts included beating men across the genitals, forcing
them to undress, rape and assault with foreign objects, castration and the severing of the
testicles; sometimes prisoners were forced to perpetrate these acts of violence against each other,
while on other occasions prison guards were the offenders (2001, 71). As described, sexual
violence against men in conflict is largely of two types, genital torture and male-male rape,
sometimes including forced rape of women or family members (Zarkov 2001, 71; Sivakumaran
2005, 1295). Many of these crimes committed in detention during the war were conducted by all
warring sides, yet no attention was paid by the media to this aspect of sexual violence during the
war, with only one handful of researchers even mentioning it in their work (Zarkov 2001, 72).8
Even when information on male sexual abuse was included, it was only inserted as a footnote or
as a couple of matter of fact sentences offering description without analysis. Very seldomly did
people testify for themselves; instead witnesses would give testimony of what they saw – a trend
that has continued into my research (Zarkov 2001, 72-73). Zarkov asks why sexually assaulted
men are so invisible in the media and academic texts when the report clearly stated their
existence, and I am posing a similar question; why is male rape such a taboo?
The answer to this question may be found in the motivating factors behind male sexual
abuse in conflict and male rape in general. While many of the motivating factors for male-male
rape are similar to that of male-female rape, there are particulars that may impact the
mystification of and under-attention granted to this form of violence and persecution. Dolan
discuses how male rape, like female rape during war, is genocidal in intention, meaning in the
case of male victims to obliterate the masculinity of victim and thus nation through acts such as
castration, mutilation and the forced intercourse of captives by one another (Dolan 2003, 10).
These actions are the other half of genocidal practices such as forced impregnation – a form of
cultural humiliation – and in some cases sterilization (Dolan 2003, 11). Hague argues that rape is
always structured by relations of power and coercion, constructing a context of subjugation and
powerlessness (Hague 1997, 59). Rape is use to feminize any subject, he argues, where power over
8
Zarkov cites an example of one rare media citation: “Russian forces stationed in Chechnya recently committed an
organized mass rape of Chechen civilian males. During a fact–finding trip to the North Caucasus, Mironov learned
of an incident which took place earlier this month: ‘Over 700 men (I was given a list of 762 names) were taken to a
field. They [the Russian soldiers] raped a woman in front of them.’ The Russian troops, Mironov related, then
taunted the Chechen men, calling on them to defend the woman’s honor. Those who intervened, sixty–two men,
were themselves then ‘handcuffed to an armored personnel carrier, and publicly raped.’ ‘Never before have I heard
about public rape,’ Mironov commented, ‘Of course, people were systematically raped in prisons and detention
centers, and [in] military units. This was intended to break their character. But now this is being done in public’
(Eurasianet, July 19)” (Dunlop, 2001).
11
the feminine functions as an assured sign of a clear and recognizable gendered identity that
imagines itself as strong, superior and virtuous (Hague 1997, 59). Zurkov argues that the
meaning of male rape is different and that the visibility of the violated male body, therefore,
becomes an issue of nationhood, not only manhood (2001, 78).
Emasculation, in the case of male-male rape carries multiple symbolisms, due mainly to
the fact that masculinity epitomizes specific aspects of ethnicity while the female body signifies
its own symbolic portion of nation (Zurkov 2001, 78). It seems that the other half of rape as a
symbolic tool of war is the rape of men. While men symbolize the virility and strength of the
nation, women’s bodies tend to embody the nation itself. Urvashi Butalia describes, as many
feminists before her, the symbolism of the female body in times of war, referring specifically to
the partition of India. Butalia describes how both Hindu and Muslim communities used rape as a
weapon to humiliate the other and how the honor of the community and of the nation was
consequently seen to inhere in the bodies of women; the violation of their bodies, therefore, was
tantamount to a violation of the body of the nation, of mother India (2001, 103). As rape in war
is intended to dishonor women and through them their male kin, male rape seeks to destroy the
masculinity of the man and thus destroy the nation. Sexual violence during times of war is a
political act aimed at the body of the nation, regardless of gender, albeit with potentially different
symbolic effect. As one commentator mentions, “a raped Croatian women is a raped Croatia,”
but a raped Croatian man means there no longer is a Croatia (Boric 1997).
The rape, mutilation and sexual torture of men during war, like women’s rape, is aimed at
the victimization of men and should be evaluated beyond the effects of the trauma on women.
In an article on rape in war and peace, Sideris (2001) effectively silences men by ignoring them in
a discussion on rape, even when they are involved in the rape. At one point in the article, she
describes how rape, when used as a tactic of social destruction in war, takes specific forms. In its
most perverse form, she comments, rape involves the relative of the victim in the assault. An
example she gives comes from Mozambique, where there have been widespread reports from
men and women explaining how rebel soldiers used the husbands of rape victims as mattresses
upon whom the perpetrator took his victims (2001, 147). She disregards the effect this may have
on the man and instead focuses exclusively on the traumatization of the woman.
How should a case worker evaluate a case such as the one described by Turshen, where a
16-year old boy is forced to rape his sister as his mother is raped nearby (2001)? El Jack has
argued that men are the indirect targets of violence against women, stating that “the rape of
women has long been considered a public act of aggression, where raping and dishonoring
women is a way of violating and demoralizing men” (2003). Jones similarly has argued that
community males are clearly the target of the rape of their womenfolk, which is often carried out
before their eyes, a point that even that feminist scholars have stressed (2003, 18). Jones believes
that such rapes of women might also be considered a form of sexual violence against men, and I
am inclined to agree with him, which means that not only must psycho-social workers be
prepared to treat victims of firsthand sexual abuse, but also those affected indirectly by sexual
assault.
12
Conclusion
With incidents like Abu Ghareb not too far from our recent past, it may be easier to imagine
why the victimization of men is an important topic for discussion. Vulnerable categories of men,
such as non-combatants and survivors of sexual abuse, are of particular importance to those in
the field of mental health. Moreover, gender issues are not women’s issues alone; boys and men
suffer from stereotyping that exists in patriarchal culture and most men cannot live up to notions
of hegemonic masculinity (Bhasin 2004, 3-5). Gender is both a culturally specific construct and a
universally applicable concept that shapes the experience of men and women alike. It must be
recognized that women and men, as social actors, each experience violence and conflict
differently, both as victims and as perpetrators. Today, women and men have differential access
to resources (including power) during conflict. Internationally, socio-economic changes
alongside global divisions of power have led to some changes in gender roles and relations.
Erosion of male power and privilege has led to psychological and social problems for many men,
while also complicating the continuum of global empowerment and disempowerment (Bhasin
2004, 3-5).
This paper is for the most part a call for more research. Gender biases against women
cannot be overcompensated for. Neither the victimization of women nor the polarization of
men as perpetrators aids us in the fight to empower women. Today, there remains a void in the
field of mental health and men have very little if any scope for receiving effective treatment. Men
can be said to be the most marginalized category of vulnerable groups, especially when they are
survivors of sexual abuse. As Jones has argued, we must overcome the taboo of male
victimization with new research. But today I want you to ask yourself: do men’s rights deserve
special consideration? If so, then a legitimate men’s rights discourse must be created so that the
reality of war and genocide may be confronted through a truly engendered lens.
Appendix I
National Center for Victims of Crime:
Medical considerations that require immediate medical attention include:
•
•
•
Rectal and anal tearing and abrasions which may require attention and put you at risk for
bacterial infections;
Potential HIV exposure; and
Exposure to other sexually transmitted diseases.
If you plan to report the rape to the police, an immediate medical examination is necessary to
collect potential evidence for the investigation and prosecution.
13
Some of the physical reactions a survivor may experience in response to the trauma of a sexual
assault or rape include:
!
!
!
!
!
Loss of appetite;
Nausea and/or stomachaches;
Headaches;
Loss of memory and/or concentration; and/or
Changes in sleep patterns.
Some of the psychological and emotional reactions a sexual assault survivor may experience
include:
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
!
Denial and/or guilt;
Shame or humiliation;
Fear and a feeling of loss of control;
Loss of self-respect;
Flashbacks to the attack;
Anger and anxiety;
Retaliation fantasies (sometimes shocking the survivor with their graphic violence);
Nervous or compulsive behavior;
Depression and mood swings;
Withdrawal from relationships; and
Changes in sexual activity.
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Manchanda, Rita. “Ambivalent Gains in South Asian Conflicts.” The Aftermath: Women in PostConflict Transformation. Meintjes, Sheila, Pillay, Anu and Meredeth Turshen, eds. London: Zed
Books. (2001)
Meintjes, Sheila, Pillay, Anu and Meredeth Turshen, eds. “There is no Aftermath for Women.”
The Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation. London: Zed Books. (2001)
Sideris, Tina. “Rape in War and Peace: Social context, Gender, Power, and Identity.” The
Aftermath: Women in Post-Conflict Transformation. Meintjes, Sheila, Pillay, Anu and Meredeth
Turshen, eds. London: Zed Books. (2001)
Sivakumaran, Sandesh. “Male/male Rape and the ‘Taint’ of Homosexuality.” Human Rights
Quarterly 27(4): 1274-1306. (2005)
Spalding, Alison D. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Gender Studies. Guilford,
CT: Dushkin/McGraw-Hill. (1998)
Turshen, Meredith. “The Political Economy of Rape: An Analysis of Systematic Rape and Sexual
Abuse of Women During Armed Conflict in Africa,” Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed
Conflict and Political Violence. Clark, Fiona C. and Caroline O.N. Moser, eds. London: Zed Books.
(2001)
Zarkov, Dubravka. “The Body of the Other Man: Sexual Violence and the Construction of
Masculinity, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Croatian Media.” Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender,
Armed Conflict and Political Violence. Clark, Fiona C. and Caroline O.N. Moser, eds. London: Zed
Books. (2001)
16
Websites
American Academy of Pediatrics
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;103/3/686.pdf
International Council of Voluntary Agencies
http://www.icva.ch/doc00000107.html
National Center for Victims of Crime:
http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32361
Stop Hazing
http://www.stophazing.org/index.html
17
Mallo ry W a nkel is a gradua te stude nt in I nterna tio nal Hum an Ri ghts La w a t T he Am e rica n
Uni ve rsi ty in C airo. S he com ple ted he r B.A. i n P oliti cal S ci ence a nd So ci olo gy a t the
Uni ve rsi ty o f To ronto. He r resea rch i nte res ts i nclu de gender a nd a rme d confli ct in i nte rna tio nal
re fu ge e la w a nd se cu ri ty polici es a nd re fu ge e pro te cti on.
Obscuring the Realities of Gender-Based Violence:
European Policies on Iraqi Asylum Claims
by Mallory Wankel
Over the last two decades, developments in international law have brought increased recognition
of the atrocities directed against women during armed conflict. Indeed, the severe and systematic
sexual and gender-based violence that has characterized the breakup of the former Yugoslavia,
the Rwandan genocide and the continuing conflicts in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of
Congo (DRC) has brought gender-based violence by armed groups to the forefront of both
public discourse and international humanitarian and criminal law dealing with conflict-related
atrocities.9 However, states have largely failed to recognize the atrocities perpetrated against
women during armed conflict in their interpretation of the 1951 Refugee Convention. Despite
alleged progress in addressing the inherent male bias in the Convention’s definition of refugee,
increasingly restrictive asylum policies in many Western receiving countries and resistance to
recognizing war-related atrocities as falling within Convention grounds continue to preclude the
recognition of many forms of conflict-related violence against women as persecution.10 The
9
As Inger Skjelsbaek argues, the systematic mass rape that occurred as part of both the ethnic cleansing that
characterized the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1992-1995 and the genocide that took place in Rwanda in
1994 `put the issue of sexual violence during armed conflict at the center of the international agenda. The
international criminal tribunals created to bring the perpetrators of these atrocities to justice were the first
international courts to try forms of sexual and gender-based violence as crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity (Skjelsbaek 2001, 211-212). As Scott Straus reports, systematic rape has been a key tactic of the
government supported janjaweed militias in their attacks on villages in Sudan’s Darfur region, an issue which has
featured prominently in debates on the characterization of the atrocities being committed as genocide and on
international intervention in Darfur (2005, 2). The severe and systematic sexual and gender-based violence that has
been a “pervasive and alarming feature” of the conflict in the DRC, in which, according to LaShawn R. Jefferson,
tens of thousands of women and girls have been subjected to assault and by various militias, has also received
extensive international attention (Jefferson 2004, 4).
10
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees’ “Guidelines on Gender-Related Persecution” was formulated with
the express purpose of addressing the extent to which the refugee definition enshrined in the 1951 Convention is
based on male experiences of persecution. The opening paragraphs of the Guidelines note that while women’s
experiences of persecution were largely ignored by the drafters, “the analysis and understanding of sex and gender in
the refugee context have advanced substantially,” and therefore interpretive guidelines are needed in order to
incorporate this understanding into refugee status determination (U.N. High Commission on Refugees, Guidelines
2002, ¶ 5). Rodger Haines also describes how the increasing recognition of women’s distinct experiences of
persecution has come to inform interpretation of the refugee definition (2003). As Gary C. Troeller explains, since the
end of the Cold War, Western states have increasingly framed their refugee policies in terms of migration control
rather that the right to seek asylum. He discusses some of the restrictive measures that have been put in place,
including temporary protection regimes, stricter border control measures, the outposting of immigration officials,
carrier sanctions and more restrictive standards for determining claims. The author also cites states’ reluctance to
recognize refugees fleeing from war zones as a defining feature of the restrictive interpretation given to the refugee
18
continuing conflict in Iraq is characterized by extremely high levels of gender-based violence,
including sexual violence perpetrated by the various militias controlling large parts of the
country, a sharp rise in domestic violence and a dramatic increase in trafficking for sex work,
atrocities from which the state and occupying forces remain unable to protect civilians.11 In this
paper, I show how the restrictive policies applied by European states to reject a vast majority of
Iraqi asylum seekers obscure the realities of Iraqi women’s persecution and leave many women
who are at risk of the gravest violations outside of the legal requirements for refugee
protection.12 I begin by explaining the legal interpretation being applied by European states and
its impact on Iraqi asylum claims. I then discuss three ways in which the use of this approach
marginalizes women’s experiences of persecution in war-torn Iraq. First, I show how the
requirement that claimants be individually targeted for persecution, by privileging violence that is
considered politically motivated, excludes the types of persecution disproportionately affecting
women. Secondly, I argue that the dismissal of sectarian violence as the generalized impact of
conflict on civilians precludes recognition of the high levels of systematic sexual violence taking
place and ultimately discriminates among women on the basis of sectarian identity. Lastly, I show
how the extremely limited recognition of violence against women as a valid basis for refugee
definition in Western countries (2003, 58-59). Heaven Crawley and Trine Lester argue that the failure to adequately
account for gender-based persecution in European asylum systems cannot be understood separately from the
increasing restrictiveness of European asylum systems as a whole (2004, 9).
11
Reports by the UNHCR, human rights organizations and media have documented the extreme levels of sexual
and gender-based violence that have plagued Iraq since 2003 and the inability of the state to provide protection
from these threats. Henia Dakkak describes the significant “gendered dimension of the sectarian conflict” in Iraq, in
which sectarian militias use sexual and gender-based violence to target opposing communities and to assert control
over the population (2007, 39). The international women’s rights NGO MADRE reports extremely high levels of
sexual and gender-based violence by militias and criminal gangs and a dramatic rise in domestic violence, including
honor killings, since the 2003 invasion, arguing that the “relationship between Iraq’s civil war and its ‘gender war’
has been largely overlooked” (2007, 22). Accurate data on gender-based crimes has been extremely difficult to
obtain, due to the facts that the medical and judicial authorities in Iraq have not maintained statistics and that
gender-based crimes are severely under-reported. According to the UN Inter-Agency Information and Analysis
Unit, reports from various human rights and women’s organizations have reported the number of rapes at
approximately 400 in the period from March 2003 to May 2006, although actual instances are thought to be
exponentially higher. Another report cites approximately sixty reported rapes in Baghdad between the period of
February and June 2006 and another eighty reported incidents of women being “sexually abused in other ways” (UN
Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit 2008, 11).Human Rights Watch has documented the sharp rise in
trafficking and prostitution since the 2003 invasion, exploitation facilitated by insecurity and severe economic
decline combined with the absence of an effective police force and functioning judicial system (2003, 1-20).
According to the American Bar Association and Iraqi Legal Development Project, the Organization for Women’s
Freedom in Iraq reports that up to 3,500 Iraqi women have gone missing since the 2003 invasion and it is suspected
that many of them have been victim to sex-trafficking (UN Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit 2008, 39).
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has repeatedly affirmed that the Iraqi state and coalition occupying
forces are unable to provide protection to civilians facing such threats, citing the extremely high levels of criminality,
the absence of a functioning judicial system and the weakness of police forces vis-à-vis militant groups as reasons
for the public security vacuum (UN High Commission on Refugees, Guidelines 2005, 2-8; UN High Commission on
Refugees, Return Advisory 2006; UN High Commission on Refugees, Country of Origin Information 2005).
12
While extensive efforts were made to obtain gender-disaggregated data on the numbers of Iraqis granted refugee
status in the European countries assessed, I was not able to find any publication containing such figures. However,
the aim of this essay is to assess not only the gendered impact of the policies being applied in terms of actual
numbers of refugees accepted, but also the implications of drawing legal categories that define different types of
gender-based violence as falling inside or outside the requirements for refugee protection. While the numbers of
Iraqi women recognized in Europe will depend on a variety of factors, including gender and class differences in the
categories of people who are able to make the journey to Europe, as well as the legal requirements that people must
fit in order to be recognized, reliance on categories of civilians most at risk in Iraq that exclude many of the kinds of
violence directed disproportionately at women will have gender-discriminatory outcomes.
19
claims draws exclusionary categories based more on political imperatives and culturally
politicized notions of gender-based persecution than on the realities of violence affecting women
in Iraq.13
The Comparative Approach: Individual Persecution v. Generalized Violence
The 1951 Convention does not recognize those fleeing from armed conflict as refugees, no
matter how dire the circumstances that compelled their flight, unless they can demonstrate a
well-founded fear of persecution on account of one of the five Convention grounds.14 Still, the
fact that most contemporary armed conflicts are characterized by atrocities perpetrated against
civilians on account of their ethnicity, religion or gender should bring many claims within the
ambit of the Convention.15 Recognizing the need to interpret the refugee definition to take into
account the realities of conflict-related persecution, the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) and several states, most notably Canada and Australia, advocate a “noncomparative” approach to persecution that takes place during armed conflict. This approach
maintains that if a claimant has a well-founded fear of serious harm based on one of the five
Convention grounds, he or she will have a valid claim for refugee status, regardless of the
number of people persecution is being directed at. Even in a context in which armed factions
from various ethnic or sectarian groups are targeting civilians from opposing groups on a large
scale, the relevant test is not whether an individual is at greater risk of harm than other group
members or inhabitants of the conflict-affected area, but “whether the claimant’s risk is a risk of
sufficiently serious harm and is linked to a Convention reason as opposed to the general,
indiscriminate consequences of civil war” (Shysta Ameer Ali v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration
1999, ¶ 4 ).16
13
The term “culturally politicized” is used here to describe the tendency of human rights advocates and other
actors, when evaluating human rights violations in non-Western cultural contexts, to place more emphasis on the
types of gender-based violence that are more readily identified as attached to cultural practices surrounding women’s
proscribed social roles or control over women’s sexuality. Audrey Macklin cites precisely this tendency as affecting
conceptions of gender-based persecution in refugee law jurisprudence, arguing that many Western states often fail to
identify gender-based violence as persecution unless it is “committed by a cultural Other” (1995, 272).
14
The 1951 Convention contains no mention of refugees fleeing armed conflict and requires that the harm feared
by the applicant be “for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political
opinion” (Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Article 1(2)). The UNHCR Handbook for Determining
Refugee Status maintains that “persons compelled to leave their country of origin as a result of international or
national armed conflicts are not normally considered refugees under the 1951 Convention or 1967 Protocol” (UN
High Commissioner for Refugees “Handbook” 2005, 39).
15
The UNHCR Executive Committee, in its Conclusion on International Protection No. 85, “expresses deep
concern about the increasing use of war and violence as a means to carry out persecutory policies against groups
targeted on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion”
(UN High Commissioner for Refugees Executive Committee 1998).
16
Case law which has upheld this approach has emphasized that the existence of armed conflict does not permit the
imposition of requirements over and above those contained in the Convention’s refugee definition, such as that
persecution be individually targeted. Instead, as the Canadian Federal Court of Appeals emphasized in Salibian v.
M.E.I., “a situation of civil war in a given country is not an obstacle to a claim provided that the fear is not that felt
indiscriminately by all citizens as a consequence of the civil war, but that felt by the applicant himself, by a group
with which he is associated, or, even by all citizens on account of a risk of persecution based on one of the reasons
stated in the definition” (Salibian v. M.E.I., 1990). Similarly, in Rizkallah v. MEI, the Canadian Court of Appeal
argued that “to succeed, refugee claimants must establish a link between themselves and persecution for a
Convention reason. In other words, they must be targeted for persecution in some way, either individually or
collectively” (Rizkallah v. MEI 1992).
20
Subsequent development of the non-comparative approach in Canadian jurisprudence
has further clarified where the correct line between war-related persecution and the generalized
impact of conflict should be drawn. In Saleh Omar Osama Fi v. Minister of Citizenship and
Immigration, the Court argued that risks related to “general consequences of civil war” encompass
harms such as “losing one’s life by accident, losing a limb by treading on a land mine, lack of
food, water, electricity, etc.,” while situations in which “one of the warring parties singles out a
person or group of persons for reasons of race, political opinion or one of the other elements
enumerated in the refugee definition and subjects it to serious human rights violations clearly
constitutes persecution” (Saleh Omar Osama Fi/Minister of Citizenship and Immigration 2006, 19). In
Mohamed Ibrahim Sheriff/Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, the Court demonstrated the limits to
the conflict-related harm that the non-comparative approach interprets the refugee definition as
encompassing. Despite the fact that the claimant was found to possess a well-founded fear of
serious harm at the hands of rebel groups in Sierra Leone, the fact that this fear could not be
linked to a Convention ground, as the claimant could not demonstrate that he risked persecution
as a member of a particular ethnic or linguistic group or even because he was a citizen of Sierra
Leone, led the Court to reject his claim for refugee status (Mohamed Ibrahim Sheriff/Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration 2002).
However, many states remain reluctant to recognize that all members of large groups
could potentially qualify for refugee status, despite the atrocities being directed at them, and
instead apply what is referred to as the “comparative” or “differential risk” approach to refugee
claims arising from armed conflict. This approach requires claimants who fear serious harm as a
result of group identity to demonstrate some factor differentiating the risk posed to them from
that facing others also threatened by the continuing violence, showing that either they have been
individually targeted for persecution or that the group of which they are a member faces a
disproportionate risk relative to other threatened groups. Earlier Canadian jurisprudence upheld
this approach. In Isa v. S.S.C, the Supreme Court justified this interpretation of the refugee
definition, arguing that “many, if not most, civil war situations are racially or ethnically based. If
racially motivated attacks in civil war circumstances constitute a ground for Convention refugee
status, then, all individuals on either side of the conflict will qualify,” a situation which the Court
found untenable (Isa v. S.C.C, cited in Storey and Wallace 2001, 351).
Similarly, in the landmark case Ex Parte Adan, the House of Lords maintained that
despite the risk of serious harm faced by the claimant on account of his clan identity, the
existence of civil war in Somalia characterized by “widespread clan and sub-clan killing and
torture” precludes recognition of the threat of clan-based killing as grounds for refugee status.
Instead, the Lords argued that in such circumstances a claimant must demonstrate “fear of
persecution for Convention reasons over and above the ordinary risks of clan warfare” (R. v.
Secretary of State for the Home Department, Ex Parte Adan 1999). This decision relied on the argument
that because the conflict in Somalia presented a situation in which “every group seems to be
fighting some other group or groups in an endeavor to gain power,” simply assessing whether or
not the harm feared was on account of a Convention ground (clan, a form of nationality or race)
would allow all individuals on all sides of the conflict to qualify (Kagan and Johnson 2002, 248).
This interpretation relies largely on the argument that the framers of the 1951
Convention intentionally limited the refugee definition so as not to encompass everyone fleeing
21
armed conflict, and the fact that many modern armed conflicts occur on ethnic, religious, or
other elements of identity therefore cannot create circumstances in which the nature of those
conflicts in itself allows all those fleeing their impact to be entitled to refugee protection. Instead,
the existence of a civil war necessarily requires different standards of assessment. The House of
Lords, in Adan, cited Professor James Hathaway in support of their decision, arguing that the
Convention refugee definition “remains firmly anchored in the notion of elevating only a subset
of those at risk of war and violent conflict to the status of refugee” (Storey and Wallace 2001,
354). Put more simply, as Hugo Storey and Rebecca Wallace argue, the use of the comparative
approach reflects the continued reluctance on the part of the international community to “open
the floodgates” to victims of armed conflict in a way that the limited definition enshrined in the
Convention was not intended to do (Storey and Wallace 2001, 351).
