As the World Health Organization notes, women and children account for more than 75 percent of people displaced by disasters. For those women, disaster magnifies health care disparities and the burdens assigned by gender roles…

…As caretakers, women may spearhead the family’s search for shelter and safety. Away from home, the women displaced in Japan could face increased vulnerability to sexual assault.

There are already reports of vulnerable women being preyed upon,

There have been reports of men approaching single women, pretending to be a police officer or someone from an aid organization offering to take them to a ‘safer place’. They are trying to take advantage of stranded women during the crisis. Please spread this around, and tell anyone you know who is in Japan. Don’t go anywhere alone, buddy up with someone and stick together.

And bear in mind that interpersonal violence is already a huge issue in Japan. Domestic violence in Japan jumped 20.2 per cent in 2010.  In most cases the victims are women.  Also, while it is good that American troops are providing humanitarian assistance, it is important to remember that there is a long history of American soldiers preying on Japanese women near U.S. military bases in Japan.

A women-only shelter has been set up.  The contact information is:

Asia Japan Women’s Resource Center
Shibuya Coop 311
14-10 Sakuragaoka
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150
Japan
Tel: 03-3780-5245
Fax: 03-3463-9752
Email: ajwrc@jca.or.jp

In addition to physical safety concerns, there are also concerns for pregnant women who may not be able to get adequate health care.  But beyond that there is another crucial concern in the aftermath of this disaster. As The Daily Beast points out,

A full-blown nuclear meltdown would be devastating for pregnant women and their fetuses, which are particularly vulnerable to the lasting effects of radiation. Should the worst-case scenario become a reality, it could lead to a generation of children born with all manner of maladies, from congenital malformation to mental retardation. Even at radiation levels too low to make a mother-to-be sick, health consequences for a fetus can be severe, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…

…Because ionizing radiation can cause DNA damage, it can thwart the cell division necessary for healthy formation of essential organs. Birth defects resulting from exposure to radiation include smaller organs, microcephaly (a condition in which a baby is born with a smaller brain) and lowered cognitive functioning. However, these effects “usually require relatively high doses of radiation” and such extreme levels are not yet confirmed, said Dr. Douple in an email.

Finally, many women in shelters are without such basics as tampons and babies need diapers, formula, etc. supplies of which are usually an afterthought, but the need is very real.

As aid begins to make its way to Japan, the vulnerabilities specifically experienced by women and children need to be fully addressed and an integral part of relief efforts.

legal and political framework that acknowledges the importance of the participation of women and the inclusion of gender perspectives in peace negotiations, humanitarian planning, peacekeeping operations, post-conflict peacebuilding and governance.

Key provisions of 1325 include:

• Increased participation and representation of women at all levels of decision-making.
• Attention to specific protection needs of women and girls in conflict.
• Gender perspective in post-conflict processes.
• Gender perspective in UN programming, reporting and in SC missions.
• Gender perspective & training in UN peace support operations.

On September 21, I’ll be giving a presentation titled, Towards a Women-Inclusive Peace:  Why 1325 is the Crucial Number at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee, WI at their International Day of Peace celebration, co-sponsored by  the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

I’m very excited to be speaking about 1325, which is something I regularly address when talking about the impact that militarism has on women’s lives.  It is particularly timely now that we’ve officially declared an end to combat missions in Iraq. But just saying it’s over doesn’t make it over if you are a widow without any substantive means of support or of you are a mother living as a refugee in Syria or Jordan forced to prostitute yourself to feed your children.  These examples point to why it is so important to consider the needs and listen to the voices of women when resolving conflict.

I’ll post the text and slides from the presentation after the event but in the meantime, here are some links for learning more about 1325.

• Peacewomen
• UNIFEM
• Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
• Checklist of Progress Made on Implementation of 1325 (link leads to detailed, very informative report)

If your school or organization would be interested in a presentation about how militarism impacts women’s lives and this very important resolution, please contact me at lucindamarshall @ feministpeacenetwork.org.

Donations to the International Planned Parenthood Federation’s Profamil program will help them get their clinics and mobile health units in Haiti back to being fully operational.

Since 1984 PROFAMIL has provided low-cost, quality sexual and reproductive healthcare. As a leader in the field, PROFAMIL meets regularly with the Minister of Health to develop strategies for increasing access to sexual and reproductive healthcare.

Programs that Profamil offers include:

* Sexual & Reproductive Health Services: PROFAMIL clinics provide family planning, early detection of breast and cervical cancers, high-quality sexual and reproductive health clinical services for men and women, and pre-and-post natal services.

* Mobile Health Clinics: PROFAMIL brings health providers directly to the rural communities where the people are totally isolated. Approximately 200 men, women and children are provided with basic health care services at each visit.

* HIV/AIDS Prevention: PROFAMIL conducts voluntary testing and counseling for HIV/AIDS, educates the public about prevention and ensures widespread access to condoms.

* PROFAMIL Youth Program: PROFAMIL provides youth-friendly clinical and educational services to young people aged 10-25.

