Ensuring protection of women in conflict and emergencies

For me what is still not clear for me living in this semi conflict situation that who is supposed to protect people like me. This is just one story from a group of 40 women who have gone through Sexual Gender Based Violence and have formed a support group of Women living with HIV/AIDS who have one message- Who is responsible for protecting us from violence?”

As incidences of emergencies occasioned by natural disasters and conflict are increasing, so have the occurrence of mass large scale targeted violence increased across the world.

In wars as well as in situations of severe political crisis, the targeting of civilians as a strategy of war has increased over the years, such that from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Kenya to Zimbabwe, the number of civilian deaths, causalities, and loss have far outstripped the number of military deaths.

This increased targeting of civilians and non combatants as a war strategy and the increased targeting of non partisan civilians in political crisis situations have combined to raise the question of the protection of civilians in crisis, war and emergencies to the front burner of national, regional and international discourse.

Even in emergencies occasioned by natural disasters, civilian populations, and among these, the most vulnerable groups have become more susceptible and exposed to acts of violence.

Among affected and at risk communities, women, girls and little children, as well as people living with disabilities, and elderly people have become the most vulnerable, and form the bulk of the at risk and survivor communities.

As protection of civilians in crisis and emergencies have become major issues, the role of the state and the international community working through regional and international intergovernmental institutions in ensuring the protection of citizens have been recognised, highlighted, asserted and vigorously promoted.

Thus it is that a consensus is emerging internationally that the responsibility to protect lies with national governments. Alongside this, is also the animated discussion around the concept of the obligation to protect? The debate here is around the fact that the implicit in the responsibility to protect, is the obligation to protect. This means that it is not only the responsibility of the state to protect, in fact the state is obliged to ensure protection.

But it is also a fact that in many instances where protection is a major issue, the state is either unwilling, or unable to protect. In such instances, some including development practioners with a rights based approach, have argued that, where the state fails or is unable to protect, then the international community acting through the intergovernmental institutions such as the UN, AU, and regional sub groupings, should step in to ensure the protection of civilians. Others, in particular state representatives, have argued that this will constitute unwarranted intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and undermine the sovereignty and independence of the nation state.

For the state or the international community to fulfil the responsibility and obligation to protect, law enforcement and armed forces need to be deployed, as well as legal experts versed in constitutional and human rights law and conventions at international and national levels.

This is the usual and conventional practice. But experience is showing however that national police and armed forces, deployed to ensure protection and keep or enforce peace, have often times been quite complicit in perpetrating acts of violence against civilian populations, and particularly in perpetrating violence against women. And this is in situations where the state and its armed apparatus are not the ones consciously using violence as a weapon and strategy of war or conflict.

In DRC for example a briefing note prepared by UNICEF in February 2008 reveals disturbing trends in the incidences of violence against women, and the complicity of the state and the international peace keeping force.

The briefing paper revealed that in non conflict zones, the percentage of the total perpetrators of violence against women, who were armed, was 24%, while the share of civilian perpetrators was 76%; In this same situation, 65% of survivors where children. Whereas, in unstable zones, armed perpetrators constituted 65% of the total, while civilian perpetrators constituted 35% of the whole. In this instance, children were 45% of survivors and older women 55% of survivors. The situation became grimmer as we move into highly unstable zones: 81% of perpetrators were armed groups, while 19% of perpetrators were civilians. Here, children, i.e. the girl child, represented between 5% and 40% of survivors, while, older women were 60% to 95% of survivors [1].

In this context, where not only armed groups in conflict, including national armies, but also peace keeping or enforcement missions are implicated in the rising incidence of violence against women, including sexual violence, it is important for civil society and the affected and at risk communities to be empowered to play significant and decisive roles in the protection of civilians.

EXPERIENCE FROM THE FIELD:

In DRC where both the case study and the UNICEF figures were taken from, ActionAid is working with a number of women and survivor groups to facilitate their participation in processes aimed at ensuring their protection.

Here ActionAid partners with a national DRC group made up of women survivors of violence and women activists across the Congo.

Using a simplified adaptation of the protection EGG response model, and integrating women’s rights analytical frameworks into this model, the partnership has been engaging in activities which address responsive; remedial, and environment building actions; as well as addressing the woman as herself, in her family space, and in the public domain [2].

In this scenario, through the collective use of a participatory analytical and planning process called Participatory Vulnerability Analysis [PVA]/participatory conflict analysis framework [PCAF] [3], affected and at risk women jointly identified the most common patterns of abuse, their causes, dynamics and consequences; as well as plan appropriate actions to be taken in response as responsive, remedial and environment building actions.

USING THE EGG MODEL OF RESPONSE IN PRACTICE:

RESPONSIVE ACTIONS: These are immediate actions or steps taken to prevent, stop, reduce, and ameliorate the impact and incidence of violence against women [VAW].

ANAMAD working with the communities, established survivor homes, where victims of VAW were taken. Here they are provided with temporary shelter, they are counselled as individuals as well as collectively. Cases are also reported to the police, and survivors are given first aid treatment and referred to hospitals. In some instances, perpetrators are arrested, and handed over to law enforcement agencies.

In Sri Lanka where ActionAid works with displaced persons, as well as in Sierra Leone and Burundi where there are similar VAW projects, women forums have been established in camps and in communities, which track incidences of VAW, report cases to the police, refer survivors to hospitals, and even negotiate with camp management committees and community leadership structures to establish vigilant groups, and to negotiate with host or neighbouring communities for the security and safety of displaced persons as they go about trying to secure a livelihood in conditions of displacement [in Sri Lanka].

REMEDIAL ACTIONS: These are actions and steps taken to mitigate the impact of the violence, and facilitate the recovery and rehabilitation of the survivor.