In a context of widespread ethnic or sectarian conflict, the attempt to “elevate a subset”
of those most threatened will often lead to greater recognition of the claims of minority groups
who are the targets of violence.17 The comparative approach ostensibly finds justification in an
understanding of the Convention’s refugee definition which emphasizes the protection of
minority groups. Proponents of such an approach understand the framers’ decision to limit
refugee protection to those facing persecution “for reasons of” one of the five enumerated
grounds to indicate that the underlying moral and normative imperative of the refugee definition
was to protect those who have been “fundamentally marginalized from their national
community” on account of identity, who will most often be members of minority groups.18
However, the comparative approach has been widely criticized for creating requirements
outside the legal limits of the Convention, resulting in the rejection of many refugees who face
serious risk of persecution on account of their ethnicity, religion, or other Convention grounds
simply because this persecution takes place during armed conflict. Perhaps the clearest argument
against the comparative approach is that the language of the Convention simply does not
indicate that the existence of civil war permits the imposition of additional requirements in order
to qualify for refugee status. In Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs v. Abdi, the
Australian Court criticized the legal validity of the approach on precisely these grounds, arguing
that there was no basis either in the language or purpose of the Convention for imposing a
“‘second tier’ of ‘differential’ or super-added persecution into the requirements for refugee status
when claims are related to armed conflict” (cited in Kagan and Johnson 2002, 258). The position
has also been explicitly rejected by the UNHCR, which has argued that “there is nothing in the
definition itself which would exclude its application to people caught up in civil war…. [M]any
conflicts take place against a political background which many involve serious violations of
17
For example, minority clans in Somalia, who suffered marginal economic, political and social status prior to the
outbreak of conflict, have been considered particularly vulnerable since the outbreak of clan warfare in 1991, which
often allows individuals from minority clans to be more favorably considered for refugee status (United Nations
Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2002). Treatment of the claims of religious and ethnic
minorities in Iraq which are related to the continuing sectarian conflict will be further discussed.
18
As Kagan and Johnson note, there is disagreement among scholars of refugee law as to the principled basis for
the Refugee Convention’s nexus requirement, or the requirement that an applicant must be at risk of persecution
“for reasons of” one of the five enumerated grounds. Proponents of the “minority protection thesis” argue that it is
primarily members of minority groups that the refugee protection was intended to benefit, because the Convention
“was designed to provide surrogate protection for those who have been fundamentally marginalized from their
national community” (Kagan and Johnson 2002, 255).
22
human rights, including the targeting of particular ethnic or religious groups” (UNHCR 1995
Information Note on Article 1 of the 1951 Convention).
According to Kagan and Johnson, the drafting history of the Refugee Convention gives
no indication that the delegates intended for the definition to exclude war refugees who meet the
definition’s requirements. On the contrary, alternate proposals for formulating the definition and
comments made by the drafters showed that they “clearly understood that the new Convention
would embrace war refugees” (2002, 253). Specifically, as the authors cite, the Israeli
representative noted that “fleeing hostilities alone is not enough ‘unless they were otherwise
covered by Article 1 of the Convention’” (2002, 254).
Moreover, dismissing a majority of the atrocities committed against civilians on the basis
of ethnic or sectarian identity as the general consequences of civil war relies on a deliberately
superficial assessment of the violence taking place. As Storey and Wallace argue, it is “highly
artificial to accept that many civil wars are fought for discriminatory motives, inter alia, of race,
religion, and political opinion, on the one hand, yet to conclude that persecution in many civilwar situations is too indiscriminate to amount to persecution based on the Convention, on the
other” (2002, 353). Such failure to distinguish between random violence and that targeted at
individuals on account of group identity, albeit on a wide scale, according to Kagan and Johnson,
relies on the fundamental misuse of the concept of “differential risk.” According to the authors,
while the concept can be used to determine whether agents of persecution have any motive that
differentiates between victims, distinguishing targeted victimization from random violence, it
should not be used to claim that violence targeted at particular groups has become so widespread
that it fails to be differentiated (2002, 260).
While members of particular minority groups may be targets of violence during civil
conflict, in circumstances in which civilians from larger groups are being targeted on the same
Convention grounds, differentiating the position of members of minority groups from that of
the civilian population generally has discriminatory results. In situations in which minority
groups are not engaged in the fighting, recognizing only violence directed at civilians from
minority groups as persecutory harm imparts a measure of guilt onto civilians from dominant
communities. The Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board criticizes the comparative approach
on precisely these grounds, arguing that “a civilian non-combatant should not be fixed with a
share of ‘collective guilt’ because combatant members of the claimant’s group are inflicting harm
on members of other groups” (Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, 1996). Regardless of
the end that it is directed at, the argument that violence against civilians is “generalized” unless it
is targeted at individuals from minority groups is undeniably discriminatory.
Moreover, there is no legal basis for privileging the claims of minority groups in
situations in which violence against civilians is widespread. The 1951 Convention makes no
reference to minorities, and instead delimits the kinds of harm that the definition encompasses
based on particular attributes or facets of identity; the way that people are targeted based on
these characteristics need not, and often does not, correspond with minority status.19 Despite the
tenuous legal and moral basis of the comparative approach, states continue to apply it in order to
19
As Kagan and Johnson note, the word “minority” appears nowhere in the text of the 1951 Convention as it does
in many other human rights instruments (2002, 258).
23
restrict refugee flows from conflict zones. In the following section, I look briefly at the impact of
European states’ continued use of this approach on the claims of refugees fleeing the continuing
conflict in Iraq before turning to an assessment of its implications for the treatment of claims
based on gender-based violence in the Iraqi conflict.
The Comparative Approach and Iraqi Asylum Claims in Europe
Since the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the dramatic rise in the numbers of Iraqis seeking asylum in
Europe, the European states to which a majority of Iraqis are fleeing, including the U.K.,
Germany, and Sweden, have relied on the comparative approach to reject a vast majority of Iraqi
asylum claims based on the argument that the harm feared does not rise above the impact of
generalized violence. U.K. policy on Iraqi asylum claims maintains that “unless the claimant is at
serious risk of adverse treatment over and above others…a grant of asylum or humanitarian
protection is unlikely to be appropriate” (U.K. Home Office 2007, 12). According to Markus
Sperl, this requirement has allowed British authorities to reject Iraqi asylum claims based on the
argument that “most Iraqis have fled the generalized violence in their country, not a State policy
of persecution which targets only certain individuals” (2007, 8). The number of Iraqi claims that
have been rejected since the 2003 invasion shows just how few Iraqis are found to face
individual persecution. According to Sperl, in 2004 and 2005, only 0.4% of the 3,475 Iraqi
claimants were recognized. Recognition increased somewhat in 2006, with an acceptance rate of
3% (2007, 7).
While Sweden has been praised for granting humanitarian protection to more than
twenty thousand Iraqis since the 2003 invasion, it too has relied on the comparative approach to
deny most Iraqis protection under the 1951 Convention.20 In 2005, only 0.1% of Iraqis were
recognized as Convention refugees largely because most failed to meet the requirement that they
be individually targeted (Sperl 2007, 13). While Sweden has taken a more humanitarian approach
than other European countries, the fact that a vast majority of Iraqis have been deemed as falling
outside the Convention’s refugee definition is highly problematic, particularly as the Swedish
government has, as of July 2007, reversed its policy of granting humanitarian protection and has
begun to refer cases of failed asylum seekers to the police for forcible return.21
Germany has also applied this restrictive approach to Iraqi refugees, requiring claimants
to show individual persecution over and above that faced by others. As a result, recognition
rates, which prior to the 2003 invasion were among the highest in Europe at 57%, dropped to
11% in 2006 (Sperl 2007, 11). While each of these states has applied the comparative approach,
my analysis will focus primarily on U.K. policies, largely because the U.K. policy documents on
the interpretation of Iraqi asylum claims are easier to access. However, because both Germany
20
UN High Commissioner for Refugees “Statistics” 2007, 1. Rather than granting these refugees legal protection
under the 1951 Convention, Sweden has classified them as “persons in need of protection for non-Convention
reasons” (Sperl 2007, 11).
21
In June 2007, a representative of the Swedish Migration Board announced this policy shift, stating that from now
on “if they (Iraqis) are not personally threatened or harassed, they cannot stay in our country” (Sperl 2007, 14).
Swedish Migration Minister Tobias Billstrom has insisted that this policy relies on a correct legal interpretation of
the requirements of the Convention, not on political decisions or concern over numbers (Cox 2007, 1). According
to journalist Kim Sengupta, as of June 2008 the Swedish government had referred 1,776 cases of failed Iraqi asylum
seekers to the police for deportation (Sengupta 2008, 1).
24
and Sweden have stated their adherence to the same approach, many of the same factors are in
play, and the limited information available on their policies will be integrated into my arguments.
While this exclusionary approach is leaving many of those deserving of refugee protection unable
to fit the legal requirements, its implications for claims related to gender-based violence are
particularly profound. In the remaining sections of this paper, I provide an assessment of three
key ways in which the widespread gender-based persecution that has characterized the Iraqi
conflict has been excluded from the ambit of refugee protection as a result of the policies being
applied.
Individually Targeted = Political Opponents: Redrawing the Public/Private Distinction
onto a Conflict Zone
In requiring Iraqi claimants to prove that they are fleeing persecution that targets them
individually, states are primarily recognizing persecution that is categorized as politically
motivated – a category into which the kinds of harm aimed almost exclusively at men are much
more likely to fit. While individually-targeted persecution should encompass persecution as
described by any of the five Convention grounds, European states are interpreting this
requirement, in the case of Iraqis, with clear bias toward those perceived as political opponents.
In this section, I assess two ways in which this interpretation excludes the kinds of harm being
disproportionately directed at women: first, through states’ partiality toward refugees persecuted
by the State (as opposed to the conflict-related persecution from which most Iraqis now flee)
and secondly, through the categories used to determine when persecution by non-state actors is
“individually targeted” enough to warrant refugee protection.
It is now widely recognized that the primary focus of the refugee protection regime in
Western countries on persecution of political opponents by the State led to the development of a
refugee definition that evaluated human rights violations almost exclusively from a male
perspective.22 As Hilary Charlesworth argues, international law relies on a public/private
dichotomy to determine what types of violence are of concern in the international legal realm
(1999, 382). Persecution of political opponents is violence of a public character, as it concerns an
individual’s relationship vis-à-vis the State. However, as Susan Wright argues, for women,
“indirect subjection to the State will almost always be mediated through direct subjection to
individual men or groups of men” (Macklin 1995, 232). Women are far less likely than men to
experience persecution as political opponents; instead, the types of harm directed
disproportionately at women occur in the private realm, or are committed by private actors with
22
The continued partiality of many states towards political refugees fleeing State persecution has stemmed largely
from, as Audrey Macklin argues, “the Eurocentric liberal rights paradigm from which it (the refugee definition)
emerged,” and from the fact that the refugee protection regime in Western countries developed in an era in which
Cold War considerations led to the acceptance of large numbers of political opponents fleeing persecution from
Soviet bloc governments (1995, 218-219). This continuing tendency on the part of many states reflects the desire to
keep limited the category of people that the refugee protection regime encompasses, as well as political
considerations involved in recognizing particular situations as giving rise to persecution warranting international
protection. The UNHCR has acknowledged the need to address the inherent gender bias in the refugee definition.
In its “Guidelines on Gender-Related Persecution,” the UNHCR urges decision-makers to take account of the fact
that women are less likely than men to be perceived as directly involved in political activity and to recognize the
often less explicit ways that women are targeted for reasons related to political opinion (UN High Commissioner for
Refugees, 2002, 33).
25
motivations often considered personal. In this way, the public/private dichotomy, when
“mapped onto the reality of violence against women,” serves to reinforce gender inequality in
who the law protects - in this case, in who is able to fit the legal category of refugee
(Charlesworth 1999, 382).
Challenging the notion that violence only amounts to persecution when committed by
the State has been a key task of those working to make the refugee definition more genderequitable. Significant progress has been made toward the recognition of threats posed by nonstate actors as grounds for refugee status when the State fails to provide protection.23 This has
been crucial in bringing the kinds of persecution previously dismissed as personally motivated,
and the kinds of violence disproportionately experienced by women, into the realm of
international law. The House of Lords’ decision in Ex Parte Shah and Islam and others v. Secretary of
State for the Home Department set an important precedent in this regard. While maintaining that the
domestic violence that the claimants were threatened with was personally motivated, the Lords
recognized that the State failed to protect women from such abuse on account of their gender,
allowing domestic violence to be defined as persecution within the grounds of the Convention
(Ex Parte Shah and Islam 1999).
However, by privileging claims based on State persecution over the conflict-related
persecution from which Iraqis now flee, European policies have reinforced this distinction
between public and private harm. The sharp decline in acceptance rates for Iraqis in Europe
since the U.S.-led invasion illustrates the biases that result from the continued partiality toward
State persecution and the corresponding reluctance to recognize many forms of harm
perpetrated by non-State actors as grounds for refugee status. As Sperl reports, between 1997
and 2001, 44% of Iraqi asylum seekers were accepted in the U.K. and 57% in Germany. This
stands in marked contrast to the 0.4% and 11% in the years following the 2003 invasion (Sperl
2007, 9-11). Germany has demonstrated perhaps the most dramatic bias towards State
persecution, determining that regardless of the current situation in Iraq, the fact that Iraqis no
longer face persecution from the Ba’ath regime absolves Germany of its obligations to continue
providing protection to even accepted refugees (Sperl 2007, 11).24 Because women are far less
likely to be represented in the class of political opponents fleeing State persecution, while they
suffer disproportionately the harms perpetrated against a civilian population during conflict,
continued recognition of persecution by the State over conflict-related persecution results in a
clear gender bias.
European states have recognized that threats emanating from non-state actors, and in
particular the sectarian militias now controlling many areas of Iraq, can give rise to valid refugee
claims if the claimant shows that he or she has been individually targeted by these groups.
23
While not dealing directly with gender-related persecution, Canada v. Ward set an important precedent in ruling
that the threat of serious harm by a non-state actor did qualify as persecution within Convention grounds when the
state was unable or unwilling to protect the claimant (1993).
24
In declaring that the fall of the Ba’ath regime has led to a fundamental change of circumstances, and that the
threat of persecution that caused refugees to flee no longer exists, Germany is invoking the general cessation clauses
of the 1951 Convention (Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, Articles 1C(5) and (6)). As Sperl notes, the
German government’s invocation of the cessation clauses when the situation in Iraq remains so precarious has
ignited significant controversy both in Germany and internationally, and has led the German government to refrain
from actually returning to Iraq individuals whose refugee status has been revoked. However, these 18,000 Iraqis no
longer enjoy the benefits of refugee status and remain in a state of legal limbo (2007, 11).
26
However, the categories that have been drawn to determine when violence committed by militias
can be considered individually targeted have essentially re-mapped the public/private distinction
onto violence committed by non-state actors.
The motive of the agent of persecution is used to determine when attacks on civilians are
individualized and when they are not. Examining those categories of claims recognized in U.K.
policy as meeting the requirement that atrocities be individually targeted reveals that persecution
which occurs on the basis of political identity is considered individualized, while militia violence
that is not motivated by political affiliation is mechanically dismissed as generalized. Perceived
collaborators with the U.S.-led occupation – such as individuals employed by the Coalition
Provisional Authority (CPA) and Multi-National Forces (MNF), those employed by foreign
firms or international organizations, and those affiliated or perceived to be affiliated with the
former ruling regime – are considered to be individually targeted when threatened with
persecution (U.K. Home Office 2007, 12-14, 18-20). In contrast to many of the other categories
of claims that it discusses, U.K. policy guidelines maintain that “a claim made on these grounds
may be well-founded and a grant of refugee status due to political opinion or imputed political
opinion may be appropriate” (U.K. Home Office 2007, 14).
These groups are indeed at high risk of persecution; according to Amnesty International,
“hundreds of Iraqis have been killed by armed groups because they were perceived as ‘traitors’ or
‘collaborators’” (U.K. Home Office 2007, 12). However, reports indicate that women are a key
target of sectarian militias and other armed factions and that sexual and gender-based violence is
a primary weapon of these groups. According to a report published by the international NGO
MADRE, while the important role played by the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade, “Iraq’s two
most deadly Shiite militias”, in Iraq’s conflict is widely acknowledged, the fact that “both Islamist
groups are notorious for their attacks on women” receives little mention (2007, 18). Similarly,
journalist Peter Beaumont describes the “insidious spread of militia and religious party control –
and how members of those same groups are, paradoxically, increasingly responsible for the rape
and murder of women outside their sects and communities” (2006, 1).
While very limited categories of gender-based violence have been recognized as meeting
the individuality requirement, which will be discussed in greater detail below, most of the threats
that women face from armed groups are not recognized as being individualized enough to
warrant refugee protection, and are instead classified as fears arising from the poor security
situation (U.K. Home Office 2007, 9). This distinction redraws the public/private dichotomy
onto violence committed by militias in the public realm: attacks motivated by political identity
are considered public in nature, therefore individually targeted enough to warrant refugee
protection, while abuses targeted against women by the same armed groups are private and
therefore not of concern in international refugee law, because the motive is apparently not
political.
This interpretation is consistent with Heaven Crawley and Trine Lester’s criticism that
despite increased official recognition that sexual and gender-based violence can be grounds for
refugee protection, European asylum systems have in practice remained reluctant to see sexual
violence as political because of the inherently personal motives behind it (2004, 39). This
lingering bias has an even more exclusionary impact when combined with the requirement that
threats target individuals, given the ways that sexual violence can be used as a weapon in violent
27
conflicts. As the treatment of Iraqi claims in Europe demonstrates, this requirement precludes an
interpretation that is consistent with the now widespread recognition of the ways that women’s
symbolic and social roles, which acquire increased political significance during armed conflict,
make them vulnerable to particular kinds of persecution. Recognition of the prevalence of such
violence, as Roger Haines argues, should give rise to group-based claims (2003, 335). Instead, the
exclusionary policies employed by European states rely on a male-biased conception of when
violence is political. As I will argue in the next section, even when gender-based violence is
perpetrated on a sectarian basis, suggesting a political motive, the restrictive approach being
applied prevents its recognition as persecution warranting refugee protection.
The Generalized Impact of Sectarian Violence? Obscuring the Realities of Gender-Related
Persecution
As discussed above, use of the comparative approach to reject Iraqi asylum claims relies on the
argument that because the sectarian violence in Iraq is so widespread, the targeting of civilians
based on their sectarian identity, despite being linked to a Convention ground, cannot give rise to
refugee status.25 Because sexual and gender-based violence has been a central feature of the
sectarian conflict in Iraq, the treatment of sectarian violence as the generalized impact of war on
civilians has precluded recognition of the atrocities committed against women as persecution. That
the targeting of women based on their sectarian identity has been a primary tactic of sectarian
militias has been well-documented by media and human rights groups. In her report on genderbased violence in Iraq, Henia Dakkak describes a conflict in which both Sunni and Shi’a insurgent
groups use sexual violence systematically to “assert dominance over one another and over the
population at large” (2007, 39). According to MADRE’s report, in as early as 2003, the
Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq began to report frequent instances of Sunni and Shi’a
Islamist groups taking revenge on each other by raping women from the other’s sect (2007, 19).
The Iraqi Women’s Network has also reported this phenomenon of “collateral rape” which is
“being used in settling the scores of the sectarian war” (Beaumont 2006, 1).
However, despite the pervasiveness of gender-based violence in the conflict, it receives
remarkably little acknowledgement in the U.K.’s policy guidelines, and like other forms of sectarian
violence, appears to be subsumed in the opaque category “claims based on the poor security
conditions in Iraq” (U.K. Home Office 2007, 9); according to these guidelines, such a category
“does not of itself give rise to a well-founded fear of persecution for a Refugee Convention reason
unless the claimant is at serious risk of treatment over and above others” (U.K. Home Office
2007, 9). Because the use of the comparative approach precludes a deeper assessment of how
people are being targeted within the sectarian violence taking place, systematic rape as a method of
war is simply being ignored for purposes of refugee protection. Such a dismissal seems absurd in
an era in which the same atrocities have been defined as war crimes and crimes against humanity
(Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 2002, Articles 7-8).
25
The exclusionary objective underlying this policy is even more apparent given the recognition of the undeniably
sectarian character of most of the violence taking place and of the fact that it is targeted at civilians. For instance,
the U.K. government recognizes the “continuing trend towards the targeting of ethnic and religious communities in
an aim to arouse ethnic/religious tensions in the country, in particular, between Sunni and Shi’a religious
communities” as a key factor driving the refugee exodus from Iraq (U.K. Home Office 2007, 9).
28
Moreover, because the claims of minority groups fearing persecution from sectarian
militias have been recognized as grounds for refugee status, the failure to recognize all sectarian
violence against civilians as warranting refugee protection has an inevitably discriminatory
outcome. The U.K. has recognized that ethnic and religious minorities, particularly Iraqi
Christians, may have valid refugee claims, as they face “a growing sectarian threat” and “feel
especially apprehensive about the overwhelming presence of extremist Islamic groups and armed
militias, whose display of intolerance towards non-Muslims has become a nearly daily feature in
Iraq” (U.K. Home Office 2007, 29-30). In contrast, claims based on fear of the same sectarian
militias are dismissed as “claims based on the poor security conditions in Iraq” when made by
members of Iraq’s majority Shi’a and Sunni populations (U.K. Home Office 2007, 11). Sweden’s
treatment of Iraqi asylum claims has demonstrated the same bias. For example, in June 2007, the
Swedish Migration Court dismissed the claims of two Iraqi asylum seekers, one from Baghdad
and the other from southern Iraq, ruling that despite the dire security conditions prevailing in
Iraq, neither claimant could demonstrate that he had been individually targeted (Cox 2007, 1).26
In the same week, the Court accepted the claim of an Iraqi Christian, ruling that he was
“personally in danger” (Cox 2007, 1).
The persecution being directed against Iraqi Christians undoubtedly gives rise to the
need for refugee protection.27 However, there is nothing in reports on the conflict in Iraq to
indicate that Sunni and Shi’a civilians are necessarily less at risk than Christians. Instead, the
conflict that has resulted from the U.S-led invasion has been characterized both as a sectarian
struggle for control of the country between Sunni and Shi’a insurgents – in which violent attacks
on the opposing community are the central means of establishing this control – and by a
dramatic rise in religious extremism on the part of these groups, leading to the persecution of
both non-Muslim minorities and others perceived as inimical to the vision of Iraq they seek to
impose.28 Because civilians from all sectarian communities remain at risk of persecution,
26
This ruling stood in conflict with the interpretation advised by the UNHCR, which urged states to favorably
consider for refugee status asylum seekers from southern and central Iraq, “given the high prevalence of serious
human rights violations related to the grounds in the 1951 Convention” and specifically the widespread targeting of
civilians by sectarian militias (UN High Commissioner for Refugees, “UNHCR Issues New Guidelines” 2002, 1).
27
Nineb Lamassu describes the sharp increase in the persecution of Iraqi Christians by extremist militias since the
2003 invasion and ensuing conflict, atrocities which have included “church bombings, kidnappings, extortion,
beheadings, rape, and forced taxation for being non-Muslims” (2007, 44).
28
Ashraf Al-Khalili and Victor Tanner argue that the fighting is understood by those engaged in it as a struggle both
for control over the country and for their very survival, as each community is perceived as trying to eliminate the
other. They describe the perception on the part of Sunni militants that the Shi’a militias plan to create “a new
Iraq…a creation of Iranian interests – a place where Sunnis no longer belong,” as well the belief of Shi’a militants
that Sunni insurgents are trying to “eliminate the Shi’a in Baghdad and Dilaya so they can establish their Taliban
state” (2007, 7). While sectarian violence
was initially characterized primarily by Sunni insurgent groups targeting both occupation forces and the Shi’a
population, the bombing of the holy Shi’a shrine in the Golden Mosque at Samarra marked a turning point in the
violence, with both an intensification of sectarian violence and the rise of Shi’a “death squads,” which continue to
be responsible for the widespread torture and killing of Sunni civilians (Al-Khalili and Tanner 2007, 7). According to
MADRE, U.S. support of these death squads (most notably the Badr Brigade and Mahdi army) in order to fight the
Sunni-led insurgency against the occupation was a key factor leading to the empowerment of these groups and the
escalation of violence between Shi’a and Sunni militants (2007, 15). MADRE also cites such U.S. backing of
Islamist elements as a principle factor in the sharp rise in religious extremism, which these groups continue to
violently impose on the Iraqi population, a campaign in which violence against women is central (2007, 11-12).
29
recognizing refugee claims only when minority status differentiates claimants from the rest of the
victimized civilian population results in discrimination between asylum seekers on the basis of
religious identity.
For Shi’a and Sunni women, the discriminatory impact is double; not only have the
atrocities inflicted on them as women been largely ignored, but the recognition only of minoritygroup claims leaves them marginalized from refugee protection when they are the targets of
sexual violence based on their sectarian identities. In reality, there is little difference between the
risks that women from different communities face. To illustrate, in September 2006, the
Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq reported instances of Shi’a gangs abducting, raping,
and torturing Sunni women from a neighboring district of Baghdad in retaliation for the rape of
Shi’a women from their area. At the same time, the organization reported that Christian women
from Mosul had been “targeted for rape as part of a broader attack on that community”
(MADRE 2007, 19). In these circumstances, recognizing refugee claims only when the harm
feared is related to minority status simply dismisses women from majority communities who are
threatened with sectarian violence as the collateral damage of a sectarian conflict.