* Health Education: PROFAMIL covers issues such as promoting family planning and presenting various methods; cervical cancer and the need for routine pap smears; relationships; gender issues; domestic violence; HIV/AIDS prevention with regular condom demonstrations. In 2006, PROFAMIL educated over 225,000 people.

Peacewomen has a list of numerous organizations that are working with women in Haiti here.

The UNFPA has launched a flash appeal to fund programs that will allow them to:

• Refurbish maternity wards to handle emergency obstetric care and other life-saving health services;
• Deploy skilled health professionals, such as midwives, obstetricians and nurses, to affected areas to provide maternal health and emergency obstetric care;
• Provide emergency safe delivery and reproductive health medicines and supplies to temporary clinics and health facilities being set up;
• Help safeguard the personal hygiene and dignity of women and girls by providing related sanitary supplies;
• Facilitate access of affected populations, especially young people, to psychosocial counselling and other services; and
• Carry out interventions to prevent gender based violence.

The Women’s Refugee Commission has a list of the ten most pressing needs that must be met to ensure the well-being and safety of those displaced in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Amnesty has issued a statement regarding the need to protect women against sexual violence and exploitation in the wake of the earthquake.

The Global Fund for Women is  asking Haitian women to help them formulate long-range responses and to inform the fund of their perceptions of need.  (Note–while this perhaps sounds non-specific, I particularly like that they are asking what is needed, rather than telling those whose  lives have been impacted what they see as the needs.  Given that women are hugely under-represented in the organizations that organize aid in response to disasters, this is a very important shift  in formulating response policy.)

AWID has an excellent piece by Masum Momaya on the role of women in the Haitian Economy, a subject that is the basis for the film Poto Mitan:

And WomenArts has this wonderful page about Haitian women in the arts including a poem entitled Mud Mothers by Lenelle Moise, here are just a few lines from the poem which I urge you to read in its entirety.

Mud Mothers

the children of haiti
are not mythological
we are starving
or eating salty cakes
made of clay

because in 1804 we felled
our former slave captors
the graceless losers sunk
vindictive yellow
teeth into our forests

what was green is now
dust & everyone knows
trees unleash oxygen
(another humble word
for life)

Please also see Providing Gender Responsive Aid in Haiti.  H/t to Change.org for pointing to many of the links provided here and Sue Katz for pointing to the WomenArts link.  Also, although not women-specific, h/t to Global Voices for providing updates from independent voices on the ground in Haiti.

GENDER ASPECTS OF STATELESSNESS
excerpted from a talk by Ada Williams Prince on International Migrants Day

Statelessness, or the lack of effective nationality, impacts the daily lives of some 11-12 million people around the world. Although the exact numbers are not known, it is estimated that half of these people are women. All displaced women and girls face extreme levels of risk to their safety and well being. This is exacerbated when Women and Girls become stateless.How do women become stateless? This can be as a result of political change or when states deliberately write laws excluding minority groups from citizenship, such as in the Dominican Republic, Myanmar/Burma, Estonia and Latvia.

Gender discrimination is another crucial factor in statelessness. Gender discrimination in nationality means that a woman can lose her right to citizenship by virtue of marriage because she has to denounce her nationality when she gets married. And Women often cannot pass on their citizenship to their children.

Other ways of becoming stateless: People may lose access to their birth records and citizenship documents when the state systems linked to registration and citizenship are destroyed during conflict or disasters. Also, families forced to flee their homes and leave their possessions during conflict and natural disasters may leave without identification, or lose proof of citizenship documents, or have them stolen.

As a result of being stateless, refugee women and girls are also frequently unable to obtain passports, to travel freely, or acquire jobs in the formal sector. This puts them at risk of using smugglers to remove themselves from difficult situations or in hopes of supporting themselves and their families.

But, there are some solutions to these problems. For example, it is important that refugees receive individual ID cards, that women’s names appear on ration cards, and that births, marriages and deaths are registered. This kind of documentation and registration has an impact on refugee return, nationality and inheritance. For example, having an individual identity card can help facilitate movement, stop
the use of detention and offer protection against refoulement.

Statelessness has innumerable consequences on children, particularly girls. Those who suffer most are stateless infants, children and youth. Though born and raised in their parents’ country of residence, they lack formal recognition of their existence.

First, refugee mothers give birth outside their home countries and in most cases cannot pass on their nationality to their children. Countries that determine citizenship exclusively by the father’s nationality create problems for children born out of wedlock, separated from their fathers, or whose fathers are stateless.

Second, Birth registration establishes a child’s legal identity and the state’s responsibility for that child. But without a permanent identity, children have limited access to health care and to primary education; and are almost universally restricted from receiving public secondary education. As a result, many young people are forced to do unskilled labor such as trash picking to survive. Currently 51 million children per year are not registered at birth.

Third, Statelessness may lead to forced or early marriage, harassment, sexual and physical violence, and trafficking. Traffickers of stateless children cannot be taken to court when children are without proper documents that prove their age or resident status.