Here ANAMAD in DRC, through the survivor homes, continues with individual and group counselling of survivors; facilitate continued treatment of survivors in hospitals; take steps to pursue reported cases in court; organise skills acquisition and livelihoods training and capacity building for survivors [in this instance skills acquisition in sewing]; provides agricultural inputs and assists survivors with farming and other agricultural practices as means of livelihoods; undertakes family mediation to ease the return of the survivor to the family [this involves counselling family members to understand the trauma of the survivor, deal with their own fears and trauma, and ease the re-uniting of family members turn apart by the act of violence]. Meetings of survivors and at risk women with state institutions including legislative assemblies are also facilitated to bring about awareness of the situation and pressure duty bearers to take appropriate actions in response.

In Kenya and Zimbabwe, where ActionAid and her partners are responding to the political crises in both countries, some of the remedial activities undertaken in response to VAW include, working with affected communities to ensure that women groups participate in the negotiation of safe spaces with neighbouring communities, militia groups, and armed forces to ensure security and safety of affected and at risk communities. These processes also include negotiations with neighbours for safe return as in the Rift province of Kenya, and negotiations with the armed forces and militia groups for security in accessing basic services and livelihoods sources in surrounding areas, as in Zimbabwe.

Similar activities are being undertaken in Sierra Leone, Burundi, and Sri Lanka.

ENVIRONMENT BUILDING ACTIONS: These are actions and steps taken to facilitate the creation of conducive environment that will help to prevent, stop, reduce, mitigate impact, aid recovery and rehabilitation of survivors into the long term.

In Sierra Leone, DRC and Burundi, the response has included working with women forums to ensure that national legislations are enforced, that the capacity of the armed forces and the judiciary are built to enforce the legislations, that funding is provided to resource the institutions established to enforce the legislations, and that reported cases are successfully prosecuted and perpetrators punished, while survivors are rehabilitated.

Other activities have included documenting cases, tracking and monitoring enforcement and compliance rates in order to raise awareness and pressure relevant authorities to take decisive action to ensure the protection of women and children.

So ANAMAD and the other women forums are supported and encouraged to meet with state authorities at local, district, provincial and national levels, to push the case for policies and legislations as well as their enforcement.

In Sierra Leone for instance, as a result of the engagement of women forums with community leadership structures, traditional authorities have passed 3 by-laws, integrates the three national gender acts into customary law and practice.

In Burundi, survivor forums are being supported to network with national civil society and women’s rights movements. By so doing, they are bringing the agenda of protection against VAW into national discourse, and helping to make it the common agenda of women’s movements and women’s rights activists in the country.

USING THE GENDER EQUALITY FRAMEWORK [GEF]:

Using this framework to address VAW enables us to understand and respond to the specific needs and issues of women in the totality of the of the roles and functions of women in society dominated as it is by men.

The woman as a survivor, and as a vulnerable and at risk person and group, is understood in her individual capacity, as well as in her role and place, in her reproductive and productive role in the home/family and in the community at large. It is this which constitutes her three spaces: the self, the private or family, and the public spaces.

So for example, in this community [survivor/at risk or affected community] based approach to protection of women from VAW, highlighted above, responses which include individual counselling of the survivor, capacity building of survivor in livelihoods skills acquisition, civic education of the survivor on rights and leadership; as well as speaking out, taking leadership roles, supporting a girl child to return to school and complete her education, and starting an income generating activity all go to address the woman as self. These activities combined, enable the woman to grow in self confidence, and restore her sense of self worth and her integrity as a human being and a woman.

Also activities such as family mediation and counselling, awareness raising targeting men in their homes, addresses the needs and issues of women in the private space in the family.

Finally, group counselling activities, working together with other women in forums and in skills acquisition, civic and leadership training exercises; participating in demonstrations and campaigns with other women, engaging as a group with state institutions and other relevant stakeholder groups, collectively speaking out, and collectively organising awareness raising activities; as well as collectively monitoring and tracking incidences of abuse and the patterns of enforcement of existing legislations to protect women are all examples of activities which address the woman in the public space.

CONCLUSION:

To conclude, as available statistics and evidence indicates, insecurity and lack of safety, the deployment of violence against civilian and vulnerable groups as a strategy and weapon of conflicts, have become indisputable facts of current emergencies and conflicts.

As these incidences of large scale indiscriminate violence has increased, the need for protection of civilians and particularly vulnerable groups have also increased. It is this which has made protection an imperative concern and agenda of development and humanitarian agencies in conflicts and emergencies.

And whereas the obligation and responsibility to protect remains with the state and the international community, the field experience documented above makes a passionate case for the involvement and participation of affected and at risk communities in their own protection.

The enduring challenge remains how to do this effectively, where the state is complicit in the perpetration and perpetuation of violence.

* Carol Angir is policy coordinator of ActionAid’s multi country Violence against women project, supported by DANIDA; while Ayodeji Ajayeoba [Jaye Gaskia] is the Global conflict advisor of ActionAid International.

*The authors would like to acknowledge the collective efforts of the VAW project team in DRC, Burundi, Sierra Leone, and the international support team.

*Please send comments to [email protected] or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Notes:

1. Briefing note on sexual violence in DRC, by UNICEF, 29th February 2008.

2. This approach that targets the woman in her individual capacity, in her role and place in the family, as well as in her role and place in the public arena, is called the Gender Equality Framework [GEF].

3. The PVA is a participatory multi stakeholder, multi level, multi step and multi dimensional framework for conducting analysis and designing action plans in response to the outcomes of the analysis. As a framework, it is a methodological approach which involves the combined use of various participatory [PRA] tools. It is also an empowering and capacity building process, which promotes self organising and mobilising, as well as alliance building and networking to solve problems. The PCAF is the adaptation of this framework to conduct conflict analysis, and plan collectively for response.