Cultural stereotypes and political imperatives: when do women experience persecution
“because they are women”?
As we have seen, European states’ dismissal of sectarian violence, along with its important
gendered dimension, as the generalized impact of war on civilians has caused many of the
atrocities directed against women to fall outside of the refugee definition. Another way that the
interpretation of Iraqi asylum claims is obscuring the realities of the violence affecting women in
Iraq is through the extremely narrow categorization of women who may qualify as posed with a
threat that “arises because they are women,” which is cited as grounds for potentially granting a
woman refugee status (UK Home Office 2007, 24). In this section, I assess how the categories that
U.K. policy draws to determine when both domestic violence and gender-based militia violence
can be considered persecution warranting refugee protection result in the exclusion of most at-risk
women. What these limited categories reflect, I argue, is an understanding of gender-based
persecution that relies more on the cultural stereotypes and political imperatives held by Western
governments than on the realities of the violence taking place in Iraq. This limited understanding is
then used to integrate gender into an exclusionary policy framework by mapping the logic of
individually targeted persecution onto the widespread violence affecting women in Iraq.
Domestic violence in Iraq has risen dramatically since the 2003 invasion, both in frequency
and severity. Not only have economic devastation and the precarious security situation led to
increases in violence against women in the private realm, but the rise in gun ownership that has
accompanied sectarian strife and military occupation has made domestic violence more deadly
(Women for Women International 2008, 23; MADRE 2007, 19). As Henia Dakkak reports, the
failure of the United States to keep track of hundreds of thousands of guns that have been shipped
to Iraq has resulted in nearly every Iraqi family owning weapons, which increases the risk that
domestic violence will become fatal as economic decline and widespread insecurity cause tensions
to rise (2007, 40). Moreover, the absence of a functioning police force and judicial system prevent
women from seeking state protection from domestic violence (UN High Commissioner for
Refugees 2005, 2-8).
30
However, U.K. policy cites only one form of domestic violence that can meet the
requirements for refugee status: honor killings. This is because women fearing honor crimes may
be able to demonstrate that the threat “arises because they are women,” apparently differentiating
it from other forms of domestic violence (U.K. Home Office 2007, 24). The threat of honor
killing has indeed risen since the 2003 invasion, reportedly due to the increase in sectarian-related
rape, the rise in religious extremism and the failure of the government and occupying forces to
provide protection (MADRE 2007, 16).29 In fact, the Iraqi Ministry of Women’s Affairs reported
in 2004 that more than half of the four hundred rapes reported since the 2003 invasion had
resulted in the murder of the victims by their families (MADRE 2007, 16). However, because this
is only one of the many severe forms of domestic violence currently plaguing Iraq, it is not clear
why it should be the only one recognized as warranting refugee protection.
The policy’s view of gender-based militia violence relies on the same limited
understanding of how women can be targeted on account of their gender. The extreme levels of
gender-based violence being perpetrated by militias and the inability of the state and occupying
forces to provide protection from these atrocities have been widely documented. A Human
Rights Watch report describing the dramatic rise of gender-based violence in Iraq since the 2003
invasion reports that the “public security vacuum” is largely to blame for the sharp increases in
sexual violence, kidnapping and trafficking – problems so widespread that many women do not
feel safe outside their homes (2003, 10). Journalist Peter Beaumont’s characterization of the
motives behind the gender-based violence in Iraq illustrates its complex yet extremely
widespread character:
Iraq’s women are living with a fear that is increasing in line with the numbers dying
violently every month. They die for being a member of the wrong sect and for helping
their fellow women. They die for doing jobs that the militants have decreed that they
cannot do: for working in hospitals and ministries and universities. They are murdered,
too, because they are the softest targets for Iraq’s criminal gangs. (Beaumont 2006, 1)
However, despite the prevalence and severity of gender-based militia violence, and the complex
motives underlying it, U.K. policy maintains that the threats posed to women by militias can only
qualify them for refugee protection if they can demonstrate that they fear harm “over and above
the general population” because of their refusal to “adhere to strict interpretations of Islam”
(U.K. Home Office 2006, 31). The violent imposition of harsh interpretations of Islam by these
groups is indeed a significant risk factor for Iraqi women. According to journalist Sinan
Salaheddin, the Basra police chief reported at the end of 2007 that at least forty women had been
killed by extremist groups for violating Islamic standards of dress, their bodies found with notes
attached warning others against “violating Islamic teachings,” and that the number was likely
29
While the numbers of honor crimes committed have risen throughout Iraq, the highest numbers of reported
incidences have taken place in the Kurdish regions of northern Iraq, which are actually more stable than the rest of
the country, making it difficult to straightforwardly attribute the rise in such crimes to particular factors, such as the
rise in sectarian-related rape and the public security vacuum. According to the UN Inter-Agency Information and
Analysis Unit, in the period between 2004 and May 2008, approximately 1, 270 honor crimes were reported in Iraq,
and a majority of these (980) took place in Iraqi Kurdistan. However, reports of higher numbers from Iraqi
Kurdistan do not necessarily mean that more honor crimes are actually occurring in this region. Instead, the fact that
it is extremely difficult to collect data from other parts of the country could account for the higher numbers
reported from the Kurdish areas (UN Inter-Agency and Analysis Unit 2008, 12-13).
31
much higher as families were unlikely to report such crimes for fear of reprisals (2007, 1).
However, in a situation in which armed groups commit gender-based atrocities for a myriad of
reasons, recognizing women’s claims only when that fear is linked to visible secularism excludes
those who face equal risk but cannot demonstrate that it is individually targeted in this way.
The distinctions that these categories draw between at-risk women, obscuring the
realities of women’s protection needs in war-torn Iraq, reflects the intersection of several trends
limiting the recognition of conflict-related violence against women as grounds for refugee status.
While European policies designed to severely restrict the numbers of refugees accepted are the
primary factor underlying the dismissal of gender-based atrocities, the way that these
exclusionary categories are drawn reflects the culturally stereotypical lens through which genderbased persecution is defined by Western countries. This tendency is severely compounded by the
political calculations and use of human rights rhetoric that determine the kinds of violence that
are of concern in refugee policy on Iraq.
The categories of gender-based claims that are recognized reflect the tendency of refugee
receiving states to identify gender-based violence as persecution only when it is “committed by a
cultural Other,” and to fail to recognize the kinds of violence against women which are less
sensationalized and occur across all countries and cultures as persecution in the same sense
(Macklin 1995, 272). This bias is often particularly acute in addressing claims of gender-based
persecution emanating from Muslim countries. In “Orientalism Revisited in Asylum and Refugee
Claims,” Susan Akram assesses the impact of the “neo-Orientalism” that frames many Western
advocates’ understanding of human rights violations in Arab and Muslim societies on the
treatment of women’s asylum claims in Western countries.30 As she argues, one of the many
negative impacts of this kind of stereotyping is that it precludes a “more accurate interpretation
of the type of persecution occurring in a Muslim milieu,” which may “deny many individuals,
especially women, human rights protections to which they are legitimately entitled” (2000, 3). In
the U.K., for example, the atrocities perpetrated against women are not recognized as
persecution unless they are linked to either the violent imposition of fundamentalist versions of
Islam or to honor crimes, which have become a central focus of Western media and human
rights advocates.
This tendency to make forms of gender-based violence that are considered culturally
sanctioned the focal point of policy on gender-related persecution is compounded by the fact
that the assessment at hand is of what kinds of violence Western governments feel that women
are most threatened with in post-invasion Iraq. Such an assessment automatically disregards the
ordinary violence and devastation that comes with a “shock and awe” military bombardment and
five years of foreign occupation, which are dismissed as the unavoidable impact of war on
civilians.31 Indeed, the kinds of violence against women that the U.K. has chosen to recognize
30
Akram’s “neo-orientalism” builds upon the concept of Orientalism, or the tendency prevalent in Western attitudes
and discourses to simplify and essentialize all cultural, social, and political phenomena associated with the Middle
East and Muslim societies and to see the mindset of these non-Western peoples as fundamentally different from
their own, which was the focus of Edward Said’s world-renowned book Orientalism. Akram defines neo-orientalism as
“the concept so scathingly attacked by Said, but as promoted by more recent movements such as modern feminists
and human rights promoters including universalists and cultural relativists” (2000, 7-8).
31
In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein discusses the impact of the overwhelming force used in the U.S.-led bombing
of Iraq in 2003, a campaign codenamed “Shock and Awe.” According to Klein, the bombardment, during which the
32
appear to be driven more by the political imperatives underlying the portrayal of violence in Iraq
than by an accurate assessment of protection needs. Just as the political expedience of accepting
large numbers of refugees fleeing Soviet oppression during the Cold War was determinate for
what kinds of refugees were favored in the West,32 validating Western imperialist interventions
in Muslim countries requires emphasis on the systematic human rights violations which those
interventions are ostensibly intended to stop, a project in which women’s human rights have
come to stand at the forefront. Akram’s argument that “particularly detrimental to human rights
in the refugee context is the demonizing of Islam by Western politicians and policy-makers to
justify militaristic interventions” has particular salience in the case of Iraqi refugees (2000, 3).
Because forms of violence against women ostensibly related to cultural practices in Muslim
countries have become a defining element in the human rights rhetoric used to justify military
intervention, it is not surprising that they have also become the central focus of policies for
determining gender-based refugee claims, while other forms of violence that can be linked only
to the unceasing sectarian conflict and public security vacuum have gone virtually
unacknowledged.
While the cultural biases and political imperatives driving this portrayal of gender-based
persecution are central to explaining the limited categories recognized, the exclusionary
objectives of the policy itself are the greatest factor underlying its marginalization of women’s
experiences. The types of gender-based violence that are recognized reflect an attempt to map
the requirement that violence be individually targeted onto shallow concerns that the distinct
forms of persecution affecting women be accounted for. By recognizing only women who
choose to exhibit their secularism in the face of growing religious extremism while dismissing the
general threat of rape or trafficking by armed groups, the U.K. is simply factoring gender into
the logic of granting only political opponents with refugee status, despite the sectarian bloodbath
taking place in Iraq. Secular women are the feminized version of regime supporters or Iraqis
employed by the U.S. government, and systematic rape is simply the form that attacks on
civilians take in a sectarian conflict. Domestic violence, however severe, occurs with impunity
only because the state’s protective apparatus has broken down. Honor crimes, in contrast, have
long been recognized as a distinct form of persecution derived from cultural norms surrounding
control of women’s sexuality, norms against which the claimant is perceived to have rebelled,
therefore differentiating such cases from those of women who are killed by family members for
reasons apparently not related to honor. The thousands of women who are raped or killed by
militias or by family members, or who are kidnapped or trafficked – women whose situations,
however unfortunate, retain no element distinguishing them from all other women affected by
the unceasing violence in Iraq – are simply dismissed as casualties of the poor security situation.
U.S. dropped more than thirty thousand bombs and twenty thousand precision-guided cruise missiles throughout
Iraq, rather than aiming at specific targets, was designed to shock the civilian population into submission (2007, 332333).
32
As Gary C. Troeller argues, during the Cold War, the U.S. and other Western countries considered providing
refugee protection to those fleeing political persecution an important foreign policy tactic and treated asylum
applications much more favorably. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and change in the nature of
refugee flows, American and European asylum policies took a much more protectionist turn, and policies toward
refugees came to be centered more on migration control that the right to seek asylum (Troeller 2003, 58).
33
Conclusion
The drafters of the 1951 Convention intentionally formulated the refugee definition to limit their
responsibilities to refugees fleeing armed conflict. However, the ethnic and sectarian persecution
that characterizes many contemporary conflicts poses an immense legal challenge to this
limitation. In the case of Iraq, European states have responded to this challenge by simply
glossing over the realities of most of the persecution taking place, recognizing the devastating
impact that sectarian violence, brought on by the U.S-led invasion, has had on Christians,
secularists and supporters of the U.S.-backed government while dismissing the same crimes as
generalized violence when committed against Shi’a and Sunni civilians. While the conflict in Iraq
is indeed complex and multifaceted, it is clear that women are the target of severe and systematic
forms of violence. The continued insistence that such violence is simply the generalized impact
of war on civilians has resulted in discrimination both against and between women in their ability
to gain refugee protection. While politically-motivated attacks on men by insurgents warrant
claims for refugee status, atrocities committed against women by these armed groups are
dismissed as random, apolitical violence, unless women are targeted for refusing to wear the veil.
The dismissal of sectarian persecution as generalized violence results in the discounting of
systematic rape used as a tactic of war, unless the women victimized happen to be Christian, in
which case their minority status differentiates such crimes from the routine impact of sectarian
conflict. Women who fear honor crimes are in need of refugee protection, while women who are
threatened with other forms of domestic violence are the unfortunate victims of the breakdown
in the state security apparatus. Indeed, the immense disconnect between the realities of the
violence being waged against women and the continued reliance of European states on tenuous
legal interpretations that dismiss nearly all conflict-related persecution as generalized violence
raises serious doubts that atrocities perpetrated against women during armed conflict can ever be
meaningfully recognized within an increasingly restrictive European asylum system.
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38
She rie f G abe r is a candi da te fo r a M. S. i n Co mmu ni ty a nd R e gio nal Pla nni ng a nd a J. D.
at the U nive rsity o f T exas in A usti n.
Verbal Abuse: Anti-Trafficking
Violence Against Women
Rhetoric
and
by Sherief Gaber
There is a significant debate in contemporary feminist political thought and amongst activist
organizations regarding the “trafficking of women” and the questions and problems attendant to
this phenomenon. Furthermore, the work of many feminist groups now concerned with and
often party to the exercise of state and international regulatory power has drawn a great deal of
attention to trafficking within the United Nations, individual nation-states (particularly the
United States) and a slew of increasingly powerful NGOs. These different organizations all
operate at a similar structural and prescriptive level, using legal and normative models to enact
protocols and legislation specifically naming, defining and acting on human trafficking.
Regardless of the apparent fervor and media attention given to trafficking in recent years, the
problem is still widespread, and there is significant criticism of existing trafficking models, both
for their failure to achieve even stated goals, and for the way their definitions of trafficking –
particularly sex trafficking – affect women.
Primarily, it is not within the scope of this paper to cut the knot tying structures that
produce sex work and trafficking and the agency of sex workers. The author presumes here that
sex workers, as much as any other individual or group, are capable of and do express agency –
within the confines or limits established by given structural conditions – even if the sex workers
operate in much more marginal(ized) positions. As such, the paper is concerned with the
appropriation of the sex worker by anti-trafficking forces and how these forces interrupt
potential agency – limiting and forcibly circumscribing what sex workers can and do achieve
through organization and activism. The question then becomes how anti-trafficking rhetoric
constructs the agency of the sex worker to justify and promote its own interventionist politics.
Thus trafficking is not autonomous, but is instead a frame that marks the organization of
certain values and ideologies – many of them expressly pertaining to structure/agency – that are
then operationalized to produce violence against sex workers and women migrants. Looking at
the internal workings of this frame allows us, not to provide an alternative, “better” definition of
trafficking but, to address alternatives to those values and ideologies that motivate antitrafficking interventionism.
Much of the analysis will be spent examining how the language of groups and individuals
opposing sex trafficking produces and feeds off of certain dangerous conceptions of the
subjectivities and bodies of women in the global South in particular, and the reciprocal
relationship that interventions “on behalf of” those women have with such rhetoric. The first
39
section takes the work of Nicholas Kristof written for the New York Times on the subject of
human trafficking and sex work. Mr. Kristof’s influential position in the media makes his
opinions something of a liberal litmus test, but also his unorthodox, even extreme actions make
the articles a rich read into the mind’s eye of liberal anti-prostitution sentiment. The second
section attempts to examine the more formal-institutional arm of the fight against the traffic in
women, examining reports of a raid conducted on a Thai brothel in 2003 and how similar
rhetorical patterns and ways of constructing sex worker subjectivity are used by NGOs and antiprostitution feminist organizations favoring such interventions. These two foci or arenas, one
very individualistic and the other a large network of state and parastatal cooperation, ultimately
share similar ideological foundations and a very casual outlook on the use of force and state
police and economic power to achieve their ends. Their rhetorical construction of trafficked
women as helpless victims begs the question of aggressive intervention, making force (economic
and corporeal) seem the only means of addressing the perceived problem, even where different
conceptions of sex work and labor already point toward alternative regimes of political and social
rights.
Anti-Trafficking Adventurism
Nicholas Kristof, a thoroughly established writer of the New York Times for over twenty years
and a regular opinion columnist since 2001, is surely one of the main editorial voices of the
newspaper and a widely-read and well-received “public intellectual” in general. Kristof’s views
are quintessentially liberal, with much of his work reflecting governance liberalism and heavily
advocating the use of American and European coercive power (economic and police) to spread
and distribute liberal ideals. As such, Kristof’s set of pieces on the trafficking of women in South
Asia – spanning three years and over twenty articles33 – is a particularly relevant barometer of
public or normative liberal views on trafficking and one aligned with current legal and policy
approaches to anti-trafficking, even if Kristof is more strident than the actual policies at times.
Reading through Kristof’s pieces on anti-trafficking demonstrates how a liberal notion of
corporeal, individual rights that ignores the possibility of sex work as labor strips sex workers of
subjectivity and makes paternalistic, external intervention the only putative solution.
Kristof began his public(ity) crusade early in 2004, traveling to Cambodia to document
what he dubs “21st century slaves” (2004c). Kristof writes dramatically and leaves anticipatory
cliffhangers between his columns, such as “Stay tuned,” “We’ll see” and promises of “what
happens next”; Kristof’s work on trafficking itself takes a three-act form: first he creates the
Cambodia of his narrative, act two is Kristof’s purchase and resituating of two sex workers and a
final epilogue details their later fates.
The settings of Kristof’s pieces conjure an Orientalist tapestry, rife with an exoticism
reminiscent of 19th century travelogues, as he seeks out brothels in Poipet, “220 miles on bouncy
roads from Phnom Penh… a dusty collection of dirt alleys lined with brothels, where teenage
girls clutch at any man walking by” (2004a). Kristof’s Cambodia is littered with “seedy” hotels in
“wild brothel towns” (Ibid.) and villages populated by uneducated (and this point is repeatedly
emphasized) farmers. Kristof produces and reiterates this stage over the course of his series on
33
See references below for a comprehensive list of articles in this series
40
Cambodia, not describing or locating Cambodia so much as dislocating and decontextualizing it.
Cambodia in Kristof’s narrative is little if anything more than its brothels and villages, and these
brothels and villages themselves exist in a vacuum – unconnected from any history, economy,
political processes or locality. Edward Said famously made this point discussing the Middle East,
but here the metaphor extends to places like the author’s Cambodia: “On this stage will appear
figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then
seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed
field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe” (1979, 63). It is on this Cambodian stage that Kristof
plays out his narrative of trafficking, using his characters as mere representations justifying
imperial intervention.
Kristof’s style is no less evocative and dramatic once he turns his attentions to the two
sex workers Srey Mom and Srey Neth, whom he buys from their respective brothel owners.
Kristof is purchasing these two women to “free” them, but his actions and the manner in which
he documents them are questionable. Kristof’s language switches at times from purchasing the
girls’ “freedom” to simply discussing the two girls he had purchased. The entire arc of his
narrative here puts Kristof in a position remarkably similar to a pimp or customer himself.
Having purchased these two bodies, the distinction between buying to “free” and simply
“buying” is not as definite as Kristof would have it be. Kristof, ostensibly to “humanize” his
victims, often focuses on their physical attributes, sexualizing and feminizing Srey Mom and Srey
Neth, even titling one of his columns “A Cambodian Girl’s Tragedy: Being Young and Pretty”
(2006e). By his inability to detach his objectives from the actual women’s bodies, and indeed
even their sexuality, Kristof undermines his whole critique.
In this way, Kristof performs much of the same script that motivates prostitution, even if
he means to condemn it: he reduces the women to little more than their bodies and produces the
victim-like quality and absolute frailty of these bodies.34 Kristof describes how “[a] year ago, a
pimp handed me a quivering teenage girl,” (2005c), and elsewhere how “Srey Mom [grabbed] at
me as I walked down the street. She wouldn’t let go, tugging me toward the inner depths of her
brothel –
but she looked so young and pitiable that I couldn’t help thinking that she really wanted me to
tug her away” (2004b). Kristof in this last quote is both writing his own intentions on the bodies
of this woman while engaging in detail on the verge of the pornographic. The entire course of
meeting and purchasing these two women contains this lurid underside, but where the ordinary
client receives sexual pleasure for his money, Kristof’s dollars (and he is quick to point out
exactly how much everything costs) buy him pleasure sublimated in the form of “ethical”
enjoyment. The women are not subjects in Kristof’s schema but bodies to be used as a means
for justifying his critique – bodies objectified for a much wider audience than when they are used
physically. Kristof’s motives, and even his admissions that purchasing individual sex workers out
of brothels is no “real” solution, may be mitigating, but they do not silence the fact that there lies
no difference between his actions and those of other customers with respect to the
commerciability and sexualization of women’s bodies.
34
The more cynical might ask if Kristof is merely a fan of the film Pretty Woman.
41
The coda of Mr. Kristof’s drama occurs after his purchase of Srey Mom and Srey Neth,
when he returns them to their home villages and provides them with roughly $100 each to start
small food stands. Kristof takes a year interim from his project, and then returns to “find out
how they coped with freedom” (2005c). Herein lies Mr. Kristof’s predominant attitude towards
these women. Whereas he ostensibly never worries about how he copes with his own freedom,
the question preoccupies much of his discussion of Srey Mom and Srey Neth. He engages with
another form of essentialization, mixed with pop-psychology, that presumes these women are
indelibly stained by the brothels – that because they were prostitutes, their subjective experience
with and relationship to “freedom” will necessarily be problematic. Kristof exudes resentment,
as he is effectively unable to understand why Srey Mom returned to the brothel and why Srey
Neth’s business did not work out. He describes how aid workers find it “unnerving that they
liberate teenagers from the bleak back rooms of a brothel, take them to a nice shelter – and then
at night the kids sometimes climb over the walls and run back to the brothel” (2005d, emphasis
added). Kristof attempts an explanation by talking about how prostitutes are “shattered and
stigmatized” and cannot cope without the brothel after their “liberation.”
Ultimately, this pseudo-Stockholm syndrome explanation reflects the contradiction
inherent between the subject’s necessary victimhood, as posed by Kristof, and the actual agency
expressed by the women. A liberal model such as Kristof’s can only understand subjects as either
acting in their own rational self-interest (as measured by Western, utilitarian norms) or as passive,
non-subject victims. The actions of the two women – neither those of Western, autonomous
subjects, nor those of victims seeking the protection of the state – confounds Kristof’s analysis.
Irresolvable at a conceptual level, Kristof moves to break the contradiction through a violent
reorganization of its perceived cause.
Kristof has not been able to conceive, throughout his narrative, of any causes for
prostitution or trafficking; focusing only on the individual “victims,” he has at best sketched a
crude model of patriarchy and subordination of women to explain trafficking. The limits of this
model, however, are quickly reached. When Srey Mom returns to the brothel, he must
psychologize her actions and locate them within some individual trauma. His musings of a “tidier
world” where “slaves [seek] freedom” (Ibid.) show how this impoverished construction of the
trafficking dilemma leads to a resentment towards the supposed victim; these wounded subjects
are marked by their difference from a Western liberal subject, one who does not need to “cope”
with a presumed de facto freedom.
Similarly, when Srey Neth’s grocery is effectively pilfered by neighbors and malnourished
members of her family, Kristof merely quips that “in a Cambodian village, nobody listens to an
uneducated teenage girl” (2005c). There is no consideration of property and familial regimes, or
of the way that structural adjustment and trade liberalization have scarred the Cambodian
countryside in recent history, when Kristof returns Srey Neth to her impoverished village in a
position irrationally wealthier than everyone around her. Kristof seems to think that the Western
entrepreneurial spirit and protestant work ethic are Srey Neth’s means of salvation and that they
can be simply transplanted irrespective of social conditions. Furthermore, once the attempt at
salvation understandably fails, it is treated as an inevitable result of the backwardness of the
family/culture. Kristof again takes up his condescending tone against a culture and situation he
all but calls uncivilized or barbaric.
42
Ironically, Kristof himself does not seem to believe in his actions or the possibility of
effecting change within the system. As if he expects his own experiment to fail from the start,
Kristof mentions throughout that the only real solutions to trafficking can come from the
intervention of American and European state power: “nothing will happen unless we get higherlevel outrage in Washington and other foreign capitals” (2005a). Kristof, at times a critic of the
Iraq war, has absolutely no qualms throwing about the morals of the United States by virtue of
its military, demanding that “today’s great powers must bring their economic and military might
to bear on this most crucial of undertakings” (2006e). Kristof makes open-ended ultimatums like
this in nearly all of his pieces, frequently employing a language of pandemic, so often
emphasizing that what he discusses is “not hyperbole” one must nearly assume that it is. Even if
Mr. Kristof were not exaggerating the dangers of trafficking – and there is cause to say he is, at
the very least given his quoting of numbers from a much-undermined government study
(Chapkis 2003, 925-6; Kim and Chang 2007, 321) – his manner of “solving” the problem,
besides its rabid militarism, presumes by its silence that states and societies like Cambodia’s are
too atavistic or incapable to produce any change, and, more importantly, that the sex workers
themselves cannot act in their own right to better their situations. Thus, the stage is set for
“humanitarian” intervention.
