at age nine you live in a small town
with approximately 20 of their families
and those civil war is happening in the
country that you live in the town that
you live in is relatively safe and
peaceful and then things begin to change
a group of Fighters moves to your town
they come to recruit and they recruit or
rather force community members to
participate they come at night they
knock on doors they beat people they
take men one per family and this happens
for years and as the war continues on
the military of your country also come
to town and at first they come to town
saying that they’re there to help with
the fighters that have entered into your
hometown in instead of being a source of
help they become a source of intense
fear and harm over the course of years
military official physically and
sexually assault community members
someone is raped by soldiers every eight
to 15 days and at age 19 it happens to
you you’re hurt bleeding ashamed you go
to your aunt’s house to heal and your
aunt tells you that you should leave the
country for safety elsewhere and after a
few days you do after a few days you
make a trek northward you know no one in
the country that you move to but you
make the trek northward and you make it
there and you never returned home again
never again do you see your family this
is the story of Rana Isabel Garcia
Martinez of Guatemala and in 1998 she
attempted to receive refugee status in
the United States on the basis of her
experiences with gender-based violence
the immigration judge hearing her case
told her that she could not substantiate
that she was a victim of past
persecution and she failed to show
according to this judge that her attack
had anything to do with her race her
religion her nationality her membership
in a political social group or or her
political opinion instead the judge said
that her experiences with sexual
violence were personal they were
personal in nature and an act that was
done personally by this soldier there
was no evidence that the act was
condoned by her government Rana was
denied Asylum unfortunately rayna’s
experiences are not unique in the United
States and around the world we have a
gender problem in the way we recognize
refugees and receive refugees and to
address this refugee crisis here and
around the world I think we must begin
to think differently about this gender
problem I suggest that to take gender
seriously as well as a number of other
categories that force people to flee
sexuality environmental degradation
poverty we may need to think about a
problem of categories and categorization
as a source of what often is used to
determine who counts as a refugee but
can then become a source of exclusion
I’m also going to suggest that we have
some deep thinking to do about gender
and taking gender seriously and
gender-based violence seriously so in my
talk for today what I want to do is to
provide a scope of the refugee problem
and how gender fits within this I’ll
then narrow to the United States to show
how the United States has addressed
gender in its refugee and asylum system
and then I’m going to end by talking
about how us as you members of us
public’s and the global community can
begin to think about moving and
directions that take gender seriously in
addressing the refugee crisis so
according to the united nations high
commissioner for refugees there are
currently sixty 5.3 million forcibly
displaced
persons in the world today and women and
girls make up half of that number and
they often experience sexual and
gender-based violence as a key of their
factors were needing to leave home and
this is much like the experience of rain
on and really the examples are too many
reports coming out of the European
crisis currently for example illustrate
that not only is sexual and gender-based
violence something that causes one to
flee but it’s also a common part of the
path to exile the migration the movement
similar accounts have been given by
Central American and Mexican women
coming to the United States and Canada
the journey can be as heroin as the
reasons we’re leaving sexual violence is
at the same time exceptional as it is
quite routine and mundane the United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
also states that it really has no way to
prevent this sort of violence that’s
happening as individuals are fleeing
places of conflict and unfortunately
once women arrive in a country and begin
to seek asylum their ability to gain
asylum on the basis of experiences of
gender and sexuality related violence
are equally slim and so I want to turn
now to talk about how the u.s. manages
this problem how the u.s. negotiates the
gender problem in accepting refugees and
asylum seekers so in the United States
the 1980 refugee act is really important
in understanding who gets to be a
refugee and under this act two systems
for accepting refugees were established
the first is this system of refugee
resettlement and this is what we hear a
lot about when individuals are talking
about asylum and refugee resettlement
today in this context mass groups of
people flee civil conflict often go to
another country and take up settlement
in a refugee camp and then at a point
often decades international workers will
say there is no end in sight to the
conflict that these individuals had to
leave and so permanent resettlement is
really necessary and so the United
States is one country that recognizes
and welcomes refugee resettlement
programs this is the process that Syrian
refugees that we are learning about
currently are working under the second
process is a process of asylum and this
is the process that Reina went through
and this is a process that happens when
an individual or maybe a family arrives
at are within the borders of the United
States and they say I have been
persecuted or I fear persecution I need
to remain in this country and they go
through a process of interviews and
immigration hearings and ultimately a
judge will decide what whether or not
you receive asylum and this is where
we’re really seeing significant problems
in the way gender is being recognized
and specifically with that refugee
definition and also the way in which
gender based violence is seen as