Two specific Examples I’d like to start by talking about Malaysia as an example

In the eyes of the Malaysian government, there is no difference
between an undocumented worker and a refugee. As Malaysia has not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees have no legal status and no right to work or legal residency.

Malaysia is host to a large number of migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers including stateless persons. Concentrated in Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding regions, there are an estimated 100,000 refugees and asylum seekers. This includes two of the most vulnerable stateless populations: Royhinga and those from Myanmar/Burma.

These refugee and stateless women face immense challenges. While they desperately need to work, without legal protection and legal status they are extremely vulnerable to violence and exploitation by employers who are able to act with impunity because the women face deportation if they go to the police.

Merely leaving the house to go to work puts women at great risk of arrest and attack. Not working at all increases women’s dependency on community members, spouses and neighbors. This also increases their risk of abuse.

The complexity of their situation makes it very challenging for UNHCR and other refugee advocates to provide sufficient protection and assistance.

Let me give you an example. One stateless girl from northern Thailand responded to a job offer in a Bangkok and ended up trafficked to Malaysia for commercial sexual exploitation in a brothel. She was eventually rescued, but then she languished for months in a detention center while states argued over where she belonged. Also, children whose migrant parents have been arrested and detained or deported may end up living and working on the street.

Let us turn now to Nepal – Bhutanese Refugees

The Himalayan nation hosts about 800,000 people whose nationality is not confirmed and who cannot access important government services without a citizenship certificate.

Some key causes of statelessness for Bhutanese in Nepal are being unable to cover the costs of applying for a citizenship certificate, and lack of motivation to apply for citizenship due to low levels of public awareness on the importance of possessing citizenship documents. In addition, many refugees who fled Bhutan in the early 90’s at the height of the refugee exodus to refugee camps in Nepal
claim that their houses and citizenship documents were burned by authorities in Bhutan.

Key issues 50% of the Bhutanese refugee population in Nepal is women. There are still a number of key issues that put these stateless and refugee women at risk in refugee camps.

Women must get up early and search for firewood both for cooking and for selling as a means of earning a living. As they venture out of the relative safety of the camps to collect firewood they are often attacked along the way, beaten or sexually assaulted.

Refugees in Nepal do not have the right to work. Without the ability to legally earn income, refugee women and girls are more likely to put themselves at risk to make a living in different – and dangerous – ways: Selling their kerosene, collecting firewood as a fuel replacement or by subjecting themselves to exploitation and abuse by working illegally. In addition, this can easily lead to women and children to fall prey to traffickers. Efforts by the international community to prevent and respond to sexual and gender-based violence in the camps remain ongoing.

Women are extremely dependent on men, and when abused they have no recourse, or access to resources on their own.

25,000 refugees from Bhutan have been resettled in the United States and other receiving countries from camps in eastern Nepal. This is something to celebrate. But for those stateless and refugee women still residing in camps, their situation continues to put them at risk.

I’d like to outline some key actions that can be taken now to protect stateless women, children and youth around the world:

* To protect children, ensure that every child is registered at
birth, identify cases of disputed nationality and grant citizenship
when a child would otherwise be stateless.

* To protect women, disseminate the new Inter-agency Standing Committee guidelines on fuel strategies (which provide fuel and alternatives and help determine agency roles and responsibilities). This will help stop women from being attacked when they collect firewood, as well as help provide for more effective livelihood interventions.

* To protect women, undertake a series of awareness campaigns to ensure they obtain citizenship certificates or other documentation and support to help anyone who wishes to do so.

See also: Refugee Girls – The Invisible Faces of War – 48 pages.

With thanks to Frieda Werden for bringing this presentation to our attention.

As we found ourselves immersed in the making PDBH, we realized time and again that this story about women’s centrality in war, peacemaking, and post-conflict rebuilding was at once both ancient and strikingly contemporary, crucial to understanding local context, yet truly global in its contours. And yet, this story hasn’t been told.

These thoughts followed us into the edit room for PDBH – we found that there was a stunning lack of relevant archival materials for us to work with. If we had been making a film about child soldiers, about combat, about warlords, or even about the heroics of the journalists themselves, there would have been no shortage of material. Despite the fact that every eyewitness to the events confirmed, in strikingly similar language, what the women had told us they had done, it appears that mainstream media wasn’t interested, or the footage resulting from those days was not deemed important enough to archive. Ultimately, most of the footage we used that showed the women in action came from private sources.

The difficulty of getting relevant footage from credible public sources highlighted an important reality for us. Everyone we spoke to, from regular citizens to policy leaders, credited these women with enormous influence on the outcome of the peace process and ensuing events, including the disarmament process and the election of Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and yet that influence was nowhere in the journalistic or official record. And so their accomplishments, however stunning, were doomed to become part of an easily dismissed “mythical” narrative, and not included in history’s document of record. The women, in other words were being erased – and right before our eyes.

In order to make sure that this erasure of history doesn’t continue to happen to women in conflict zones around the world, we have joined forces with Pamela Hogan at the New York PBS station THIRTEEN/WNET.ORG, to create Women, War & Peace.

Here is a trailer for the series:

You can contribute to making this project happen here.