Whereas Nicholas Kristof at best represents an influential voice of persuasion in the
media, and thus a limited prescriptive force for implementing such intervention, his rhetoric and
treatment of trafficking closely engages with that of many anti-trafficking groups who have
managed to incorporate themselves into state and disciplinary machineries. Such groups,
particularly the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), also engage with trafficking
under the presumption that sex workers are damaged subjects, unable to act on their own.
Reading through some of their rhetoric and interventions, as a complement to our reading of
Kristof, will bring out the violent ends of this state power as it affects the putative “victims” of
trafficking.
Anti-Trafficking Interventionism
If Kristof’s narrative conjures up the Orientalist travelogue and late imperial morality crusades,
much of the work done by trafficking NGOs and other parastatal organizations reads like
vigilante novels. NGOs have had resounding successes as neoliberal management and structural
adjustment have vitiated much of the developing state’s regulatory and administrative
capabilities. As Janet Halley comments in a dialog on Governance Feminism and trafficking, the
global South has been particularly affected by non-state actors, because “the South, accessible
through the language of international human rights law, presented a theater of opportunity at a
time when the radical feminist project in the North was embattled…” (2006, 353). Lamia Karim,
in a parallel example, has shown how microfinance organizations such as the Grameen Bank in
Bangladesh have effectively supplanted traditional realms of state power, including police power
(2007). The scope of authority wielded by anti-trafficking NGOs may not have reached the same
degree of control, but they too wield significant power by virtue of the weakness of developing
states and the backing of American and European monies and aid conditions.
43
The turn of the millennium marked the passage of the United Nations’ Palermo
Protocol35 and the United States’ Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), the two documents
most extending Western anti-trafficking efforts into the global South. Since 2000, the US has
elaborated on and expanded the TVPA with reauthorization acts in 2003 and 2005. The TVPA
in particular has been one of the greatest forces incorporating the language and rhetoric of
Western anti-trafficking into a policing regime, motivating trafficking intervention by NGOs
abroad and compelling Southern states to participate with Western NGOs. As part of this law,
the State Department publishes an annual Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP Report), giving nationstates a ranking on a three-tiered scale. Based on relative compliance with US policing policies,
states can either be sanctioned or given aid (Kim and Chang 2007, 330). This carrot-and-stick
system has been remarkably effective, if not at stopping trafficking than at least providing for a
global regime of trafficking enforcement based on U.S. definitions of trafficking and values
around sex work. South Korea, for instance, “[d]espite protests by sex worker rights groups, has
instituted a sweeping anti-prostitution law, the first of its kind since 1961. The reform includes
prison sentences and fines for traffickers and for women in the sex industry” (Ibid., 331, emphasis
added). Korea in this way jumped from Tier 3 to Tier 1, and the United States further expanded
its reach on the matter. Since the passing of the TVPA and the release of annual TIP Reports,
almost all of the 154 countries examined within the reports have followed suit by conforming at
least in part to the UN/US standards on trafficking (Department of State 2008).
As a general schema, the U.S.-based model is strongly anti-prostitution and anti-sex
worker. Pushed into law by the strange bedfellows of moral conservative and Christian groups
united with anti-prostitution feminists such as CATW, the act has been strongly criticized by
many activists and scholars for its over- and under-reachings. One of the most dangerous
aspects of the law, as addressed by its critics, is the way in which it forces a distinction between
“innocent” and “knowing” victims, and thus to what extent the enforcement arm of the
legislation directly and negatively affects women involved in sex work, legislating against them as
much if not more than it stops egregious forms of labor exploitation and human rights violations
(Chapkis 2003, 929-30). Furthermore, the TVPA and its parallel enforcement schema by other
states have been strongly censured for their use as tools for punishing immigrants and putting
excessive controls on the migration of women across borders (See Sharma 2005; Chapkis 2003;
Adams 2003). Without engaging in a critique of the entirety of the TVPA or similar frameworks,
the law has introduced language condemning and marginalizing sex workers, licensing a global
juridical and policing system with dangerous consequences furthered by the application of such
laws by NGOs like CATW.
In May of 2003, a “raid and rescue” operation was undertaken in a brothel in Chiang
Mai, Thailand by the joint efforts of at least two Western anti-trafficking organizations, backed
by local police. The Chiang Mai raid is perhaps an exemplary illustration of current antitrafficking efforts and much of the problematic aspects of this work. In addition to their
exposure by the colluding feminist anti-prostitution organization TRAFCORD36 and the
35
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United
Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime (2000)
36
Anti-Trafficking Coordination Unit Northern Thailand. They are registered as a Public Benefit Organization
charged with coordinating between government and NGOs to combat trafficking.
44
Christian, faith-based anti-trafficking NGO International Justice Mission (IJM), the brothel and
sex workers within were closely tied to a Thai-based sex worker’s labor rights group,
EMPOWER. Examining the rhetoric and criticisms from both sides reveals how current
enforcement practices result in overt control over women and women’s bodies and the
treatment of ostensible “victims” as passive or voiceless tokens in anti-trafficking measures.
The raid itself was a spectacular event, as journalists and news media were permitted to
accompany the raiders, photographing many of the 28 women seized in the action.37 These
women were then taken to a Public Welfare Boys Home and effectively detained without the
ability to make contact with relatives or EMPOWER. The women were detained in this way for
over a month, being interrogated and pressured to give testimony by TRAFCORD
representatives. Four of the women detained fled the building through the gates and went to
EMPOWER, believing the raid had been intended to arrest the girls working. Numerous rights
violations were claimed by EMPOWER and other observers, namely the confiscation of the
girls’ property, photographing of the women without their consent, their involuntary and
extended detention, and the deprivation of their rights to work. Even TRAFCORD
representatives expressed some regrets about the undertaking of the operation, but only weakly
and without any self-reproach about the measures taken (EMPOWER Chiang Mai 2003;
Ruprecht 2003b).
Niki Adams has similarly documented the bathetic aftermath of a 2002 London raid
where over 60 sex workers and other women were detained; these women likewise were granted
little or none of the supposed protections afforded to victims (2003, 138). This time the raid
occurred not at the hands of foreign NGOs operating within the global South, but under the
aegis of the British government. The results, however, were hardly different; the Soho raid
Adams describes was no less spectacular than the Chiang Mai raid. Police had been conducting
surveillance in the neighborhood for months in advance, even interviewing and talking to many
of the individual sex workers. However, none of this concern seemed to carry over into
“liberating the victims of trafficking,” and in the middle of the night 50 police officers,
characteristically accompanied by a slew of reporters and journalists, raided the neighborhood.
Among the immigrants and sex workers culled were several asylum seekers applying for refugee
status, many of whom were summarily deported without any sort of due process. Other
deportations were halted only after a significant backlash by concerned local organizations.
Adams describes how UK anti-trafficking law, borrowing from the initiative of the
Palermo Protocol, attempts to avoid the complications of dealing with the expressed interests
and desires of sex workers that are often highly contradictory to the intentions of their supposed
rescuers. The law seeks to diminish law enforcement’s reliance on the testimony of witnesses
deemed “vulnerable and intimidated” (Ibid. 137). Ultimately, the result is the ability for police
and prosecutors to conduct raids and arrests against even willing sex workers and other
individuals, merely by virtue of their fitting the definition of trafficking or being otherwise valued
targets for the state. This definition conceals a vicious circularity; if being trafficked requires
being forced against one’s will, and all sex workers are presumed to be vulnerable and
37
In a similar that took place in the spring of 2000, IJM raiders were accompanied by the cameras of Dateline NBC
to film the event for American viewers (Jones 2003).
45
intimidated, then they can never express any real will or intention and can be presumed to have
been trafficked. Consequently, the state effectively gains total control over these women’s bodies
and livelihoods by fiat decision. Compounded by the increasingly carceral and hostile
immigration policies of most European nations and the U.S., this mandated ability of the state to
decide who can be a subject and who is a victim further threatens the safety of any and all
women migrating and crossing national borders.
The language of CATW and the “Rambo” operations of IJM and other such
organizations (McBride 2001) demonstrate a problematic link between the rhetorical opposition
of trafficking in women and the ultimate perceived necessity and justification of interventionist
force. The supposedly structural problems and causes of sex trafficking are simultaneously relied
upon and ignored. The structural nature of sex trafficking is (ab)used by states so they may name
their victims while avoiding or disregarding the testimony of sex workers themselves. Indeed,
such testimony is doubly ignored, as such prosecutorial and police measures target and punish
individual sex workers without any consideration of the effects on the individuals apprehended
or the situations presented. The structural causes of trafficking become a pretext for state
violence, as the state uses the complexity of the situation to vitiate the agency of sex workers as
false consciousness, meaning only forces outside of these particular structures (Western state
power) can consequently effect change.
The Chiang Mai and London raids are exemplary instances of this bootstrapping, where
effectively abstract rhetoric invoking patriarchy and narratives of victimization become not only
the justification for the raids but also the means allowing “rescuers” to ignore or efface any
contrary concerns of the sex workers affected. A CATW presentation before the UN
demonstrates this position quite succinctly:
The notion that prostitution is work – “sex work” is the dangerously misleading term –
ignores both these powerful social forces of poverty, violence, and inequality that propel
women and children into sexual exploitation and the harm that women and children
sustain as a direct consequence of sexual exploitation. (Leidholdt 2000)
There is no doubt that poverty, violence and inequality are extremely prevalent factors affecting
labor – in both the North and South – and that women are generally most severely and adversely
exposed to such conditions; however, the connection between structural forces and the lived
experience of subjects in the world is hardly so direct as CATW would have it. The
CATW/TRAFCORD position is flawed if for no other reason than the fact that only those who
have already been deemed “victims” of trafficking are considered to be subjects of patriarchy,
the economy or cultural structures; just as Mr. Kristof never questioned how he coped with his
own freedom, CATW rhetoric never questions the autonomy of Western female subjects, but
presumes a structurally determined lack of agency for those women on whose behalf antitrafficking forces would seek to intervene. Notions of structural determinism are asymmetrically
applied, and the access gained to the global South by Northern economic and police power,
facilitated by human rights law, allows for the success of this maneuver. Theories of the subject
and actions that may receive intense scrutiny or are deemed violative of rights and personal
autonomy in the West – outdated or idealistic at best – are unreflexively considered “good
46
enough” for the “victims” of the South, and can be deployed and even lauded by popular media
sources and the United States government.38
This rhetorical approach towards combating trafficking – fighting the battle at the level
of the sex worker’s subjectivity and body – consequently forms an exclusionary system wherein
anti-trafficking NGOs, faith-based groups and state policing apparatuses have effectively
determined in an arbitrary and abstract fashion that the consent of those involved in prostitution
is not and cannot be considered, and therefore, it is left in the hands of those organizations to
decide who has been trafficked, who will be rescued, who will be arrested and deported, etc. In
defense of this, CATW feminists point to certain clauses within the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR) procedure that allow rape
convictions “irrespective” of victim’s consent and have successfully at times extended this to
apply to trafficked women. It is a truism that the two situations are incontestably different and
should be treated as such, but in any case, ICTY and ICTR procedure also affects who can be
considered a subject, and who is merely an object to be rescued. Vitiating the consent of sex
workers on the one hand furthers the imperialistic presumption that these women are somehow
damaged subjects, incapable of proper rationality or suffering false consciousness, and on the
other hand, it totally exposes the sex worker to the will, intentions and sometimes violence of
the aid worker, however arbitrary these may be. In a peculiar reversal, anti-trafficking efforts in
this way “free” women from the supposed domination of brothel and pimp, only to effectively
dominate their wills and bodies to suit other political and ideological ends.
The Violence of Abstraction
The above discussions of Adventurism and Interventionism have, in dealing with more discrete
examples and interventions by traditional anti-trafficking groups and authors, attempted to give
shape to a critique of current rhetoric and practice. Kristof’s writings point towards the
individual or micro-level, whereas the rhetoric of the raider – whether Police or NGO – is
representative of macropolitical and large-scale efforts against trafficking. However, the two are
linked by similar ideologies and constructions of their supposed victims, and each highlights the
flaw in the other. Where Kristof focuses on individuals and the actual bodies of two women
while CATW focuses on the moral wrong of prostitution as a function of patriarchy, thereby
ignoring the agency of sex workers, both levels of argument use the language of women as pure
victims incapable of self-representation or agency to justify extreme and violent actions.
This double-myopia – at both structural and individual levels – illustrates how liberalism
as a whole constructs subjects in an abstract-universal sense. The liberal subject, being a subject
traditionally constituted in rights, is effectively a priori in any liberal society. This subject is then
universalized insofar as its priority makes it the groundwork consideration for all other liberal
38
Jacques Ranciere has made a similar statement very pointedly, worth quoting here: “Ultimately, those rights
[enjoyed by the West] appear actually empty. They seem to be of no use. And when they are of no use, you do the
same as charitable persons do with their old clothes. You give them to the poor. Those rights that appear to be
useless in their place are sent abroad, along with medicine and clothes, to people deprived of medicine, clothes, and
rights. It is in this way, as the result of this process, that the Rights of Man become the rights of those who have no
rights, the rights of bare human beings subjected to inhuman repression and inhuman conditions of existence. They
become humanitarian rights, the rights of those who cannot enact them, the victims of the absolute denial of right”
(2004, 307).
47
subjects. Ultimately, however, this subject only refers back to its a priori foundations, and not the
discrete social and material processes of subjectivization. As Wendy Brown states, “Indeed, in a
smooth and legitimate liberal order, the particularistic ‘I’s’ must remain unpoliticized, and the
universalistic ‘we’ must remain without specific content or aim, without a common good other
than abstract universal representation or pluralism” (1993, 392). This depoliticization becomes
particularly dangerous in the context of women’s bodies and trafficking discourse, for as we have
seen, the abstraction of individual subjects by virtue of supposedly universal rights packages is
one of the primary enabling factors for CATW and other intervention.
This abstraction of the subject is one of the primary means by which the rhetoric of antitrafficking efforts promotes its own ability to intervene. Jo Doezema has shown how liberalism
encourages both the creation of these identities, based upon the failure of the liberal rights
package, and the capture and control of these identities within the sovereign system. Borrowing
from Wendy Brown, Doezema discusses how the promised rights package of liberalism cannot
be effectively delivered to all; the contradiction between liberalism’s supposedly universal rights
and their manifest absence in certain situations becomes the site of “injury” and creation of the
“victim” category. Anti-trafficking rhetoric, as we have seen, is quick to name these injured
subjects and victims.
As such, groups attempting to claim these missing rights or those seeking redress must
assume this language of injury to make their rights-based claims. Doezema writes that “this
paradox results in a politics that seeks protection from the state rather than power or freedom
for itself” (2001, 20). Doezema practically demonstrates how anti-trafficking groups such as
CATW have formed their concept of trafficking victims by applying these abstract notions of
identity. However, as should become apparent, the reliance of this injured identity on the state
and parastatal agencies severely limits anti-trafficking efforts to those mandated by the state
(police or military power, economic sanctions, etc.). The “truth” of the prostitutes’ experience
held in comparison to the abstract liberal subject, the kernel motivating strong-arm
interventionism, becomes the fact of their status as incomplete or injured subjects, and thus any
other narrative or set of experiences becomes “ontologically impossible” (Ibid. 27-28).
This reductionism and its consequences becomes clearer in the context of the “raid and
rescue.” Many of the women detained in the Chiang Mai raid claimed that intensive and coercive
measures were used to secure testimony (EMPOWER 2003), and in other situations women are
often forced to make the choice between cooperation with prosecution and renunciation of their
way of life or deportation/imprisonment – a Catch-22 with both ends exposing the sex worker
to impoverishment and further abuse. Chapkis shows that in many cases women must effectively
renounce their own status as subjects to receive protection or assistance, becoming in the eyes of
the state “no more than unwilling goods, exchanged between unscrupulous men” (Chapkis 2003,
930). Having already presumed an injured identity in the sex workers, the TRAFCORD
representatives were able to justify all of their violations of the sex workers’ rights based on the
supposed injury that they had been suffering within the brothel. The various indignities imposed
on the sex workers by their interveners become a form of “collateral damage,” apparently
without need of justification as such damage is overshadowed by the initial ontological trauma
presumed on their behalf.
48
Just as it produces problematic, victimized identities, an additional consequence of the
“lazy structuralism” of anti-trafficking advocates is its inability to recognize that prostitution can
be considered work without legitimizing prostitution or deeming it a normative good, thereby
allowing sex workers access to rights under labor and welfare systems. Just as the “truth” of
prostitution prescribes that all sex workers be victims, this victim identity implies that sex work is
purely exploitation, not to be considered as labor. Some of CATW’s most strident assaults have
been not against traffickers but organizations such as EMPOWER and The Global Alliance
Against Traffic in Women (GAATW, a pro-sex worker coalition); CATW argues that any
attempt to justify the labor value of prostitution and sex work is tantamount to condoning and
supporting prostitution and the sex industry, and it even goes so far as to draw spurious linkages
between such organizations and pornographers and pimps.
Contrary to this assessment, Berta E. Hernandez-Truyol and Jane E. Larsen note that the
opposition between a right to work and human rights is a “false dichotomy”; conflating a
legitimate critique of the conditions under which prostitution operates with the refusal to
recognize prostitution as a form of labor “means that…complex social [realities] cannot engage
the underlying human rights principles invoked, preventing human rights understandings from
deepening and expanding” (2004, 405). Taking Hernandez-Truyol’s argument further, by
ignoring the fact that prostitution is labor, human rights discourse around the subject becomes
shallow and ineffectual, and far worse, it is merely a tool for interventionism and laws targeting
and punishing migrants and women, both directly and indirectly. Raid and rescue operations,
based in abstraction take little account of actual working conditions within brothels and the
women’s abilities to otherwise earn a wage.
The conflict or contradiction of rights produced by humanitarian interventionism of
anti-trafficking organizations eschews the productive capacities and potential autonomy of the
subject, instead paternalistically reading rights as the “protection” of bodies. The Hernandez
piece also importantly highlights the distinction between first and second generation rights: the
former are purely negative liberties such as basic bodily security and freedom from physical
abuse or political tyranny, and the latter involve more constructive rights such as conditions of
fair and equitable labor. These second generation rights do not even come under the
consideration of anti-trafficking workers. As we have seen, the considerations of labor-based
rights, founded in the same UN protocols that organizations such as CATW use to justify their
work, are dismissed. Those rights presume the existence of a subject who claims them, and even
though the existence of sex worker organizations such as EMPOWER speaks to sex workers’
abilities to comprehend and access such rights, the CATW and TRAFCORD narrative ignores
and negates any constructive freedoms as the mere “false consciousness” of the prostitute.
If second generation rights and the agency of the immigrant or sex worker are to be
ignored, the actual situation of these women is reduced to the “tragedy” of being “young and
pretty,” or “empty holes surrounded by flesh, waiting for a masculine deposit of sperm”
(Doezema 2001, 26). The rights-based focus, when it arises out of the abstract constructions of
identity and injury, cannot seem to disengage the subject from the threatened or injured body,
and as a consequence, potentially all women, or at least all women of the myriad territories of the
49
global South, become subsumed within the purview of anti-trafficking schemes.39 Statist and
legal mechanisms for enforcing these identities are themselves limited, and can only criminalize
and penalize. The London raid is exemplary of this, where the ultimate end of the raid, if not its
stated goals, was the violent uprooting and deportation of women immigrants and sex workers.
Nandita Sharma’s work further demonstrates how the collapse of the subject into the body
produces severe disciplinary controls on women’s bodies, particularly as regards the movement
of women across borders for purposes of seeking any labor, least of all sex work. Sharma points
to the formation of a “Global Apartheid” (2005) wherein the putative risk of trafficking marks
women’s bodies against the possibility of migration and labor opportunities, as women are all –
ontologically – presumptive victims of trafficking.
What benefits are on offer by the state-protectionist system are highly conditioned, as in
the above example where the Chiang Mai sex workers were interrogated and coerced into
cooperation with state and NGO investigation. In the US, the special trafficking visa (T-visa)
authorized by the TVPA and issued to “victims” of trafficking, for instance, is conditioned on
their being “willing to assist in every reasonable way” with the investigation and prosecution of
trafficants. To secure permanent residency in the United States furthermore requires that the
trafficked person would “suffer extreme hardship involving unusual and severe harm upon
removal from the United States” (TVPA, S.107[E]). Jennifer Nam, looking at civil suits filed in
the U.S. by victims of trafficking under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act
of 2003 (TVPRA), notes that, besides the paucity of lawsuits in general, sex trafficking victims have
not filed a single suit under the act authorizing civil remedies for victims of trafficking, 18 U.S.C.
S.1595 (Nam 2007, 1656). The majority of these reports have been filed by agricultural, domestic
or industrial workers. There is reason enough above for sex workers to be discouraged from
participating in state anti-trafficking efforts, and S.1595 contains requirements of participation in
prosecution and other similar disciplinary controls and hurdles before victims can access a
remedy. Many of these conditions are particular to the sex trafficking claim, whereas claims for
“forced labor” and “trafficking into servitude” lack much of the spectacular trauma and
disciplinary aspects of the former. Even under the banner of a moral crusade to save and protect
these women, they must be made into docile and pliant objects as the state interest in controlling
immigration and the flow of bodies trumps real security.
Conclusion
In the wreckage of the raid, the lives and livelihoods of these ostensibly rescued women become
collateral damage, and the self-satisfied press releases of the rescuers never make mention of
their fates. Such outcomes cannot be considered incidental or contingent; they must be seen as a
more active and purposive form of harassment and violence visited on sex workers and women
migrants. What little has come of punishing trafficants and severe forms of labor abuse must be
39
Kristof is not alone in his attempt to use dramatic and sometimes shocking individual stories to attempt to prove
a point about trafficking, nor is it only a journalistic conceit. Dina Francesca Haynes begins an article in Human
Rights Quarterly with the story of one particular victim. It is particularly relevant here that Haynes, a proponent of law
enforcement methods who is generally in line with the CATW position, uses a narrative about a Moldovan woman
named Madelina, but at no point is the woman given any voice or intentionality. Madelina is effectively a
placeholder victim who allows Haynes to justify a critique of “smugglers” and criminal traffickers, echoing what has
been discussed above.
50
contrasted with the extreme violence and injury visited upon the supposed beneficiaries of such
laws and raids. Beyond the Chiang Mai and SoHo operations, many other parallel events
chronicle the extremely threatening presence of the state and legal mechanisms in the lives of
women migrants and workers. The triumphalism of media cameras at the scene and photos of
young girls in anonymous rooms40 disguises the way in which state and parastatal agents directly
create systems that seek to control and isolate women’s bodies. This control extends from the
individual level of pernicious anti-prostitution campaigns – which lead to the arrest of the
women to be putatively saved – to the tightening of national borders and the limitation and
restriction of women’s migration across those borders, even for the purposes of seeking asylum
or escape from conflict and poverty.
Jennifer Nam, in her assessment of existing remedies for the victims of trafficking
concludes on a note of frustration, stating that “something is missing” (Ibid. 1659), though she is
unable to effectively name that something. This viewpoint, however, still presumes an impossible
separability between the means used to combat trafficking and the after-effects of intervention.
The rhetorical construction of the victims of trafficking has already ensured the necessity of
force and state power; this force is itself blind to the existence of these various women as
anything but victims, due to the way that trafficking presumes its subject (as object). Victim is,
however, a category that is temporally fixed and permanently abstract – a state of being without
the a matter of a situation; as such these women victims cease to exist at the point of their
“rescue.” They are not freed so much as they are effaced or erased. This is evidenced by the
unspectacular fates that are visited on the women singled-out by these laws after the spectacle of
the raid and rescue operation.
Perhaps it is not that something is missing from existing remedies, but that the current
frame of sex trafficking must move away from its targeting of women’s bodies and instead focus
on the actual, expressed rights of sex workers. The EMPOWER report states: “The rights of
adult trafficked victims as workers must be acknowledged. We should receive recognition of our
work and compensation...” (2003). Indeed, a great deal of the voices critical of current antitrafficking discourse would seek to address the issue under the frame of work and labor. The sex
trafficking framework, using and producing notions of the sex worker as a victimized object,
cannot address sex work as labor. However, understanding sex work precisely as labor may stand
to produce the most gains for the women involved.
Escaping the ideological and imperial logics surrounding sex work would clearly expand
the scope and means of remedy for the actual, identifiable harms of trafficking. The HernandezTruyol article discussed above provides a comprehensive and instrumental approach to this
problem. Beginning with the notion of labor as a fundamental human right, the authors argue
that it is violative of such rights to consider sex trafficking exploitative or abusive per se. Instead,
it must be asked in any case whether or not the labor arrangement meets conditions of slavery,
forced/coerced labor or exploitative labor (2006, 428-38). By avoiding the initial roil over
whether prostitution can be considered labor, instead presuming sex work to be a form of labor
and then interrogating its possible unjustness qua labor, much more work can be done. The labor
40
The most recent U.S. Trafficking in Persons Report carries such photographs, accompanied by narrative, on almost
every other page.