political persecution so if you’re like
Raina and you’re making an asylum claim
on the basis of having experienced
gender-based violence something like
rape or intimate abuse the category of
relief that you’ll ask for is as a
person who is a member of a particular
social group so the United Nations also
designated and provided us with a
definition of who counts as a refugee
and this definition is used throughout
the world to decide who is a refugee who
is not a refugee it states that a
refugee is someone outside of their
country that has a well-founded fear of
persecution on the basis of their race
religion nationality political opinion
or membership in a social group I want
you to take a minute with this
definition notice the categories that
are named as protected and what category
these are absent what seems strangely
absent to you as a category worthy of
protection for refugee status if you
were writing this definition today what
categories would you include would you
have any at all gender along with many
other factors that cause people to flee
is notably absent in this definition the
very construction of a system for
managing refugees really creates many
exclusions that don’t allow people to
have access to the protections that they
perhaps deserve and for women like Raina
who have made gender-based claims as
members of gendered social groups the
challenges have really been giant early
on in the United States women making
gender-based claims we’re told that
gender alone could not count as a social
group because more than half of a
country’s population does not count as a
social group it’s too big other women
took a more narrow approach and they
framed their claim their their social
group in ways such as being members of a
social group of poor women who have been
battered by their husbands and who
oppose male domination in these cases
the claimants were told that they
couldn’t count either because they
couldn’t prove that their husbands were
abusing them on the basis of their
membership that their husbands saw them
as that group and were thusly
persecuting them now in addition to
struggling to fit into the definition of
a refugee women claiming gender-based
violence as persecution have also been
denied Asylum because their experiences
with violence are seen as personal not
political this was the case for a
limpiar las Omaha no of El Salvador she
came to the United States to seek refuge
after a sergeant of the Salvador
Salvadoran army began to repeatedly and
violently physically and sexually
assault her as well as threatened her
life
and the judge in her case told her that
the case attests to evidence and
mistreatment of an individual but not
persecution the judge continued that
Olympia quote may indeed have suffered
emotional and physical abuse in the
course of her personal relationship with
sergeant zuniga but such mistreatment is
clearly personal in nature and does not
constitute political persecution with
the meaning of immigration laws these
cases and so so so many more show us
that particularly in the United States
we have a problem with seeing gender and
gender based violence as anything more
than just personal experience I think we
must learn to think differently about
gender and gender based violence if we
are significantly going to address the
world’s refugee crisis and I want to end
the first thing that we must do is we
must learn to take women’s claims
seriously in particular women’s claims
of violence this sort of thinking would
really mean a culture shift and it’s not
just in this international context that
this matters that women’s experiences
with sexual violence are devalued and
discredited but it’s also when we talk
about sexual assault on us college
campuses something that twenty three
percent of women undergraduate women in
college experience during their time on
campus or domestic violence something
that thirty percent of women worldwide
experience over the course of their
lifetime across these contexts women are
not believed not taken seriously they’re
devalued and discredited especially when
they begin to publicly named their
experiences what will it take to take
sexual and gender-based violence
seriously I think we must begin by
believing women second in addressing the
gender dynamic in the refugee crisis we
must begin by centralizing gen
as a fundamental aspect of all elements
of migration the need to flee your home
the path to migration wading in refugee
camps seeking permanent resettlement
each moment is fundamentally shaped and
impacted by the gender of the person
migrating and fleeing we can do a better
job of integrating a gender analysis
into policy and procedure and protocol
and according to human rights and aid
workers that are on the ground
oftentimes the steps are quite simple
and actionable we must centralized a
gender analysis finally I suggest that
we may need to go back to the
foundations of the modern refugee system
and really rethink seriously what
categories and categorization do who
categories and categorization serves in
my research about gender and sexuality
related Asylum cases in the United
States one thing that I found is that
rather than being a tool of organization
and welcome these categories those
mentioned in the refugee definition are
often used to exclude more than they
include so that refugee receiving states
use them as techniques and tools to to
say you can’t counter you don’t belong
rather than using them to allow people
entrance and hospitality now I don’t
know if I’m suggesting that a definition
without categories would impact and
change in significant ways the gender
problem I really do believe that that is
a culture change but I think that by
centralizing a gender analysis in the
way we develop and think about things
like refugee processes and systems we
can really begin to take women’s lives
seriously and this taking women’s lives
seriously not only improves women’s
lives but every person connected to that
woman Herc in her community all of these
individuals benefit when her experiences
are acknowledged
and received as valid and worthy of
protection I really believe we can take
gender seriously we must thank you [Applause]