51
framework does not guarantee a solution, but turning the problems of sex work into problems
of labor diverts the scrutiny and power of the state away from the regulation and disciplining of
women’s bodies and agency.
Shifting the frame of sex trafficking away from values based upon control of women’s
bodies and the non-agency of victimized identities provides a potential way out of the vicious
circularity between anti-trafficking rhetoric’s construction of the victimized third-world
prostitute and the ensuing violence that results. The narrow focus on stopping prostitution, seen
in Kristof’s crusade through Cambodia and CATW’s efforts on a larger scale, bootstraps and
legitimates violence in presuming that the sex worker cannot exert any agency over her body or
labor. In the attempt to create even minimal guarantees against the worst forms of sex trafficking
abuse and labor exploitation, the administrative apparatus of state and parastatal organizations
have spawned vast panoptical, disciplinary machineries. As I have tried to show above, the
rhetoric currently surrounding these problems brings about pernicious and often violent
entailments. In the case of those seeking to cross a border or those targeted by the brothel raid,
these results and mechanisms of control vastly outstrip the structure of the security granted in
fact. Changing this rhetoric from a language of control over women’s bodies to one where sex
workers and women can control the conditions of their own labor may be one of the first steps
needed to end this violent cycle.
Appendix: Definitions of Trafficking
Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (22 USC §7102)
SEC. 103. Definitions
(3) COMMERCIAL SEX ACT - The term “commercial sex act” means any sex act on account
of which anything of value is given to or received by any person.
(8) SEVERE FORMS OF TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS- The term “severe forms of
trafficking in persons” means-(A) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in
which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age; or
(B) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or
services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to
involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
(9) SEX TRAFFICKING- The term “sex trafficking” means the recruitment, harboring,
transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act.
52
(13) VICTIM OF A SEVERE FORM OF TRAFFICKING- The term “victim of a severe form
of trafficking” means a person subject to an act or practice described in paragraph (8).
(14) VICTIM OF TRAFFICKING- The term “victim of trafficking” means a person subjected
to an act or practice described in paragraph (8) or (9).
Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and
Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime
Article 3: Use of Terms
For the purposes of this Protocol:
( a ) ”Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or
receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of
abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of
the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control
over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum,
the exploitation of 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;
( b ) The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in
subparagraph ( a ) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in
subparagraph ( a ) have been used;
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53
Halley, Janet, Prabha Kotiswaran, Hila Shamir and Chantal Thomas. “From the International to
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54
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55
Na dia Ila hi is a re ce nt gra dua te o f the M. A. progra m i n So ciol o gy- Anthro pol o gy a t The Am erica n
Uni ve rsi ty in C airo ( AU C). S he cu rrently resides in C airo , E gy pt a nd wo rks at AU C as a rese arche r
fo r bo th the Cynthia Nels o n I ns titute fo r G e nder a nd Wo me n’s S tu di es a nd the Ce nte r for M igrati o n
and Re fu ge e Studi es. Her intell e ctual i nte res ts revol ve arou nd ge nde r and sex uality , wi th s pe cifi c
fo cus o n issu es of ge nde re d perfo rma nce and mobili ty i n publi c s pa ce.
! !!
! ! ! !! !
Gendered Contestations: An Analysis of Street
Harassment in Cairo and its Implications For
Women’s Access to Public Spaces
by Nadia Ilahi
The city offers untrammeled sexual experience; in the city the forbidden – what is most feared and desired –
becomes possible. Woman is present in cities as temptress, as whore, as fallen woman, as lesbian, but also as
virtuous womanhood in danger, as heroic womanhood who triumphs over temptation and tribulation. (Wilson
1991, 6)
Introduction
Street harassment in Egypt is a widespread phenomenon that women from a variety of
backgrounds, circumstances and social locations experience on almost a daily basis. Harassment
hinders women’s mobility and infringes on their access to public spaces. Gender inequity and
multiple exclusions of women from public spaces produce a masculinisation of these spaces in
urban settings. In this, women are forced to perform a model femininity to retain their
respectability in the street. This paper explores street harassment and its implications for social
change among a small sample of foreign and Egyptian women. This research draws heavily upon
data gathered from Fall 2006 - Spring 2008 using textual analyses of in-depth, informal
interviews conducted in English and Arabic with men and women, as well as previously collected
data from a small sample of surveys distributed in the fall of 2006 around various parts of Cairo.
The street is a gendered space that operates within dynamics of class and race, forging
interactions between many groups of people.
For this reason, I explore the local and global implications of harassment within the
context of the body politic. I compare the relationship of the Egyptian state to feminist agendas
operative within civil society. I also examine the intersections of gender, race and class within
Egypt. Women’s responses demonstrate the ways in which they discursively negotiate urban
spaces through a multitude of practices. This examination of street harassment is an attempt to
underscore and further understand the collective experiences of women in their everyday lives as
social actors negotiating public space. In turn, their behaviours at times contest the framework of
what constitutes masculine and feminine by reshaping what their very presence means in urban
areas.
56
That which keeps women from participating equally in various religious, political and
social public spheres impinges upon their experience of public space. The public sphere in
Habermasian terms denotes “the entire realm of our social life in which something approaching
public opinion can be formed,” (Habermas 1964, 49) which includes material spaces. Salwa
Ismail adds to this notion in pointing out the public sphere embodies a space of debate and
deliberation as well as the construction of “public subjects through techniques of marking,
differentiation and identification” (2007, 7). In what ways are the experiences of urban spaces
gendered? Wilson argues, “Both western and non-western societies have regulated women’s
movement in cities, although to varying degrees” (1991, 16). In fleshing out the gendered
ambiguities cities have accumulated, Wilson draws upon the notion that women nefariously
represent urban chaos in opposition to their male counterparts. As she traces the city from
eighteenth century London to postmodern L.A., the city gains ambiguity. Wilson’s reading of the
“flaneur” as strollers and loiterers etch into context the gendered conditions of such an
experience:
George Sand was one of the most successful of nineteenth-century French writers…She
described how, disguised as a man, she could experience the pleasure of being a flaneur –
a stroller, that quintessentially Parisian way of relating to the modern industrial city of the
nineteenth century: ‘no one knew me, no one looked at me…I was an atom lost in that
immense crowd.’ (Wilson 1991, 52)
Much of what Wilson purports necessitates the need to explore women’s relationship to and
notions of gendered harassment in urban space. The female flaneur in Europe will experience
the aspects of city streets differently than in parts of the Middle East. In Egypt, Cairo’s streets
are a major point of convergence for all people. The streets host unrelenting human and
automobile traffic at all hours of the day, and the social activities of street space are not limited
to the selling and purchasing of goods, people watching or protesting. Women are commonly
seen outside in Cairo’s streets where they face gendered hostilities. According to Wilson,
women’s presence in urban spaces were read as a problem of order, partly because their presence
“symbolized the promise of sexual adventure” (1999, 6).
The early twentieth century European view of women as problematic, endowed with
unbridled sexuality, can be seen as justifying masculinist understandings of women in public
spaces in parts of today’s Middle East. According to Bruce Dunne (1998), masculinistappropriated Islamic doctrine concerns itself with women in very particular ways. The charms or
seductive powers of women are viewed as a source of “fitna” or social chaos that usurps the
rightly guided rationale of men. Pertaining to earlier Islamic societies, Dunne adds, “Social
segregation was legitimized in part by constructing ‘male’ and ‘female’ as opposites: men as
rational and capable of self-control; women as emotional and lacking self-control, particularly of
sexual drives” (1998, 9). If in the Middle East, masculinity has in many ways been shaped in
opposition to the feminine, femininity always bears some relation to masculinity. Simone de
Beauvoir frames this argument historically in The Second Sex, underscoring the ways in which the
female subject has been cast as inadequate to man, both biologically and culturally. Cognizant of
the importance of context, de Beauvoir notes, “These facts take on quite different values
according to the economic and social context” (1968, 53).
57
Discursively-shaped behaviors of men and women are performed through particular
appropriations of gender division informed by specific contexts. Butler frames the notion of
gender performativity as demonstrating ways in which “reified and naturalized conceptions of
gender might be understood as constituted and, hence, capable of being constituted differently”
(1988, 520). Gender in Cairo is not perceived as fluid, but is rather more narrowly understood as
either male or female. In those narrow confines are ascribed aspects of behavior. Gender
performance offers one lens for locating and understanding sexual harassment in Egypt as a
form of punishment; in Butler’s terms, “Those who fail to do their gender right are regularly
punished” (1988, 520). In the nascent stages of this research, I found that women who respond
verbally or physically to men who harass them are seen as acting outside of their appropriate
gender category as females, when local practice dictates women should ignore them and walk
away in order to retain their respectability.
Defining the Problem
A working definition proposed by Cynthia Grant Bowman defines street harassment as verbal
and non-verbal behaviours that characterise the targets of harassment as female, the harassers as
both male and strangers to their targets and the encounter as forced and taking place in public
spaces such as the street, sidewalk or metro station. Bowman argues street harassment hinders
women’s mobility and participation within the public domain: “In this sense, street harassment
accomplishes an informal ghettoization of women – a ghettoization to the private sphere of
hearth and home” (1993, 520).
Emanuela Guano draws on a variety of interesting parallels in her exploration of public
harassment in Genoa, Italy. While examining the discourse and practices associated with gender
performance, Guano argues that women modify their public behaviours in order not to draw
unwanted male attention, therein resisting “their exclusion from the public domain even as they
reproduce the restrictions that weaken their claim to it” (2007, 66). Guano’s insights are
particularly relevant and useful in the case of street harassment in Cairo, where traditional gender
binaries between men and women perceived largely through performance seemingly exclude
women from the public sphere that is largely marked as masculine. Highlighting the violence of
such exclusion, Elizabeth Arveda Kissling, in her brief comparative study of street harassment
from the United States to the Arab world, states that the multiple functions of street harassment
– which range from complimenting women to social control – all “work together to produce an
environment of sexual terrorism” (1991, 451).
There should be an introductory sentence here; if it this belongs to the paragraph above,
you need a sentence that links this conceptually to the paragraph above. Arguing that women
and men experience space differently in Cairo, I highlight a number of instances of harassment
that shape an understanding of women’s preoccupations with their sense of space and personal
safety. One foreign informant, Erika (pseudonym), said:
I have been groped, stared at, catcalled, and made to feel very unwelcome on the streets of Cairo.
I find that in general the worst incidents happen in the street and so I try to take taxis and not
walk in the street, which is very annoying because I like walking the city. I am always conscious
58
of my body in Egypt and feeling ashamed if I draw any attention. Is it a coincidence that these
guys have been doing this or is it becoming normal?41
Her comment suggests the multiple exclusions women face in the streets as well as the
normalisation of the male practice of street harassment. Although space is an imagined category
that is experienced by men and women, it develops corporeality within certain masculine
performances such as catcalling women, making lewd comments, staring, groping and following,
which in turn render space a contested category which cuts across race, class and gendered lines.
During the 2006 Eid El Fitr holiday, a celebration that marks the end of Ramadan, the
Islamic holy month of fasting, a series of vicious attacks against women commenced in
downtown Cairo. The events that took place occurred during a new movie opening. Dina, a
famous Egyptian belly dancer, was purported to have been there, dancing “wildly at the entrance
of the cinema with scant regard of the professional etiquettes expected of artists” [sic]42 It is then
understood that when the movie sold out, the men who could not get in rioted, first charging the
box office and then attacking veiled and un-veiled women passersby. Egyptian bloggers were
among the first to lament the fact state media’s neglect of the issue; and when finally confronted
and forced to respond, state media talked about public harassment as an isolated incident rather
than a widespread, urban, social issue. The bloggers criticise Egyptian society as a whole for its
myopic attitude towards harassment of women.
The juxtaposition between culture and religion reflects a significant series of changes
that have taken place in Egypt over the past several years. An influx of satellite television and
internet signalled marked technological advancements and heightened material evidence of
economic disparity, while the rise of religious conservatism or the Islamic movement connoted a
backlash against the perceived ills of Western modernity. Haideh Moghissi illustrates this point
well, noting how “by selectively appropriating [the] past, lending it divinity and imposing it on
the present, the struggle of socially disadvantaged groups and classes is diverted from the centres
of power to ‘imagined’ areas of conflict (e.g., women’s dress)” (2005, 161).
This tension helps to create naturalised dichotomies, assigning women as sole members
of the private sphere and men as proprietors of the public sphere - a relationship of social
hierarchy. Furthermore, street harassment hinders women’s mobility as it escalates and continues
to be ignored by patriarchal, state structures. As women vie for basic rights within human rights
frameworks, where do they belong as citizens within the Egyptian nationalist project? Local
Egyptian feminist organizations such as the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights (ECWR) are
actively working to create a campaign which seeks to eradicate “sexual harassment.” A current
study undertaken by ECWR surveyed over 1,000 Egyptian men and women, concluding that
62% of Egyptian men surveyed admitted to harassing women (Hassan, Shoukry and Abdel
Komsan 2008). ECWR defines harassment as any uninvited behavior that is sexual in nature and
makes women feel uncomfortable or unsafe. This includes behaviors such as calling out in an
obscene or threatening way, following or stalking, fondling, and even indecent exposure,
masturbation or assault (Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights 2007).
41
42
Ilahi Interview Notes 2006
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&article=88655&d=18&m=11&y=2006
59
The term “sexual harassment” is a new concept in Egypt. Commonly referred to as a
Western concept, a more nuanced examination of the term should precede its use in a wide
range of cultural settings. The meaning of “sexual harassment” translated into Arabic carries
serious and negative connotations. So part of the problem the ECWR faces is being able to
normalize the term “sexual harassment” just as the behavior they mean to describe has become
so prevalent. For the purposes of my research, I adopt the term street harassment, the local
manifestation of which fits the definition proposed by anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo:
Street harassment occurs when one or more strange men accost one or more women…in a
public place which is not the woman’s/women’s worksite. Through looks, words, or gestures the
man asserts his right to intrude on the woman’s attention, defining her as a sexual object, and
forcing her to interact with him. (di Leonardo 1981, 51-52)
The parameters of what counts as public harassment against women undoubtedly stem from a
hegemonic, Euro-American definition. To locate street harassment as a form of sexual violence
against Arab and non-Arab women in a Western, contextual understanding of the term sets
limitations for a culturally-based explanation of the issue. In problematizing the idea of a
“universal oppression” of women, Sherry Ortner challenges this distinction of universal versus
particular in a number of ways. Like Ortner, I argue that in order to properly situate the problem
of male harassment against women in Egypt, we must situate harassment in a cultural and
historical moment. Ortner posits “that each culture, in its own way and in its own terms, makes
this evaluation” (1972, 7). Ortner constructs three types of data sets, assigning female groups as
subordinate or oppressed in terms of elements of cultural ideology, symbolic devices or social
rules – gestures that weaken the vantage points of women in various societies (1972, 3).
Importantly, Ortner exposes the dynamics involved in the production of gender inequity.
However, problematic as a concept in Egypt, harassment is largely overlooked by the state as an
endemic form of violence against women. It is partly ignored because women do not commonly
report cases of harassment to the police: police are some of the worst harassers and therefore, it
becomes pointless to seek help from them. One frustrated respondent commented, “I live in
Garden City where all the streets are blocked off with officers. Needless to say, I am harassed
with all sorts of comments from them on a daily basis.”43
Even men feel powerless at times in dealing with law enforcement. In a conversation
with Ahmed, a middle-aged Egyptian man, lamented:
I was walking along the Nile and noticed a man standing facing the water. He had his eye on two
veiled women who were seated on a bench nearby. As I approached, I noticed he was
masturbating. My first instinct was to react violently, throw him in the river, but I saw a
policeman standing nearby. I ran up to him and told him what was going on, sure that he would
apprehend the man and make an example out of him. I was so angry when he met my words
with a blank face and muttered, ‘You’ll have to find another police officer elsewhere; I don’t
patrol this area.’44
43
44
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The apathy of state police and the absence of any anti-harassment laws further complicate the
notion of reporting while sending a message to men that public violence against women is
acceptable. Additionally, women fail to report sexual crimes to avoid being blamed for the way
they were dressed or seemingly behaving at the time of the incident. This suggests a tacit
acceptance of normalized everyday sexual violence as condoned by the state against all women,
regardless of their social location. Because there are no harassment statistics reported to the
police that would substantiate it as a problem, government officials can then vehemently deny
the seriousness of this problem.
The Intersection of Gender, Race and Class with Street Harassment
Research undertaken in the autumn of 2006 suggests that race plays a crucial role in street
harassment. Although race cannot be easily defined, for the purposes of this research, I will situate
race as a shared, lived experience by women in Cairo. In the most literal ways, race will be viewed
in terms of what women say in their narratives.
The many Egyptian and foreign women who took part in my research believed that all
women receive some degree of harassment, but those whose features stood out more in terms of
skin colour and ethnicity felt prone to higher and more severe degrees of harassment. To be a
non-Egyptian may distinguish a person as an outsider, potentially open to unwanted sexist and
racist remarks in public places. One respondent observed: “I think skin color makes a huge
difference; my women friends who look more explicitly foreign [those who are very white or
very dark skinned] get tons more remarks and harassment than I do because I look Egyptian.”45
While women who fall outside the physically-denoted demarcations of “Egyptian” may
receive racialized comment and a higher degree of harassment, all women are subject to
discrimination, made to feel unsettled about their presence and sense of physical space. As a
mechanism to conform, women modify their movements and daily actions. Many who have
moved to Egypt reported that they have made alterations in their form of dress and movement,
such as wearing scarves to cover their chests or,purposely veering away from and avoiding eye
contact with men considered to be potential threats. In turn, I read these as important strategies
women cultivate in order to diffuse harassment.
In 2005, the violent removal of Sudanese refugees camped in Mohandessin, a suburb of
Giza, underscores underlying racial tensions in Egypt. Race is a somewhat divisive issue in Egypt.
As a country situated in both Africa and the Middle East, many Egyptians scoff at the idea of
identifying as African. Tensions between Egyptians and Africans are manifested in a range of
milieus. In this example, I examine race in a transnational context. One cannot overlook the
treatment of many Sudanese refugees vying for survival while simultaneously facing barriers such
as harassment and discrimination in Cairo. Al-Ahram, an Egyptian state newspaper, featured an
article entitled, “Radical Refugees” which underscored the racism Sudanese asylum seekers face
publicly in parts of Cairo:
They bitterly complain of the hostility meted out to them on the streets of Cairo. ‘We are called
names and children make faces at us. We want to be relocated to a country where there is no
45
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61
racism,’ said one of the protesters. ‘We want to go to a country where no one hurls racist remarks
at us.’ (Nkrumah 2005)
Other informants in my study recounted incidents of racialized harassment in the streets as they
described being called names such as sarmada [black/dirt] and abd [slave] in Arabic racist slang.
African-American women and women from sub-Saharan Africa attested to similar situations in the
street and problematic encounters with men who view them as prostitutes because they are black.
Cases like this highlight the objectification and commodification of black bodies. Jane, a young
Kenyan woman related the events of being followed home by a man:
He actually followed me up the stairs to my flat and then took off his trousers revealing himself to
me in the hallway. I screamed and chased him out of the building. I was mortified and no one tried
to stop him as he fled through the street.46
Gender, race and class, as they relate to harassment, bring to light aspects of male privilege on
with space. In an examination of the effects of racial and gender discrimination, Laura Beth
Nielsen argues that “members of traditionally disadvantaged groups [i.e. women] face a strikingly
different reality on the street than do members of privileged groups [men]” (2002, 279). She
discusses the similar tensions women and African Americans feel in their encounters with street
harassment, which involves being targets of hate speech in public places. In a study involving indepth interviews with people in Northern California, Nielsen concluded that acts of hate speech,
like street harassment, are not “isolated incidents; rather, they are embedded in social structures
and hierarchies” (2002, 279).
Women face similar circumstances globally in being targets of public harassment. Tying
Nielsen’s study into my own, I am critical of how the state minimizes the seriousness of violence
against women by caricaturizing harassment as isolated incidents. Harassment against women in
Egypt is endemic; women constantly vent to me how they cannot simply walk in the streets in
peace. “You have to psychologically prepare yourself to go out and run a simple errand because of
the harassment you are most likely going to face,”47 Selma, a student at Ain Shams University
commented. Our social positions as women are interwoven in our experiences of the city.
Class, like race, is also embedded within notions of public harassment. While class is linked
to certain privileges or disparities among certain groups, upper class women, depending on the
time they spend walking in the city, are not protected by their social status. Shilpa Phadke
demonstrates the division of public space through class arguing that women are barred from public
space but not in the same way. Phadke writes that because of access to economic capital through
private infrastructure and cultural capital through education, middle class women have greater
access to public space (2007, 1513). The symbolic capital of the middle-class woman affords her
the privilege and class status of being less visible in the street. For those who rely on public
transportation, avoiding harassment is a daily ritual. Hind, a woman I interviewed from Shobra, a
large, poor district in Cairo, admitted to slapping a man who grabbed her from behind on a
microbus:
46
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47
Ilahi Personal Communication 2007
62
He was sitting behind me on the bus, and I remember feeling his hand on me. I reached around,
slapped him in the face, calling him hiawan [Arabic insult meaning animal], and the whole scene
drew so much attention, he got kicked off the bus.48
Having a car, chauffeur or someone to run errands may serve as strategies employed by women
from higher classes to avoid street harassment. For some women, having a car drastically
changes their lives. Reham, an Egyptian woman I interviewed, explained that her car affords her
safety from the pressures of people in the street, as well as room to dress less conservatively. In
this case, the car can come to represent a mobile (but not impenetrable) private space which
women appropriate in order to negotiate their mobility.49 The privilege of having a car and the
effect of being less visible in street space further reifies the gendered public/private dichotomy.
In cars, women are hardly seen except through windows, encased in compound-like structures
that work to maintain a strict sense of separation.
Women in the street are not shielded by their class status and professional privilege.
Having a car may provide temporary refuge from street harassment, but once outside its
confines, women are again exposed to unwanted attention. May, a student from Cairo University
in the Faculty of Dentistry commented:
A colleague of mine had just parked her car and this guy came up to her and showed her his
penis. Then, she just got out of the car and ran. The word had spread that this guy has been
doing this to several girls who parked in that area.50
May’s testimony about her friend reveals the blatant and crude behaviours which embody
street harassment, as well as women’s fears and responses when confronted publicly in such a
manner. Women’s narratives on street harassment urge us to question why it becomes so
endemic.
Reflections on Why…
Conversations with both men and women draw upon three major themes of why men harass: a
harsh economy, gender disparities and socio-cultural-religious explanations. I focus on
examining the discourse of these themes as people associated them with rising unemployment,
religious conservatism and women’s dress.
The global crisis of rising food and gas prices along with high rates of unemployment in
Egypt are reflected in people’s explanations for explaining the increase in harassment. Galal
Amin underscored this notion in his discussion of Egypt’s high unemployment problem, which
started in the late 1980s, and stemmed from decreased migration of employed workers to the
Gulf region of the Middle East. Since that time, Egypt has seen its population rise by 50%, and
unemployed youth between the ages of 15-24 years old, when not in school, spend their time
idling in the streets (Amin 2006). Due to financial woes, men and women face longer delays
48
Ilahi Personal Communication 2008
Men still harass women while driving or being driven in cars by following them.
50
Ilahi Personal Communication 2006
49
63
before marriage, beset by the costs of securing housing, furnishings and basic security. Both men
and women I interviewed recall the disparity in young people being able to afford getting
married because of the high costs involved in the process. A New York Times article recently
noted, “Here in Egypt and across the Middle East, many young people are being forced to put
off marriage, the gateway to independence, sexual activity and societal respect. And so, instead of
marrying, people wait and seek religious outlets for their frustrations” (Slackman 2008).
Respondents in my study suggest that harassment functions as an outlet because of the growing
frustration and sexual repression caused by delaying marriage. Sex before marriage in Islam is
considered a sin and is punishable by law in Egypt. Religion discursively dictates the behavioral
practices of men and women. Sexual repression as a way to understand harassment is reductive
and minimizes women’s experiences of sexual repression. Due to the limitations of my research, I
did not delve into examining how sexually frustrated women cope in a society where the laws
against pre-marital sex are harsh. However, in understanding how particular aspects of
masculinity are produced, the notion of “sexual repression” was a feature of this discussion.
With the rise in Islamic religious conservatism since the 1980s, markers of Islamic piety, as seen
through the veiling practice of hijab, are increasingly popular. Some suggest the hijab helps to
empower women in particular ways, yet it must also be recognized that it leaves them open to
street harassment.
Religious Islamic conservatism as a trend corresponds with the rise in harassment.
Informants I spoke to often vented about diminishing respect towards women and its relation to
religious custom, which they believe fuels harassment. There is nostalgia for the past, around 15-20
years ago, when many claim that harassment like this did not exist. Often times, I have heard
young people make comments such as, “Our mothers used to walk around in mini skirts,
displaying French high fashion with their hair beautifully coiffed.” Interestingly, the
aforementioned New York Times article portrays more and more young people adhering to a more
traditional Islamic lifestyle as a way to cope with economic instability: “More young people are
observing stricter separation between boys and girls, sociologists say, fueling sexual frustrations”
(Slackman 2008).
Religious responses to harassment continue to urge women to veil in order to evade
harassment. The absence of veiling becomes a tool to blame women for being harassed. For
example, an email campaign urging women to veil in Egypt warns, “A veil to protect or the eyes
will molest” (Knickmeyer 2008). The accompanying picture oddly compares men to flies and
women to pieces of candy. The first of two images uses a piece of untouched and covered candy
to represent the ideal, veiled Muslim woman. In the next image, silhouettes of unveiled women
wearing tight clothing are compared to sticky pieces of uncovered candy. This message clearly
links women to notions of sexual chaos, whereby because of their presumed sexual powers, held
within notions of their femininity, men are unable to control themselves.
In some of my discussions with men, I gathered they had difficulty accepting behaviour
as a form of harassment. One man I spoke to named Maged, a tailor from Cairo who works with
his uncle making clothing near the district of Hussein, expressed firm denial. He defined
harassment as having purpose to either 1) engage in sexual discussion or 2) have fun and flirt
with a woman. When I ran down a list of behaviours, explaining why they made women
64
uncomfortable, he exhaled from his cigarette and leaning in towards me, he said, “They say no,
but they mean yes. These women walk suggestively, wearing makeup and we men are supposed
to just ignore it.”51
Women’s dress and behaviour come under scrutiny and criticism within the discussion.
The hijab is worn freely and eclectically by Egyptian and non-Egyptian Muslim women in Cairo.
The styles of hijab range from conservative, covering the whole body of a woman, to extremely
chic, covering a woman’s hair, yet revealing stylish tight-fitting clothing. The popularity of the
hijab has fetishized particular forms, where in some cases, women wearing the niqab (a scarf
covering the face) are assumed to be either hiding one of two things-their beauty or the
possibility that they could be prostitutes manoeuvring through spaces unrecognized. So too,
women in hijab are not free from the judgmental gaze of others. Blame is usually placed on
women in that they are somehow “asking for it.” A male informant named Wael confessed to
me in an interview that he routinely harasses women. When I asked him why, he replied:
You can tell the type of girls that are looking for it. You can feel it off of them. They walk
swaying their hips and looking at men. A woman who doesn’t want to be harassed would not do
that.52
The good girl/bad girl dichotomy makes it difficult to move beyond conceptions of masculinity
where “boys will be boys” and femininity that suggests silent acceptance of men’s behaviour.
Veiling does not exempt women from gender inequity in public spaces.
Dovetailing with Ismail’s earlier mention of identification practices in public space, the
appropriation of the veil and other markers of piety by some Muslim women is one way in which
the visible signs of one’s religiosity argue her right to public participation. Ismail also emphasizes
“that such practices discipline the self while also opening up spaces for resistance” (2007, 15). It
is important to note that not all Muslim women veil and the practice of hijab does not
necessarily imply a particular political position. The practice of veiling in Egypt specifically
demonstrates that while the hijab is adopted by some women to reaffirm religiosity, it may also
be worn to contest exclusion and harassment within public space.
The veil and its growing popularity is one of the ways in which women renegotiate
moving through the public sphere. MacLeod interprets the prevalence of veiling in Cairo as
“accommodating protest” in terms of women’s simultaneous resistance and subordination to
gendered dimensions of power. In a cultural study of working class Muslim women in Egypt,
Macleod focuses on the veiling movement in Cairo in order to situate women’s decisions to veil
within the matrices of “power, protest and accommodation” (1992, 535). Within this practice,
working class women subscribe to Islamic notions of femininity while appropriating the veil to
maneuver through space, attain employment and protest perceptions of their identities as
oppressed and confined because they veil. Veiling and avoidance of eye contact serve as a form of
what Jane Khatib-Chahidi (1981) calls “fictive invisibility,” where women methodically try to draw
51
52
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less attention to themselves from men in order to maintain their respectability, while attaining
more public freedom.
Fear, Space and Modification
Street harassment is a public safety concern for women. Women in this study negotiate personal
safety by managing aspects of personal space. The variety of public-private spaces, such as the
women’s car in the metro underground, are limited in the protection they serve to women. It is the
upholding of particular gendered behavioural expectations which shape discontinuities between
safety and reputation for women. Hille Koskela and Kristen Day both examine women’s fear in
public spaces as shaped by violence and sexual harassment. In terms of gendered power relations,
Koskela finds that “by restricting their mobility because of fear, women unwittingly reproduce
masculine domination over space” (1999, 113). Day situates masculinity in opposition to women’s
fear in public spaces, where performance of “bad boys” masculinity or that of “chivalrous” men
depend on the sense of a woman’s vulnerability in maintaining these roles. In this context, the
performance of particular aspects of gender highlights the disparity in equal access to space.
However, in order to negotiate this, Egyptian and foreign women differently employ traditional
aspects of feminine-associated modesty as strategies to maneuver through space safely.
My interviews with women revealed ways in which, through fear of being harassed, they
modify their own movement within urban spaces. One woman noted:
I ask my husband to respond verbally or switch places with me so I am further away from the
harasser, asked male friends to do the same. I try to make sure I am not walking by myself or
riding the metro by myself, and I ride in the women’s car on the Metro. I’ve stopped going to
certain places, like Talaat Harb in downtown for instance.53
Phadke’s work on public space in India suggests taking an active stance toward the issue of
safety. She urges us to explore the realm of feminist rights to the city and argues that passive
modes of seeking safety is an unviable feminist strategy to enhance access to public space. With
such an approach, performing respectability and issues of honor take precedence over women’s
safety (Phadke 2007, 1512). Dressing differently, avoiding eye contact and not walking alone are
examples of how daily life is modified in urban spaces by foreign and Egyptian women. In leftist
feminist terms, women are then marginalized because the act of performing their “worthiness of
being protected,” outweighs their right to basic tenets of safety and legal recourse. Observantly,
when I saw women out walking at night, the majority were relying on male escorts such as
relatives, co-workers or boyfriends. This strategy may reproduce the gendered notions built up
within society about a woman’s place being in the home unless accompanied outside by a male.
Fear acting as a mechanism to drive women back into dichotomous conceptions of space limits
their equal access to public spaces and infantilizes them as helpless and prone to danger by men.
53
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66
Conclusion: Agency, Resistance and Negotiating Public Spaces
Street harassment serves as a means to maintain traditional gender norms that mask male violence
against women, which is grossly ignored and portrayed as insignificant by the Egyptian state. It is a
masculine performance rooted in normative patriarchal ideals. Through participating in
harassment, men maintain privileges of space over women. Subsequently, women are relegated to
traditional feminine roles directly linked to their behaviour and dress, following Phadke, help
constitute their role in upholding patriarchal values of control over their bodies. More and more
women push gendered boundaries by aggressively fighting back alongside Egyptian feminists. They
continue to oppose the absence of harassment laws and the practices perpetrated against the
female body that continue to oppress women. Today’s Egyptian feminists would help create a safer
environment for women spanning diverse class boundaries by focusing on redirecting efforts to
encourage alternate forms of masculinity and femininity. Social space as felt in Egypt does convey
a different set of experiences for men and women, and further research is needed to illustrate how
particular feminist notions of reclaiming space are impacted by class divisions. Women in Egypt
are reclaiming space, and it is men and women alike who challenge or acquiesce to the various
meanings of these spaces.
References
Amin, Galal. “Socio-economic Interpretations of the West el Balad Events.” Presented at the
IGWS Sexual Harassment Forum, Cairo, December 4, 2006.
Arab News. “Egyptian Belly Dancer Dina Investigated for Dacing ‘Wildly.’” Arab News.
(November 11, 2006)
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9&section=0&article=88655&d=18&m=11&y=2006 (last
accessed May 1, 2009)
Bowman, Cynthia Grant. “Street Harassment and the Informal Ghettoization of Women.”
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Ali A tef re cei ve d his B. A. from T he A me ri ca n Uni ve rsi ty i n Cai ro i n A nthro polo gy and Poli tical
Sci ence. Cu rre ntly , he is a n A nthropolo gy M. A. ca ndida te at C olum bia Uni versi ty. T hrou gh an
inte rnshi p a t the W om en’s Inte rna tio nal P ea ce M o ve me nt i n E gy pt, he b e ca me di re ctly i nvo lve d
wi th issu es re ga rdi ng “ wo me n, pe a ce and se cu rity. ”
“Women and Security”: Interview with Anne
Marie Goetz
by Ali Atef
What are the contested relationships between gender and conflict? More specifically, how have scholars
and policy makers been involved in debating and/or operationalizing the field of “women and security”?
How do feminist activists and academics, in their variety, debate and implement these relationships?
At the international policy level, two UN resolutions have given focus to these questions. United Nations
Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on women, peace and security, and more recently
UNSCR 1820, have been seen as groundbreaking resolutions in the field of “women and security.” In
tandem with the newest Progress of the World’s Women Report, Ali Atef from the Surfacing
Collective asks Anne-Marie Goetz, Chief Advisor for the Governance, Peace and Security program at
the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), for her thoughts.
Ali Atef: The newly released Progress of the World’s Women report “Who Answers to
Women?” came out in late 2008, and, as lead author, you argued that accountability only
begins with the recognition that increasing the number of women in decision making
positions is needed. The report clearly says that we have to go further. I was just
wondering what were some of the motivations behind this position and what are the
priorities with regard to “women and security,” particularly with regard to this argument
that women need to be more present in power-making apparatuses.
Anne-Marie Goetz: There are two distinct issues here. One is the general issue of
accountability and the place of decision making and political power in accountability
systems, so I’ll just quickly explain what that’s about. UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s
Women report says that it’s extremely important to change the character and composition
of decision making in the sense that it is male-dominated and of course elite-dominated
around the world and that it’s only a matter of democratic justice that there be more
women in power.
What does that have to do with accountability? Our report argues that you don’t
necessarily get better decision making or better governance for women or governance in
the interest of gender equality simply by virtue of having more women in public office.
What would change things is much more gender responsiveness in public policy agendas,
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and there’s no reason why men can’t be responsible for that too. But what we do need is
to have different interests, particularly women’s interests, represented amongst decision
makers. It does happen to be the case that many very important changes for women –
legislative changes, justice changes, policy changes – have occurred as a result of women
being in public office. Just a couple of obvious examples: there was no prosecution in an
international war crimes tribunal for systematic widespread sexual violence until
Navanethem Pillay introduced a prosecution in the tribunal for Rwanda, and similarly,
Carla del Ponte pioneered prosecution on gender-related atrocities. No male judge ever
took that initiative. So, it does make a difference having women in public office, but it
doesn’t happen automatically. I would say it’s about the nature of their ideologies and
ideas, not necessarily about their gender.
It’s a separate question when you say, “What do I see as the priorities for ‘women and
security’ at the moment?”; and I’m glad you’ve asked that question, because I think we’re
at a critical moment on the women, peace and security agenda. As you know,
international and national security have never been defined as matters that involve
women’s security, and in fact, in many countries women live in a state of heightened
insecurity and injustice and that’s not considered to be a problem for justice institutions
or for law enforcement institutions. As an example: in some countries, rapes within
marriage or domestic violence are not effectively criminalized, and even if regarded as
crimes, they are inadequately policed, investigated or prosecuted. As you know in many
countries, the least well-prosecuted crime is sexual violence between women and men,
where a tiny fraction gets reported and an even tinier fraction goes to court, and of
those, an even tinier fraction results in conviction. The point is you can have heightened
insecurity for women, and security systems don’t recognize it. This has become
particularly a problem in post-conflict contexts where, for example, in Sierra Leone,
Liberia, or DR Congo, in Nepal or East Timor, there are heightened levels of sexual
violence, of rape and other forms of sexual violence against women and children. We
don’t know if levels have gone up after conflict or if it’s just the case that with stability
women can report more – or [that] more attention can be paid to these issues. We don’t
know. But the point is, the war isn’t over for women. Women still can’t go out in Liberia
after dark; many women aren’t safe in their own homes, and they’re certainly not safe in
their societies. And if they do get attacked, there is no justice. There is no effective
prosecution capability. So, with regard to women and security, priority number one is
indeed just security: women’s physical safety both during and after conflict.
Something happened in the Security Council this year which was extremely important.
For too long, women’s physical security, whether in the house or the streets, has been
seen as a woman’s problem. Often, it has mainly been women-related organizations that
respond to sexual violence and violence against women, and the institutions that are set
up to deal with security like the DPKO [Department of Peacekeeping Operations] have
not had adequate doctrine, guidance and response on these matters. But this year, on
June 19, 2008, the Security Council passed resolution 1820, recognizing sexual violence
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in some contexts as a tactic of warfare. This recognizes that sexual violence is a security
issue and that it’s as much a security issue as is mass murder, forced displacement of
civilians, mass starvation or any other civilian atrocity listed as a war crime. By
recognizing that it’s a security problem, the SC recognizes that sexual violence can be
deployed as a deliberate commanded method of warfare and therefore requires a
deliberate commanded security response. This means that security institutions – from
law enforcement, justice, to military boots on the ground – must respond to this
problem.
Atef: Is this linked to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and
Security?
Goetz: The UN has 21 peacekeeping missions of one kind or another, of which just 8
have a mandate to protect civilians. In these 8 UN missions – for instance, DRC,
Lebanon, Haiti, Central African Republic (CAR), Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan, and a couple of
others – the UN has the responsibility to protect civilians. And we discovered in a
conference that we ran this year with ex-force commanders from UN peacekeeping
operations – a conference held in Wilton Park in Sussex at the end of May, with the
support of the UK and Canada, DPKO and UN Action against Sexual Violence in
Conflict – we discovered that in these protection-of-civilian missions, there are no
explicit instructions for troops, police or civilians on what to do when women are being
raped systematically as a method of warfare. And this is particularly the case in places like
Eastern Congo. Military commanders and generals have said that this is an area where
our performance has not been up to the mark and where much more needs to be done in
elaborating military doctrine, concepts of operations, standard operating procedures,
rules of engagement and incentive systems to make sure that we’re protecting women.
And what was so significant about that was the recognition that you cannot have
business as usual when you’re talking about women’s security. Protecting civilians may
require one set of actions but if you’re protecting women from sexual violence it
happens in different spaces at different times than other attacks on civilians. It requires a
different set of intelligence gathering; it requires even different equipment. They talked
about the need for night vision goggles in jungles so that they can apprehend or intercept
rebels who were about to attack a community in the middle of the night or patrolling
between villages and the water point in pre-dawn hours, which is where women are
targeted. So the point is that it requires a different approach to building security, peace
and stabilization. It’s a really important recognition. It shows that we cannot treat UNSC
1325 and the wish to engage women in peace building as business as usual. It requires
different practices.
Atef: Right. You actually mentioned in the report that there are certain groups that are
also working on this; and I believe there was a working group that the UK was part of,
and they were conducting discussions to create guidelines for peacekeepers to know what
to do in response to women’s security needs.
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Goetz: Yes, that’ right.
Atef: Are these connected to what happened in Wilton Park? What was mentioned in the
report is that the working group convened at Wilton Park became part of a lobbying
group that effectively got 1820 to the SC and got it debated and passed.
Goetz: The Wilton Park meeting was a major impetus to the momentum leading to the
passage of resolution 1820. It provided a practical perspective on how we can treat
sexual violence as a security problem and what a security response to sexual violence
would look like. There was much else going on besides. Resolution 1820 was put forward
by the US, and the US ambassador to the Security Council was present at Wilton Park.
Atef: Could you give us a background on Resolution 1820?
Goetz: Resolution 1820 says that sexual violence is a tactic of warfare in certain
circumstances and therefore requires a security response. Not only that, but the SC is
now mandated to send some cases to the Sanctions Committee if governments are found
to be not only failing to protect women from widespread systematic sexual violence but
in fact using it as a means of promoting political or military objectives. So, this is
potentially a strong accountability provision, and it has subsequently been reinforced in
resolution 1857 that renews the mandate of the Sanctions Committee and now mentions
sexual violence as one of the triggers for the Sanctions Committee’s attention. So SCR
1820 is a very strong resolution in that respect, and it demands that the Secretary
General, within a year (by June 2009), come up with a report showing how he’s going to
implement this resolution. And peacekeeping commanders, police leaders and civilian
operators have to come up with guidelines on what they’re going to be doing to protect
women from widespread and systematic sexual violence. It was presented by Condoleeza
Rice, who made a very powerful argument for why this is a security matter, and I think it
reflects a number of developments in the women, peace and security world. One
development, of course, is our effort to point out that there has to be a security response
to sexual violence and this has to be a preventive response, as opposed to simply
patching up the problem afterwards. It also reflects the heightening attention to sexual
violence in the DRC and the Congo, and the way it persists after conflict, seemingly at an
elevated rate, and is used by the rebel groups to control civilian populations. I think it
also possibly came as a reaction to the fact that in January, in Goma in East DRC, there
was a peace conference between the main rebel groups and the government. There was
no effort to include women’s perspectives – and this is in a conflict where women are the
primary victims, and secondly, where amnesty was given to rebels for crimes or sexual
violence and atrocity. So that’s pretty depressing and shocking after 8 years of the
passing of UNSC 1325, with no effort to include women’s views and having given
amnesty for crimes against women. So in some ways, 1820 might be a reaction to that.
And that actually leads me to the other point, which is what do I see as the priorities for
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women and security, and as I said, one of the priorities is getting a definitive security
response to sexual violence. And that includes everything I just talked about: judicial
response, an end to impunity for crimes of sexual violence and an end to amnesty. 1820
says that under no circumstances should amnesty ever be given.
The second thing though, which is a huge priority on the women and security agenda, is
ensuring women’s participation in peace talks and in all conflict resolution efforts (this is
in 1820, too). At UNIFEM, we have done a review of a sample of peace agreements over
the past 8 years and found that the proportion of women on negotiating teams is less
than 10%; the proportion of women’s signatories for peace deals is less than 1.7%; and
the proportion of women negotiators and mediators is 0%. It’s just unacceptable. Eight
years after the passage of a resolution saying that women must be included in peace
processes – and it’s a pure, clear sign that on an official level at least there are still no
women in peace processes – that’s unacceptable.
Atef: Especially for UNSC 1325, there’s a lot of international support that people can
argue; instead of saying, “Just give women specific rights, entitlement and spaces to
elaborate on what they need,” make sure they’re in decision making apparatuses.
Goetz: First of all, you’re right that 1325 does have a strong premise that women have a
constructive contribution to make to peace building. 1820 is addressing a very specific
piece of 1325, which is the issue of sexual violence and the need to prevent it. 1325 does
not fully address the gendered nature of the conduct of belligerent actions, and that’s
what 1820 does. 1820 says some wars – not all – some wars are fought on women’s
bodies. Because of that, they require exactly the same kind of attention from the Council
as the Council would give to a war that involves other methods of warfare, such as
cluster bombs; sexual violence is as destructive of community and of recovery prospects
as are cluster bombs or landmines—although they require a different kind of response.
1820 takes a piece of 1325 and elaborates on it. It also goes beyond 1325 – for instance
1325 does not prohibit amnesty for sexual violence. It says amnesty should, where
possible, be given for crimes of sexual violence. In some parts, 1325 is a very tentative
resolution, and in fact, if you look at it historically, it is one of the first of the spate of
thematic resolutions that were passed in the first five years of the 21st century. And in
contrast to subsequent thematic resolutions, like UNSC 1612, regarding children in
armed conflict, it has somewhat tentative language. It urges and encourages, but it
doesn’t demand. It doesn’t require. It doesn’t prohibit.
Back to the point about women as peace-builders. That point is actually contestable. In
any conflict, you will find women combatants, women fighters, women leaders of
fighting forces and also women who have incited ethnic violence and women who have
an interest in pursuing violence. At the same time, it is also noticeable in many conflicts
that women are leaders of peace building groups, reconciliation and conflict resolution
groups. Women tend to have a very strong interest in recovery, and I think the point of
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1325 is not necessarily to say that women are better at building peace than other social
groups, but simply that they must be included and given a chance. But if we disregard
not just women’s roles as leaders and peace-builders, but also women’s roles in early
recovery, we may be undermining long-term stability. And let me just give you an
example, and this is a third area which I think is a priority for the women, peace, and
security agenda. In countries like Sierra Leone and North Uganda, women don’t have
strong inheritance rights over their spouse’s property. So if a woman loses her husband
in the fighting, she comes back to her house, but sometimes his relatives take over her
house and the land. She and her children have nowhere to go. So my point is: how are
you going to have recovery in agrarian societies if you don’t address women’s economic
rights post-conflict, and specifically their rights to productive property, namely land?
What I see happening now on the women, peace and security agenda is that 1325 is
being enriched by efforts to build on different pieces of it. The sexual violence part was
the most neglected part, because if security and judicial actors aren’t protecting women,
preventing the violence and stopping impunity, then what happens is that women aren’t
able to participate in post-conflict recovery. Frankly, any society that tolerates this level
of horrific violence against women is sending the message that women are not valued
citizens, and therefore, how can they possibly have a role in politics and social life if
they’re not valued citizens? So that has to be tackled urgently; plus, there’s a massive
human rights emergency in places like the eastern Congo.
But there are other pieces of 1325 that need to be strengthened. And I think the next
piece is that something has to be done about the failure to include women in peace
negotiations as mediators, negotiators, observers and experts, and in the implementation
of peace deals.
Atef: And actually, we can segue from there to the lack of a peer review mechanism for
1325 and the lack of accountability. Yes, you say that we need to have more women in
peacekeeping operations, yet there hasn’t been any way to hold people accountable to
that, except by saying, “They’re not applying 1325,” and that’s it. I know EU
Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Walder has been trying to petition global leaders to call for
a heavier implementation of 1325. She hasn’t actually been specific in saying that we
need peer review mechanisms, but she’s saying it needs to be implemented. I was
wondering, how have 1325 practitioners grappled with that critique? I think it also ties in
with some of the earlier stuff you were saying, not just with 1820, but also with the
thematic comparison you make with 1325 and 1612.
Goetz: 1325, frankly, has a rather weak accountability framework of all thematic
resolutions. Currently, its accountability framework is simply an annual report presented
by the Secretary General and written by the office of his special advisor on gender issues
and women’s affairs.
Atef: And an annual debate, as far as I understand?
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Goetz: And an annual open debate. We have no way of holding the system answerable
for its failure to respond. I would have to say that the current Secretary General is trying
to change the situation. He has made really serious efforts to appoint more women
amongst leaders in peacekeeping, so that means special representatives of the SG, who
lead peacekeeping missions. There’s currently a woman Special Representative to the
Secretary General (SRSG) leading the Liberian mission, and there are seven women
deputy special representatives to the SG. There is an increase in the gender composition
of the police groups that are contributed by the UN. It’s up to almost 8% female. But
this is nothing that the SG can control; this is countries that contribute troops, and of
course, Egypt and Jordan, your region, contribute a lot. Not necessarily women. I think
the number of women in the military is still down to 2-3%. But women civilians in
peacekeeping operations are going up. Improvements have been made within the last
year on this. But the real issue is, what are the consequences for failing to prevent attacks
on women civilians? What are the consequences for failing to bring women to peace
talks? There are no consequences, and there is no formal review process. And this is why
we are holding out hopes for 1820. A report on how 1820 is going to be implemented is
due to the council in June, and we’re hoping that that report will contain within it
concrete ideas about implementation, review and accountability.
Atef: And there seems to be optimism behind that? What is your sense?
Goetz: The process of writing that report is being run by the DPKO, and we’re
expecting that it will be an inclusive consultative process in which we’ll have a chance to
input ideas about accountability. There is certainly an appetite for very strong
accountability measures and applying lessons learnt about 1325. Countering that is the
fact that measures that are going to impose costs on the Council members in terms of
time or money will not be popular. In our view here at UNIFEM, there are some strong
accountability tools already within the resolution, and also within the system, from which
we can start pulling together a more effective tracking of sexual violence. For instance,
the resolution calls on the Secretary General to enter into dialogue with parties to armed
conflict on this question of sexual violence. It’s actually pretty powerful that the Security
Council asks the Secretary General to do this. It’s a very powerful way of bringing to the
attention of the parties of armed conflict that the international community is watching
and doesn’t approve and, in fact, is extremely judgmental about the use of sexual
violence. So, that’s a powerful tool. Also, the children and armed conflict group is
looking increasingly at issues of sexual violence against children, and any armed group
that’s perpetrating sexual violence towards children is doing it to women as well.
Therefore, there is already an implicit mechanism potentially in place, as well as some
accountability elements, and we’re hoping to strengthen those. So, I’m actually feeling
optimistic that we’ll get a better outcome this time around.
Atef: There seems to be a more conscious effort to set up what you called “more of a
decisive gendered architecture” to address 1325 from the conference that will be held at
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the UN in New York in 2010, implying closer collaboration with different offices within
the UN. This is coming from the suggestion that there’s been a lot of criticism of this
lack of support for the participation of women in the peace process, particularly from the
UN. I mention Cynthia Enloe, as she was saying “who is deciding what” in the peace
process – but this has been repeated by many UN critics and practitioners. And based on
what you said, there seems to be more of an effort to ensure not giving up on 1325.
Goetz: I think that’s right. I think the ministerial-level meeting proposed by Benita
Ferrero-Walder would be a good idea. But, I think that beyond that, the year 2010
provides a very important moment of reckoning for 1325. If we haven’t achieved a more
effective accountability mechanism, and if we don’t start seeing improved performance
on the inclusion of women in peace processes, in post-conflict recovery and protection
of women in camps, etc., then that’s a very serious moment to ask, “Why isn’t the UN
performing on this?” If the reason is that there is not organized, effective or strong
enough leadership on women’s issues within the UN, or that within the UN, the
responsibility to work on women’s rights and gender equality is scattered across a
number of smaller agencies that are not equipped financially or in terms of staff
resources to accomplish the tasks that are needed, then I think this gives further
importance to the unresolved question: does the UN put its money and its work where
its mouth is? This discussion on gender entity within the UN has been going for some
time and it is not resolved by any means. I think that the implementation problem of
1325, and no doubt 1820, are going to reveal that if you do not have a strong gender
entity that is operational on the ground that can pick this up and make it work, then the
result is weak implementation.
Atef: I wanted to pick up on something you said in answering the previous question on
leadership and add one more event: a colloquium that’s being held in Liberia this March
in 2009. According to some of the organizers of the colloquium, they’re very keen on
this concept of women leadership, and, in fact, they want to establish this center, the
Angie Brooks Center…
Making sure that women leaders are present will ensure that they will be able to pick it
up on the ground and make sure that funding comes to them. So, there seems to be that
concern with leadership. At the end of the Report, in the conclusion, you mention this
concern with leadership. And my question is: why the shift towards leadership now, or
has it always been a concern?
Goetz: I think it’s always been a concern, only now we’re starting to see that it does
deliver. I mean, Liberian President Johnson-Sirleaf does deliver. And Chile’s Bachelet
does deliver. And more than that, when you have women in positions of public power,
they inspire other women to stop putting up with injustice. Probably the best example of
that is the all-women-formed police unit in Liberia, which was contributed to the
peacekeeping mission by India. These women are very visible in Monrovia. They’re the
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presidential guard, but they also patrol streets at night. And anecdotal evidence shows
that they are motivating young women to join the Liberian police and that, in the areas
where these women operate, other women come up to them and say “I’m being
attacked. This is going on in the neighborhood. Can you help?” So, having women in
visible public space as leaders shows on the one hand that women are valued. For
example, the UN having women as leaders is very important, in order to show that the
UN practices what it preaches, that it has a role-modeling effect, and that it does result in
better representation of women’s issues. Now we’re back with the question you started
with, because in our view, that is not enough. You also need to work on policy platforms
and you also need to have gender-sensitive approaches to policing. I mean, you can’t just
have women police, you need to have the infrastructure so that rape cases can be dealt
with sensitively by the police, and you need to have training. So, leadership doesn’t work
on its own.
Atef: Fair enough. I think now we can move into something that you’ve been
mentioning a lot on the community level with gender and security. What spaces have
been created by the category of gender and security that enable communities to monitor
government structures and hold them more accountable? I think that the report ties in
very nicely to that. And also, you’ve been a part of the Boston Consortium on Gender
Security and Human Rights, and they seem very active on filling the knowledge gaps
between different stakeholders who are facing obstacles on implementing 1325. I mean,
there are articles on practical ways to implement 1325 at the grassroots level, and the first
thing is to elaborate more on gender and security in terms of how local communities
have been able to make use of them. But then, what kind of organizations do you think –
organizations from the academic community or the articles that come out of The Boston
Consortium – are needed on a policy level? Or do you want to separate them?
Goetz: First of all, few communities around the world know about 1325 and 1820. This
stuff doesn’t penetrate very far. But in conflict and post-conflict contexts, where you
have women’s peace movements – especially when they start coalescing at a national
level, like in Uganda, Liberia, Sierra Leone – then certainly there’s a strong narrative on
women’s rightful place amongst peace-builders. Now, in some places that’s been
formalized at a community level, so, for instance, in Timor and Afghanistan, there are
district-level peace councils, and in Nepal too, although I don’t know if that’s taken off.
There are district-level peace councils which are there to build community dialogue, to
build a will to reconcile and find peaceful resolutions to a conflict. Another way in which
communities are picking up this narrative, as you put it, is of course in abuse of
traditional reconciliation mechanisms to address some of the atrocities of the conflict. In
Rwanda, it is the Gacaca courts which have 30% women judges and that’s a deliberate
change to tradition explicitly in recognition of women’s contributions and rights to
participate. And in Northern Uganda, there’s much talk to the use of Mato Oput, which
is a traditional conflict resolution mechanism – again, very patriarchal, very maledominated – and the women of Northern Uganda have said, “If we have to accept this,”
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although they don’t like it, “then we need to see structural changes to these institutions
to include women’s voices.” What was your second question?
Atef: You’ve been part of The Boston Consortium on Gender, Security and Human
Rights, and they have been very active in filling the knowledge gap for stakeholders who
are trying to implement the wordings of 1325. What kinds of motivation are behind the
Boston Consortium and what kind of organization is desired from a more academic
community at the policy level?
Goetz: And as an academic, the issue of influencing policy makers was something that
concerned us all the time, because I worked at the Institute of Development Studies, but
it’s been a very important eye-opener for me to work on these things from a policy
maker’s perspective. My need for knowledge and research is vast, and I don’t get what I
need from much research. The Boston Consortium, I think, is a very good idea and
deserves more support.
Atef: Could you elaborate on the discrepancy between what is perceived in academic
communities as producing knowledge for policy makers and then the experience of being
in the policy maker’s position, where you feel that there’s not enough coming to you?
Goetz: Well, I don’t want to be really unfair about this, because academics pursue their
own interests. You know, there’s brilliant work on international law and women’s rights,
and there’s brilliant work on gendered discourses of conflict, for example – particularly
coming out of the Boston Consortium. But as a policy maker, for instance, I need to
know the percentage of women on the negotiating team in the 36 major peace talks that
happened since 2000 and now. That piece of information does not exist. It simply does
not exist. Nobody assembled it. Another example: I need to know right now what
accountability mechanisms, formal and informal, have facilitated the implementation of
other thematic resolutions besides 1325. Why have they worked? Can they be adapted to
1820? I need to know that right away. In other words, I can’t predict my needs for
research in the normal research time frame, which is a much longer time frame than what
I need as a policy maker.
Atef: Right, and do you think UNIFEM’s Progress of the World’s Women report is [an
adequate] way of organizing knowledge production? Yes, commissioning the report is
important to get the kinds of knowledge needed at the moment, but have there been
suggestions for other ways?
Atef: Oh sure, I mean, every institution has its problems, I mean, so some of the biggest
and most powerful [organizations] do research in-house, like the World Bank, and as a
result, the knowledge that informs their policy making is probably a little bit too selfreferential and inadequately troubled by conflicting world-views. UNICEF, likewise,
organizes a lot of its knowledge generation in-house and has a reasonably good formula
79
for that, but the point is its always going to be a tense relationship. This problem is
always going to be there. If you really want to be a policy maker informed by the best
knowledge that’s available, you will always face the time delay problem, you will always
face the translation problem (as in my needs now are different from what you think is
interesting as a researcher). There will always be a tension, because I don’t want to only
have my own in-house research. Because, frankly, it won’t be as interesting as what you
can give me. You know, when you’re doing research that is informed by a world-view
that is completely different from mine, I need to see what you come up with. So I think
that’s always going to be a tense relationship, and I don’t have a solution.
Atef: I wasn’t trying to ask for a solution even. I was just trying to see what other kinds
of relationships exist. Maybe we could move into the question on language: Nadine
Puechguirbal was saying that we don’t pay sufficient attention to the importance of
language when informing decision-makers, and she continues to say that if you want
better policies, you need to have a language on gender mainstreaming in the mandate
that creates a UN mission. And I just wanted to ask, in terms of conceptualizing 1325 or
1820, what’s been the role of language with particular regard to gender mainstreaming in
conflict situations?
Goetz: Nadine is absolutely right. Language is much more important than I realized as
an outsider and an academic. The UN, in particular, but also other security institutions, is
a hierarchical, command-driven institution. So, if you want something to happen, it has
to be in the set of commands and the command structure. You can see this in the
evolving language of mandates for peacekeeping missions. Over the last two years,
mandate renewals in MONUC in DRC, for MINUSTAH in Haiti, for the efforts in Chad
and Central African Republic, and certainly Sudan, you will see increasingly progressive
and powerful language on gender. It starts simply by saying we recognize 1325. Then it
moves on to say [that] in every single recovery or conflict-mediation initiative, women
must be involved. Then it goes on to say sexual violence is a serious problem. The next
Secretary General report from MONUC must have data on this and information on what
they are doing to prevent it. And now, a mandate renewals since 1820 that was passed
invokes 1820 and demands data and response. So language is phenomenally important.
Atef: I actually want to go back for a bit – and I’m sorry I forgot to ask this – but you
mentioned Egypt and Jordan contributing to troops, and I’m guessing that the
astounding gender ratio there is a lot of men, very little women. In terms of multilateral
institutions and civil society organizations that are working here, their response here has
usually been from CSOs [Civil Society Organizations] or from government institutions,
and it’s a facetious response: “How are we ever going to get a woman to be interested in
joining a peacekeeping mission?”
Goetz: Well, this is my point that I keep making about [how] we cannot approach these
challenges of gender inclusion from a “business as usual” perspective. If you want
80
women in peacekeeping missions, the following has to happen: first of all, family-friendly
policies (and it’s not as if only women have families, men do too; and it’s not as if only
women miss their children, men do too) are necessary. All peacekeepers should have a
humane sort of arrangement to see their children and return home frequently enough to
make it worth their while to engage in this work. Number two: women have got to be
absolutely assured that they will not be attacked by people on their own side. Sexual
harassment within the ranks is a massive deterrent to being a soldier. If your own
organization won’t guarantee your safety, you are subject to attack from your own
colleagues and you know it’s very hard to have a court marshal for sexual violence within
your own military operation. Three: you know the women soldiers who were in one of
the peacekeeping missions early on in DRC didn’t have toilets that were women-only;
you can’t attract women if you’re subjecting them to these conditions. So you want
women? You pay for it. You pay by adjusting, not having business as usual, and I think
the same thing is true for senior levels at the UN or at other international organizations.
Women tend to fall off the scene after they reach a certain level at the UN, which is
around P5. They just disappear. Why? One reason is perhaps a lower level of promotion
of women than men to higher levels, but women themselves withdraw sometimes,
because either they have families or they have elderly parents. Somebody’s got to take
care of them. You know, there are care responsibilities that are inadequately
compensated for, there are inadequate family policies and there are all kinds of other
reasons why they don’t stay. If you want to keep women, you’ll have to adjust. So,
NGOs are right when they say, “Why on earth would a woman join a peacekeeping
force?” Governments are being disingenuous when they say, “Well we try to attract
women, but nobody wants to join.”
Atef: What strategies are currently being proposed? And I’m not just talking about
UNIFEM only, but from other, similar institutions that are strained: CSOs and strained
government entities, wherever they do exist.
Goetz: I don’t think enough is being proposed. Troop and police contributing countries
need to find ways of proposing safe conditions and family-friendly policies, and I don’t
think they’re willing to do that because they don’t want it to look like they are doing
special favors for women. But frankly, that’s what’s needed. Temporary special measures.
Atef: And that is mentioned in the report…
Goetz: Yes, of course. It is consistent with best practices, at least in terms of political
leadership, and I think it has to be used in other spheres as well.
Atef: As more of a concluding question, Surfacing is focused on theorizing gender in the
global South, and I know that you’ve had experience with gender experts being sent to
peacekeeping missions in different parts of Africa. I wanted to ask you, what’s been your
81
experience with gender experts or gender advisors being sent to these conflict zones,
particularly with regard to the region?
Goetz: You’re talking about peacekeeping experts right? DPKO has gone farther than
other parts of the peacekeeping apparatus in developing a whole cadre of gender advisors
for peacekeeping missions, and to be honest, everyone I’ve ever met has been extremely
high caliber, extremely dedicated, hardworking and really had good ideas about how to
bring gender equality to a peacekeeping operation. And let me be absolutely clear, that’s
very different from addressing issues of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers.
That’s a completely different story, and it’s not relevant to this discussion in a way,
because really, that’s a disciplinary manner, whereas what the gender experts do is to
address gender in peace building. I think they’ve been doing an amazing job. I think the
problem is not with them. I think the problem is the notion that you can mainstream
gender with just one expert or one gender unit, which is preposterous, because the range
of changes and the numbers and the issues that need attention are vast. So you might
have a whole gender unit in Juba in the UN Mission, but this person is over-stretched as
is and not able to ensure, for instance, that the multi-donor trust fund for financing the
peace agreement between North and South Sudan adequately spends on women’s rights
and gender equality. How can she? That’s managed by the World Bank, and she has a
range of other responsibilities. So just the idea that one gender unit or one gender
advisor can handle the massive task of gender mainstreaming, that’s the preposterous
thing. Much more needs to be done, and every element of a peacekeeping operation has
to have gender sensitivity and a gender component. So it’s a long standing institutional
problem of how to bring in the gender sensitivity. Should everyone be a gender expert?
Should you just add one and stir? I don’t know. It’s not an easy problem to solve.
Atef: Regardless of their own role in making sure that gender gets mainstreamed in postconflict reconstruction, what kind of setting are they put into? And is having a gender
expert the best option for the setting they are in?
Goetz: Well, the answer to your last question is no, it’s not the best way. The best way is
to have the high-level commanders and the special representative of the SG deeply
committed to these issues and willing to move on these issues. Sending women into
conflict zones? Well, it’s happened in Liberia, and so far it’s been a very positive
experience. So I think women should definitely be part of troops on the ground as far as
possible. And frankly, at a conference in Brussels in the EU – on this issue, on EU
defense security and defense missions – generals, all male I must say, kept saying, “We
need women to be visible amongst our troops; it make a massive difference when you’re
trying to stabilize areas and set up protective parameters.” The general leading the EU’s
Chadian force was able to get 250 women, which is 7% of his troop’s contingent. He
says that that 7% makes all the difference in sending out the right message and
establishing good relations with civilians. So indispensable to have women.
82
Azita Aza rgos hasb is a re cent gra du ate of T he Am eri can Uni versi ty i n Cai ro. S he cu rre ntly
wo rks i n Cai ro as a freel ance de velo pm ent co nsulta nt a nd res ea rche r, enga gi ng Cai ro as
criti cal s pa ce thro ugh a b roa d s co pe o f au di o , visual a nd tex t- base d rese arch i nte rests.
Review of ECWR’s Seminar on Sexual
Harassment and Egypt’s Tourism Industry
by Azita Azargoshasb
Sexual harassment in Cairo emerged as a subject of scrutiny in 2008, highlighting the
fissure between a slow restructuring of the permissible male-female encounter among
city residents and an increasing degree of international and national pressure to reinvent
local gender norms according to more cosmopolitan social and legal formulae. Sexual
harassment as both an imagined and literal obstacle to everyday life in Cairo elicits
emotional response from Cairenes spanning the social spectrum. An explosive debate on
the public e-mail listserv Cairo Scholars1 during June and July of 2008, followed by an
outcrop of several Facebook groups and gender text reading circles,2 all denote the issue
as one in flux, adding hue and dimension to the ways in which sexual harassment
obscures the boundaries between emotion and bodily experience for Cairo’s residents as
they engage an expanding scope of the city’s public and private spaces. In its ability to
deftly obscure these boundaries, sexual harassment becomes challenging to define in
both legal and vernacular discourses. As Egypt undergoes this lengthy process of
reforming gender relations to meet a new image of itself, sexual harassment emerges as a
signature issue not simply in its ability to underscore the tension between Egyptian and
foreign cultural norms being exercised within the city’s limits, but also in its ability to
penetrate layered notions of gender and permissible gendered encounters within
Egyptian culture itself.3 By interrogating both theaters simultaneously, sexual harassment
and the set of local initiatives charged with remodeling its conceptualization within local
law and local ethos contribute to a view of Cairene culture as one internally conflicted.
1
Cairo Scholars is a listserv started by Middle East Studies professor Samer Ali at the University of Texas,
Austin in 2005 for students and researchers new to Cairo. To join the listserv or to request access to an
archive of the sexual harassment debates from June-July, 2008, send an email inquiry to [email protected].
2
A Facebook group entitled “Stop Sexual Harassment in Egypt!” was the first of several groups to crop up
on the subject of sexual harassment. During the summer of 2008, I noticed three advertisements on the
Cairo Scholars listserv for gender text reading circles.
3
ECWR’s latest field study, Clouds in Egypt’s Sky, posits that sexual harassment is a recent phenomenon in
Egypt, emerging largely since 2002. Four Egyptian women over the age of 40, whom this author
interviewed, alternatively suggested that public commentary and displays of “interest” from men are not
new. The difference between public commentary today and years ago, they agreed, is that what was once
considered a kind of safe “flattery” has shifted to “lewd and vulgar talk,” as one woman coined the
sentiment. The women seemed to agree that touching and other forms of physical contact between
strangers in the street are new.
83
The Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR), a midlevel NGO enjoying Special
Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC)
and Egypt’s leading advocate of anti-sexual harassment reform, first launched its
comprehensive Cairo-based initiative “Making Our Streets Safer for Everyone” in 2005.
An original and enduring campaign, “Making Our Streets Safer” has engaged local and
international media programming,4 enabled an ongoing series of local workshops and
publications and lobbied tenaciously for enhanced gender sensitivity in Egypt’s
institutions, from the micro to macro level. Launched informally in 2000 as an ongoing
set of field surveys intended to gather primary data on sexual harassment on Cairo
streets, “Making Our Streets Safer” fast became a multifaceted advocacy campaign
permeating a vast scope of social, economic and professional sectors. The results of its
third and most recent field survey, Clouds in Egypt’s Sky, based upon the testimony of
some 2,020 Egyptian women and men5 and 109 foreign women, has added momentum
to a legal reform campaign to criminalize sexual harassment in Egypt since its release in
March of 2008.
On August 19, 2008, ECWR hosted a seminar entitled “Sexual Harassment and its
Impacts on the Egyptian Economy” at the Pyramisa Hotel in the Doqqi neighborhood
of Cairo. A tangential outgrowth of the “Making Our Streets Safer” campaign, the
seminar sought to identify and make meaningful both a candid discussion of Egypt’s
evolving social attitudes and perceptions toward sexual harassment – how it has
historically been construed, to what extent those perceptions have changed and the
changes now needed to effectively remedy the nation’s “cancer”6 – as well as a more
pragmatic rendering of sexual harassment as a detriment to Egypt’s economic growth
aspirations. Shaped by the objectives of ECWR’s 2008 “Million Signatures Campaign,”7
an initiative designed to garner the support of public and private sector firms and
regional economic heavyweights operating in Cairo, the seminar was co-hosted by
representatives from Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and the nation’s parliament. Seminar
speakers ultimately converged around the legal project to criminalize sexual harassment
in Egypt by coupling that initiative with the priorities of Egypt’s tourism industry and its
potential to incur revenue losses as a result of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is not yet explicitly recognized in Egypt’s penal code. The existing
penal code does recognize Insulting (Article 306), Indecent Behavior (Article 278) and
4
Sexual harassment has been a recurrent theme among Egyptian and international news media in 2008.
According to the ECWR website, Egyptian actor and television host Hussein el Imam aligned himself
publicly with ECWR’s “Million Signature Campaign” and dedicated a full episode of his program to
discussing ECWR’s anti-sexual harassment efforts.
5
The sample of Egyptians interviewed was equally divided into 1,010 Egyptian men and 1,010 Egyptian
women. This is the first ECWR sexual harassment study to gather a male sample.
6
Magdi Abdelhadi, “Egypt’s Sexual Harassment ‘Cancer,’” BBC News, July 18, 2008,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7514567.stm.
7
ECWR’s “Million Signatures Campaign” was launched 6 March 2008.
84
Sexual Assault (Article 268),8 all of which may be, but infrequently are, applied to sexual
harassment claims, due to cumbersome evidentiary standards and insufficient willingness
to prosecute. The legal project contained within ECWR’s broader initiative thus endorses
the formal incorporation of a legal definition of sexual harassment as:
unwanted sexual conduct deliberately perpetrated by the harasser, resulting in sexual,
physical, or psychological abuse of the victim regardless of location, whether in the
workplace, the street, public transportation, educational institution, or even in private
places such as home or in the company of others such as relatives or colleagues, etc.
(ECWR 2008, 2-3)
Accompanying a legal definition of the acts and spaces which characterize sexual
harassment in its broadest and most inclusive sense, ECWR envisions a synchronized
institution of reformed legal process, evidentiary standards and a system of punitive
recourse to support the criminalization of acts deemed illegal (ECWR 2008, 16).
Criminalization is here envisioned as an essential step toward further integrating Egypt’s
penal code with the international standards and objectives set forth by its commitments
to uphold and enforce the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW),9 the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals (2000) and the Beijing Platform for Action, a compendium of
globally-pertinent objectives and strategies adopted by participants of the United Nations
Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 to further women’s equal participation
and representation in a number of national contexts. Yet, inasmuch as the adoption of
new law(s) may be considered among the most fundamental steps in bridging Egypt’s
domestic legal framework with its international obligations to establish a cosmopolitan
outlook on gender, such law(s) cannot stand detached from the social environs in which
they operate. Ostensibly, legal reform must also involve the codification and
implementation of a feasible, comprehensive and effective punitive strategy for dealing
with victims, witnesses10 and a new body of “criminal” citizens – rather daunting task.
Conference participants, taking cue from ECWR’s Clouds in Egypt’s Sky publication,
discussed a range of punitive remedies including the implementation of a broad-based
8
This information was collected from the Facebook group, “Stop Sexual Harassment in Egypt!” which is
administered by members of ECWR’s International Relations Unit.
9
This was signed by Egypt in1980 and ratified in 1981. Egypt is not a signatory of the Optional Protocol
(2000) for CEDAW. Egypt signed and ratified CEDAW with initial reservation to Articles 9(2), 16, 29(2)
and 2. Egypt’s international commitments to the broader project of legally guaranteeing women’s equality
with men also stem from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both signed by Egypt in 1967
and ratified in 1982, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), signed and ratified in
1990 with reservations relating to Articles 20 and 21.
10
According to Egypt’s penal code, claims of Insulting, Indecent Behavior and Sexual Assault require two
witnesses and, as is still the standard in some Islamic countries, the witness of (at least) two women serves
as the equivalent of one male witness. This exemplifies the basis for Egypt’s reservation to CEDAW,
Article 2, which gives Egypt’s application of Shari’a precedence over its adherence to the Convention’s
observations.
85
training (and re-training) program to help street police recognize and manage cases of
sexual harassment; the enabling of street police with tools for on-site issuance of
violation tickets (akin to the traffic violation model, which many argue has been widely
effective in Cairo); the mobilization of an on-site offense reporting system; and
enactment of a set of punitive consequences for police officers who either refuse to
report cases of sexual harassment or incite the act(s) themselves. Imprisonment as
penalty for sexual harassment was not discussed at the seminar, nor does the idea emerge
as a dominant strategy in any of the ECWR campaign literature.
ECWR, joined by several partnering NGOs and civil society organizations (CSOs) in
Cairo and in Egypt more generally, have championed the operative ethic that legal
reform can be effective only when coupled with a political and social strategy to
transform attitudes. In practicing its preach, the “Making Our Streets Safer” campaign
has thus taken local norms to task through a series of increasingly notable television and
radio adverts and a vast body of literature and testimony on the subject of sexual
harassment. These strategies, intended to compliment and support the more pointed
legal reform project, tap into a sphere of moral and ethical tropes, engaging notions of
personal rights, public responsibility and Islamic values to achieve popular reception and
legitimacy. Yet much of the local publicity and high-level pressure now concentrating on
the issue of sexual harassment and its adjoining legal reform project defers to the claim
that sexual harassment bears high economic costs.11 The diverse socio-political initiative
ECWR established to reshape attitudes toward gender from the grassroots level, which in
turn gave rise to the legal reform project, is increasingly coupled with a translation of
sexual harassment’s effects into money terms, with lost tourism revenues as a popular
refrain.
The “Sexual Harassment and its Impacts on the Egyptian Economy” seminar entertained
this economic rationale and, in doing so, contributed to the framing of sexual harassment
as an impediment to Egypt’s neoliberal growth trajectory. There it was suggested that
sexual harassment alienates foreign tourists, students and residents in Cairo who
contribute significantly to the nation’s foreign exchange accounts both indirectly in the
form of tuitions and scholarships, donor aid and foreign direct investments, while also
directly in the purchase of goods and services from local formal and informal merchants
and establishments. Noting that some 98 percent of foreign women interviewed in
ECWR’s latest field survey affirmed exposure to sexual harassment while in Egypt and
that, of this sample, some 96.3 percent identified tourist destinations and foreign
educational institutions as the second most concentrated sites of harassment following
Cairo streets, speakers at the seminar concluded that sexual harassment is a significant
threat to foreign women visiting or residing in Cairo (ECWR 2008, 9). As the bearers of
11
See, for example, 1) Reem Abu Zahra, “MP Chides Tourism Ministry over Sexual Harassment,” Daily
News Egypt, July 14, 2008, available at http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15072;
or 2) Shaimaa Fayed, “Female Tourists Face Sexual Harassment,” Business Monthly, October 2008, available
at www.amcham.org.eg.
86
critical capital, more likely than foreign men to be subjected to sexual harassment while
traveling abroad, foreign women become powerful agents in this paradigm and an asset
the Egyptian government wants to protect.
Foreign female residents are not, however, the only venue for potential lost revenues.
According to the seminar, lost productivity which results as Egypt’s female laborers
retreat from the workplace for fear of being sexually harassed by employers, fellow
employees or by persons encountered on the way to work also poses an obstacle to
growth. The seminar downplayed this aspect of the survey data, which was statistically
minimal despite a significant bias toward Egyptian women in ECWR’s female survey
sample.12 Of the 83 percent of Egyptian women interviewed by ECWR who affirmed
exposure to sexual harassment, 91.5 percent of that sample identified Cairo streets, not
the workplace, as the primary location of harassment (ECWR 2008, 9-11). It is important
to acknowledge that Egyptian female survey responses may reflect a gendered fear of
punishment for “witnessing” sexual harassment in the workplace, ranging from loss of
employment to social marginalization or escalated encounters of harassment. To
support an accurate reading of ECWR’s survey data on the whole, however, it is even
more essential to note that the data provides its most conclusive evidence that revenues
from foreign spending in Egypt are more sensitive to fluctuation as a result of exposure
to sexual harassment than both earnings and revenues compromised as Egyptian women
become reluctant to enter or remain in the workplace.
The suggestion that economic losses inevitably result from sexual harassment to an
extent which merits its criminalization relies upon a precarious stream of logic, even
when supported by ECWR’s invariably well-researched and defended claim that sexual
harassment is profoundly deleterious for Cairene society.13 What lingers problematic in
situating a discussion of sexual harassment within a neoliberal framework where
macroeconomic aspirations such as stable foreign direct investment, foreign university
tuitions and escalating tourism revenues suffice as legitimation for legal reform, is the
implicit endorsement of those aspirations as a package of non-negotiable commitments
and obligations to the global economy and the project of advancing Egypt’s position
within that economy at all cost. Such framing of the discussion thus merits the question:
does the strategic entanglement of macroeconomic objectives and globally-funded
“gender” advocacy for the purpose of altering sexual harassment trends at home imply a
surrender of the critical distance necessary to critique those economic objectives in and
of themselves? Particularly once sexual harassment becomes realized as a social
phenomenon rooted in economic, social, political and existential frustrations, does the
case for revenues ultimately aim too shallow?
12
ECWR’s female sample included 1,010 Egyptian females and 109 foreign females.
ECWR’s “Making Our Streets Safer” campaign is ultimately one which challenges the motivations
behind sexual harassment as they affect all of Egypt. Because the campaign is currently focused on raising
awareness of sexual harassment in Cairo, I take the liberty here in referring to “Cairene society.”
13
87
Apropos of the moment, with Egypt’s sexual harassment legal reform project on the
doorstep of institutionalization, it is vital to pose such questions, and not simply because
an export-oriented, revenues by any means necessary, neoliberal growth paradigm invariably
couples social and economic “development” initiatives with a range of financial
obligations and symbolic forfeitures, which should on those grounds be fervently
interrogated. It is vital more importantly because tailoring legal and social reform to suit
macroeconomic ends inevitably informs both the way and the extent to which new laws
and new social norms take shape and become internalized as part of contemporary
culture. What is worrisome is the possibility that once social aims are tailored to meet
economic targets on Egypt’s checklist of priorities, the entire project of realizing sexual
harassment as a violation of the right to gender equality, which emerges as one of many
just entitlements in a civil rights framework, takes a back seat to the project of earning
national revenues, toward which sexual harassment is merely an inconvenient hindrance
and gender equality the necessary instrument for its oust.
The “Sexual Harassment and its Impacts on the Egyptian Economy” seminar helped
convey sexual harassment as a critical example of how gender and sexuality issues
become emblematic of the Southern metropolis and its conflicted state, teetering on the
precipice of an outward-looking neoliberal economic transition while confronted by the
mounting consequences of its own social negligence and displacement. Between these
two centers of gravity, Cairo, like many Southern cities, struggles for balance and
upgrade. ECWR, in its dedication to gender and sexuality reform initiatives across
sectors, has contributed to Egypt’s negotiation of growth and progress, not simply by
gathering momentum behind initiatives intended to shape the way Egyptians create and
envision their future society, but also by giving reason to question the ways in which
Egypt, as a nation, should proceed toward that vision.
References
Abdelhadi, Magdi. “Egypt’s Sexual Harassment ‘Cancer.’” BBC News Online. (July 18,
2008)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7514567.stm (last accessed May 1, 2009)
Abu Zahra, Reem. “MP Chides Tourism Ministry over Sexual Harassment.” Daily News
Egypt. (July 14, 2008)
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=15072 (last accessed May 1,
2009)
Fayed, Shaimaa. “Female Tourists Face Sexual Harassment.” Business Monthly. (October
2008)
88
http://www.amcham.org.eg/Publications/BusinessMonthly/october%2008/indepth(fe
maletouristsfacesexualharassment).asp (last accessed May 1, 2009)
Hassan, Rasha Mohammad, Aliyaa Shoukry and Nehad Abul Komsan. ‘Clouds in Egypt’s
Sky’: Sexual Harassment: From Verbal Harassment to Rape (A Sociological Study). The Egyptian
Women’s Rights Association (2008)
http://ecwronline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=275&Itemid=7
2
Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR). Making Our Streets Safer for Everyone.
http://ecwronline.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=16&Ite
mid=72 (last accessed May 1, 2009)
Ali, Samer. Cairo Scholars Listserv. [email protected]
89
Mi chael Ke nne dy is an M. A. s tu dent i n Anthro pol o gy a t T he Am eri can U nive rsity i n Cai ro.
Fo r the las t two y ea rs , he has also s e rve d as re gio nal de velo pme nt co o rdinato r fo r the
Rese a rch Jo urnalism I ni tia ti ve , a n e du ca tio nal me dia NG O tha t pro vi des te chni cal a nd
conce ptual me dia trai ni ng to P ales ti nia n s tu de nts in Na blus , Wes t Ba nk.
Prison is for Men: Remembering Al-Fara’a
by Michael Kennedy
A L -F ARA ’ A :
“At that time (1982) you could be sent to prison for 6 months for just owning a Palestinian flag. We began to
resist this. The student movement in protest of the occupation really gaining momentum in the early 1980s. We
began to organize, to hold demonstrations, sing national songs, raise flags – all of which were illegal. They opened
Al Fara’a to crush the youth/student movements resisting the occupation. We were sent there to break our will.”14
The Al-Fara’a compound, located 20 kilometers northeast of the West Bank city of
Nablus, was built by the British in 1932 to serve as a military camp. The facility was
utilized for the same purpose by the Jordanian army until the facility was seized by Israel
in the 1967 war. The facility fell into disrepair until 1982 when then Chief of Staff of the
Israel Defense Forces Rafael Eitan ordered the establishment of a facility to crush
growing popular opposition to Israeli occupation, “even if it does not have the
conditions of a normal prison” (Law in the Service of Man 1984, 4). A “normal” prison
is a facility where criminals are held to complete a sentence after being prosecuted in a
court of law. It is staffed by police and is expected to provide at least minimal standards
of food, health and sanitation. However, as Eitan ordered, Al-Fara’a was not a “normal”
prison.
Al-Fara’a was a military base used for detention and torture, staffed by military soldiers
rather than police. Prisoners were not sent there to serve a sentence, but rather to be
isolated from their community, humiliated, tortured – perhaps with the intention of
extracting a confession, which would lead to incarceration in a “normal” prison. In short,
Al-Fara’a was a torture camp for Palestinian youth.
The establishment of Al-Fara’a should be understood within the context of a regular
Israeli military practice in the early 1980s called “population terture,” Israeli military slang
14
The narrative cited here and those in following pages are from interviews with former detainees recorded
during my fieldwork at the former Al-Fara’a prison in August and September 2008.
90
for operations intended as harassment or semi-torture. Captain Artzi Mordechai explains
a “terture” operation: “In addition to this business where we work to discover the
provocateurs, you terture the population. Population terture does not mean that you
punish those who did something, but you simply round up everyone, just like that” (Law
in the Service of Man 1984, 5). As student demonstrations (which included youth as
young as 13) began to rise in number and force, this practice of population terture
became an increasingly common military response. The most frequent manifestation of
terturing practices was the rounding up groups of Palestinian youths in a neighborhood,
humiliating and beating them publicly, and forcing them to sing the Israeli national
anthem or crawl on all fours.15 Al-Fara’a was a space that institutionalized this practice of
population terture, making it routine and systematized. In 1982, Al-Fara’a was (re)opened
to provide a facility for this practice of population terture, which coincided with a wide
increase in home demolitions, curfews and the withdrawal of basic services from
neighborhoods across the Occupied Territories.
Until 1984 Al-Fara’a served as a place where “troublesome” youth were removed from
their communities, isolated and beaten, as a “warning” to Palestinians involved in
nationalist activities. A former prisoner recalls this period:
Sometimes there would be 120 of us there. Back then (1982) they just
beat us in Al-Fara’a. Later they developed the torture cells. We were
there when it was makeshift structures. We were shitting in holes and
ditches. It wasn’t as sophisticated as it became later. For us at our time
(1982-83), at the beginning, it was: you put the activist here, you isolate
them from the community. And then you beat them, arrest them,
humiliate them, stuff like this.
At its inception, Al-Fara’a was terture between walls: little if no interrogation, no
advanced torture techniques, short sentences, “only” beatings and humiliation, all meant
as “preventative detention” in order to discipline teenage boys who resisted the
occupation by organizing parades, displaying Palestinian flags and on occasion throwing
rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers.
However, in early 1984, Al-Fara’a began to evolve from a “preventative detention” site
to a “detention center,” intended to procure confessions to “crimes” such as political
affiliation, student and community organizing and stone throwing. Al-Fara’a ceased to be
a place where teenagers were sent and “merely beaten,” to a place where youth were sent
to be tortured. In the words of nearly every prisoner from Al-Fara’a I have interviewed,
it was a place “to break our will.”
A report on Al-Fara’a, issued by the Ramallah-based Palestinian human rights
organization Law in the Service of Man, notes that beginning in 1984:
15
For a more detailed account of public beatings: Peteet, Julie, “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in
the Palestinian Intifada: A Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21(1):31-49. (1994)
91
Detainees are no longer detained without charge in the prison, but are
interrogated on a number of accounts, usually participating in
demonstrations or stone throwing, and are subjected to brutal physical
and mental punishment during interrogation, aimed at procuring a
confession. Frequently the detainee refuses to confess on a false charge
and is later released without trial; at other times he does confess, mainly
to avoid further maltreatment, and is usually subsequently convicted
and sentenced primarily on the basis of this confession. Many former
detainees have stated under oath that they falsely confessed to acts they
had not committed in order to stop the punishment. (Law in the
Service on Man 1984, 22)
The evolution of this prison, from a relatively crude and disorganized site of beatings and
“preventative detention” to a highly organized facility staffed by trained interrogators,
physicians and military personnel using their professional training toward the torture of
detainees, is, for me, the most startling feature of Al-Fara’a. This transformation is quite
emblematic of the course of Israeli activities in the Occupied Territories to date: ever
growing, from simple to complex, and increasingly employing the expertise of trained
professionals for economic, political and military goals pursued in the name of
“security.”
M A KING M EN :
According to Israeli human rights organization B’tselem, 40 percent of the men
in the Occupied Territories have been detained by Israeli security forces, and 86
percent of those have been tortured.16 Because the arrest and detention of
Palestinian youth occurs with such regularity, and at such a massive scale, the
prison/interrogation experience is a defining feature in the youth of nearly half of
Palestinian men. As a collective experience, the carceral exists as a prominent
theme in Palestinian popular discourses, nationalist songs, poetry and literature,
placing the prison experience squarely within the master narrative of Palestinian
dispossession.
In her 1976 novel Wild Thorns, Palestinian author and Nablus resident Sahar Khalifeh
narrates the experience of a Nablusi teenager named Basil, moving from his participation
in the national movement to his incarceration and reintegration into his community – his
rites of passage into political agency and manhood. I offer a literary reference here as a
companion to the ethnographic narratives that accompany each photo so as to further
exemplify the relationship of the carceral to Palestinian cultural discourses tied to prison,
masculinity and nationalism.
16
This figure comes from an interview with the director of the Trauma Rehabilitation Center in Ramallah.
It is a figure often cited in popular discourses related to prison and detention.
92
In Wild Thorns, Basil is arrested in the same manner as many of the youth who were sent
to Al-Fara’a, for participating in public displays of Palestinian nationalism. Basil does not
remember his arrest, an implication that he was beaten and lost consciousness. He
regains consciousness in “The Nablus Prison,” to the cheers of his cellmates:
May you live to get the same again, Basil! Prison’s for men, you know. We’ll
have a party for you such as the world’s never seen. Hold your head up high and
never let it fall. Prison’s for men, Abu al-Izz! (Khalifeh 1976, 115)
Basil’s fleeting status as hero is confirmed by his wounds, praised by his cellmates
as the “badges of honour he wears on his face and hand” (Khalifeh 1976, 116).
Not only has Basil become a man, he has become a father: Abu al-Izz, “The
Father of Glory.” He is now a symbolic father and protector of the Palestinian
motherland. As a father to a nation, Basil’s duty is to ensure his people’s safety
and well being in the face of imminent oppression by Israeli forces.
After his imprisonment, Basil returns home to his family intoxicated with his perceived
social status. After being teased by his brother about “wasting time in prison,” Basil
retaliates:
Morning and evening, day and night. Always reminding me of prison and its
woes. Am I responsible for being put into prison? Or the imprisonment of
others like me? No sir! Certainly not! No way am I responsible for the actions
and interests of the occupation. And the terrors I witnessed are part of my
national duty.
Inside they told me that prison was for men. And that those who don’t go to
prison, even for a day, will never become real men, even if they grow two
moustaches rather than one. (Khalifeh 1976, 149)
In his eyes, it was prison that made Basil a man. He then equates his experience
of imprisonment and torture to his “national duty” as a Palestinian. If national
duty and “becoming a man” are satisfied through the prison experience, the
implied message is that one who has not experienced prison is either not a
Palestinian or not a man.
Elaborating on this relationship between masculinity, nationalism and resistance
in Palestine, Joseph Massad writes:
Struggling against the Israeli occupiers and colonizers is not only an
affirmation of Palestinian nationalist agency, it is also a masculinizing
act enabling the concrete pairing of nationalist agency and masculinity
(the two being already paired conceptually) and their logical
inseparability within the discourse of nationalism. Thus, resisting occupation
can be used to stage masculine acts as it performs nationalist ones. Through this
national anti-colonial resistance, a new figuration of masculine bodies is
mapped out on the terrain of the national struggle, one that becomes
93
the model for Palestinian nationalist agency itself. (Massad 2006, 51,
emphasis in original)
The interrogation center/prison is a primary site in which a Palestinian national
masculine identity is constituted. In its entirety, the prison experience (arrest, detention
and release) is an act of “resistance” to the Israeli occupation. These acts of resistance are
a simultaneous staging of masculine and national identities, producing both “men” and
“Palestinians.”
A L -F ARA ’ A R EVISIT ED :
After the Oslo Accords, control of the Al Fara’a compound was transferred to the
Palestinian Authority, and it ceased to be a prison. Shortly after, a group of former
prisoners and community leaders recommended to Arafat that the facility be converted
into a youth center. Arafat agreed and the Al Fara’a Prison became the Al Fara’a Center.
Since 1995 Al Fara’a has hosted thousands of youth from across the West Bank each
year to participate in summer camps, leadership conferences and athletics.
The renovations are symbolic: the soldier’s mess hall has been converted into a dining
room for campers; the barracks that once housed the soldiers, interrogators and
Palestinian collaborators responsible for the atrocities committed at Al-Fara’a now host a
new generation of Palestinian youth. However, approximately one fourth of the facility
remains as it was when Al-Fara’a was under Israeli control, in keeping with the hopes of
one day turning Al-Fara’a into a museum. The torture cells and interrogation rooms,
although in disrepair, have not been altered since 1995. It is from this unrenovated
section that the images below were taken. During August and July 2008, I made a
number of trips to Al-Fara’a with former prisoners, many of whom had not been to the
facility since the early 1980s. Each image here, and the accompanying narratives, are a
result of these interviews.17
In her essay “Language and Body,” anthropologist Veena Das writes: “In repeatedly
trying to write the meaning(s) of violence against women in Indian society, I find that
languages of pain through which social sciences could gaze at, touch or become textual
bodies on which this pain is written often elude me” (Das 1997, 31). I too have had
immense difficulty in locating a “language,” academic or otherwise, with which to discuss
the experiences of torture and suffering at Al-Fara’a. Literary scholar Elaine Scarry
argues that physical pain, unlike other subjective experiences such as love or depression,
cannot be written because physical pain – “unlike any other state of consciousness – has
no referential content. It is not of or for anything. It is precisely because it takes no object
that it, more than any other phenomenon, resists objectification in language” (Scarry
1995, 5). If Scarry is correct and pain is the antithesis of language, does any attempt at
conveying the pain of another – much less the memory of pain which is perhaps more
17
Two of the captions below were transcribed by my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman.
94
elusive – fiction? Perhaps more importantly, is it necessary, or required of fieldwork, to
attempt to relay the experience of pain rather than analyzing only the narrative(s) of pain in
their social/temporal/subjective functioning? Must the imagination of the reader/viewer
be stirred in order to study the pain of another?
Susan Sontag writes, “Whether the photograph is understood as a naïve object or the
work of an experienced artificer, its meaning – and the viewer’s response – depends on
how the picture is identified or misidentified; that is, on words” (2003, 29). In elaborating
on the relationship between image, text and meaning, she writes, “All photographs wait
to be explained or falsified by their captions” (Sontag 2003, 10). In other words, all
images are ambiguous until defined and (in)validated by text. Instead of writing captions
in the tradition of photojournalism – such as “Holding cell no. 3, where detainees
accused of stone throwing were held” – to define particular spaces and experiences in AlFara’a, the images in this essay are defined through narratives from my interviews with
former prisoners, literary references and legal testimony from Israeli interrogators at the
facility.
And so instead of authoring only text to convey the experiences had between the walls of
Al-Fara’a, I opted to create photographs as a type of surface from which the narratives of
the site might be read. This method certainly does not exclude my role as author and the
creator of a particular anthropological object. However, I hope that the pairing of
narrative and image found here might present a different means of bridging the void
between narratives of pain and their visual/textual representation.
References
Das, Veena, ed. “Language and Body: Transactions in the Construction of Pain.” Social
Suffering. Das, Veena and Arthur Kleinman, eds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
(1997)
Khalifeh, Sahar. Wild Thorns. New York: Interlink Books. (1976)
Law in the Service of Man. Torture and Intimidation in the West Bank: The Case of Al-Fara’a
Prison. (April 1984)
http://www.alhaq.org/pdfs/Torture and Intimidation in the West Bank.pdf, (last
accessed March 19, 2009)
95
Massad, Joseph. “Conceiving the Masculine: Gender and Palestinian Nationalism.” The
Persistence of Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians. New York: Routledge.
(2006)
Peteet, Julie. “Male Gender and Rituals of Resistance in the Palestinian Intifada: A
Cultural Politics of Violence.” American Ethnologist 21(1):31-49. (1994)
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford
University Press. (1995)
Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador. (2003)
96
“All of my friends went there. Fara’a was like a summer camp for us. Fara’a made
us strong. That kind of experience made us grow up, it made us men. When you
get released from Fara’a, it was something to be proud of.”
97
“In 1989 I was sent to Al-Fara’a. The first day I got there, we were collecting our
equipment, and they came up to me and said, ‘Hey, how long are you here for?’ I
said, ‘Thirty days.’ So they said, ‘You want to do something interesting during
your time here?’ I said sure. So they took me over to the interrogation section. It
has a big yard out in front, and behind a wall, the interrogation rooms. They are
regular rooms, in a line, maybe six or seven of them. Behind the rooms are the
cells, lots of cells. Anyways, they took me inside a room, and there was an
interrogator there. He was in army uniform, but he was a Druze. They were all
Druze in uniforms. There was a detainee there, and they told me to hit him. I did.
Afterwards, I didn’t like it, I said, ‘Look, this is not for me, thanks a lot, I don’t
want to do this.’ So they showed me the detainee’s file and said, ‘This guy is a
terrorist, now you see, we need to do this.’ That’s how they work: they get you all
mad at the Arabs, at the terrorists, and then you are willing to keep doing it. So I
kept on going, until the end of my reserve duty.”
98
99
“I’d been in Al-Fara’a for six days. He dragged me off to the bathroom and told
me to take my cloths off and go under the water. I did as he said. It was nearly
midnight and the water was extremely cold. After this, he ordered me to
masturbate until I ejaculated. This I refused to do – I couldn’t – and when he
insisted, I tried, but wasn’t able to do it, so he brought an elastic band and began
to beat my penis until I screamed so loudly that he stopped. He told me I had two
minutes to get dressed. I started putting my clothes on and was just getting the
last thing on when he said, ‘You’re too late, take your clothes off again.’ It went
on like this for more than an hour, and when it was nearly morning, he left me in
the cell.”
100
`
“We sometimes were made to sit on a concrete bench, blindfolded and hands and
feet tied with plastic ties. If you struggled with your hands, the ties would get
tighter and sometimes our wrists bled or the circulation was cut off and our hands
would swell up. We were forced to sit there for days on end. Sometimes the
soldiers guarding the walls from above would throw stones at us or dump buckets
of cold water and urine on us.”
101
102
“The x’s are where they put the children in a sort of confinement; they were ‘put
away’ for an indefinite amount of time. We went away and didn’t know when we
were coming back. The x’s are about 12 rooms, each one 4 feet by 12 feet, and a
tiny window. I stayed here, everyone stayed here at some point, for months at a
time, with six to eight, even 15 other boys in one room. No toilet, just a bucket
that would regularly get tripped over and spill its fetid contents. Every day, if we
were lucky, we had one minute to empty the bucket and return back to the x.
When a boy would come back from being tortured, we would crowd to one side
of the room so he could sleep. We could hear the sounds of the generator outside.
We could hear the sounds of the adan [call to prayer] from the local mosque. We
were disoriented and couldn’t breathe in the x’s. There is still the heavy iron door.
This sound we still can’t get out of our heads. This was the sound of the x’s.”
103
104
“God release us”
105
“Inside they told me that prison was for men. And that those who don’t go to prison, even for a
day, will never become real men, even if they grow two moustaches rather than one”
-- from “Wild Thorns” by Sahar Khalifeh
106
“They wanted me to make a stencil, because we were writing on the walls. They
were going to put these instructions in every room, but in Arabic: ‘mamnou3 al
kitabah 3ala el het’ (writing on the walls is forbidden). When they asked me to do
this, they gave me some cigarettes, and I smoked all of them, because I knew they
were going to beat the shit out of me anyways. So he told me, ‘Write this on a
piece of cardboard,’ so they could spray paint over it onto the walls. So what did I
do? I wrote three [letter] ‘mim’s’: ‘mou mamnou3 al kitabah 3ala el het’. In Arabic, the
first mim negates the second two mims, so the sign said, ‘Don’t don’t write on the
walls.’ And then they put these instructions in every room, and so people started
writing on the walls like crazy. And people knew that I did it, and I’m glad I left
afterward, because he wanted to beat the shit out of me. Because we put these in
EVERY room. And it became very famous for me when I got out of prison: ‘He’s
the guy who painted mamnou3 kitab…’
107
108
“We were put into metal boxes and repeatedly tortured. Three-walled metal
cabinets, about 2 feet by 2 feet and six feet tall, were lined up against this wall.
There were about 15 cabinets. Children were put inside. They scratched their
names into the plaster. They scratched their village or city names into the plaster.
Israelis would enforce sleep deprivation for these kids in the boxes, kicking in the
door when the child tried to sleep or throwing rocks on the top to startle a child.
In the blistering heat and the chilly winter, music was turned up full blast and only
30-second snippets of a song were played over and over again. Sometimes animal
sounds were played. This is where the will was broke.”
109
110
111
“I stood inside the room with the interrogator and the detainee. The interrogator
sat facing me, the detainee with his back to me. And they would talk, in Arabic. I
don’t understand Arabic. And then, when the interrogator didn’t get the answer
he wanted, he made a sign, and I hit the detainee… With a club, my hand, foot,
anything… They would just say, ‘Try not to kill him.’ That’s all. We hit them
everywhere – head, face, mouth, arms, balls. Interrogations were a combination of
beatings and questions. I didn’t understand the questions.”
112
“Confession is Betrayal” - “The korsi (chair). Your hands were tied to the ground,
and they put us in a small chair whose back legs were raised higher than the front
legs to cause pain to your back. There was a one-week record for the korsi.
Because I was a child, I was only kept for 5 days. There were days I would scream,
‘Just get me off this chair, I’ll confess to anything.’ They would take me off, and I
was ready to confess. But then I remembered my mother. When I was arrested my
mother hugged me and said, ‘If you confess to anything, you are not my son.’”
113
“Jerusalem is in our eyes, we will perish before it is oppressed”
114