SHAMING THE WORLD

The needs of women refugees

Lucy Bonnerjea

CONTENTS

• Introduction
• Refugee women in camps
• The refugee context
• Women's social roles
• Women's economic roles
• Refugee women's health
• Refugee women and education
• Participation in camps decisions
• 'Durable Solutions?'
• The beginning of visibility
• Beginning to see
• Beginning to act
• Refugee women and migrant women
• Parallel problems
• Migrants' lot
• Sexual vulnerability
• As cause
• As consequence
• Refugee women in Western countries
• Conclusions and Recommendations

Introduction

The majority of the 12-15 million refugees throughout the world are female. In countries torn by war, armed conflict and political resistance, it is the women and children who frequently seek safety away from home. Their husbands and their fathers may be fighting or dead. The same is true when 'natural' catastrophes like droughts occur: women and children become refugees.

The map opposite presents the numbers of recognised refugees in 1984. Every moment of the day, however, sees changes as more flee and more resettle. The figures hide politically differing causes of exile, as well as differing criteria by which governments recognise refugees and receive them in the short and the long term. While the post-war period has been, for the affluent North, the most prolonged period of peace this century, not a day has passed without a war raging somewhere in the South. Many of these wars have been a product, direct or indirect, of the post-war geopolitics which divided the world into spheres of influence of the superpowers. More civilians than soldiers have died in these wars, creating a flood of refugees, whose reception depends on which side the host government is on. Humanitarian relief is as political as the crises which create the need for it.

The problems that create movements of populations - war, drought, bad agricultural planning and economic collapse are often, in the most literal sense, 'man-made'. It is not women who set economic priorities that allocate scarce investment to cash-crop farming or ranching for export to Western tables, rather than to production of food for domestic consumption. Women, who are the subsistence farmers in many countries, are particularly vulnerable to famine and drought. Yet, often chronically underfed and responsible for childcare, they are less mobile and less able than men to seek help rapidly. Women do not form a substantial part of the world's legislatures and are not represented at all in military governments. War councils are traditionally male and few women have the power to prevent wars (though it is worth noting that women's participation tends to be greater in wars of liberation than in conventional wars). Women's experience of refugee status within the microcosm of the camps does not improve their prospects of participation in the political and economic development of their countries or communities. The book aims to highlight the female refugee as an individual in her own right rather than as the dependent of a male. But we need to look at this first in the context of the global refugee problem displayed on the map.

In the North American continent, the present refugee population reflects two main processes: the aftermath of the US intervention in South East Asia and the present conflicts in Central America. Mexico and her neighbours are countries of 'first asylum' for the hundreds of thousands of peasants fleeing the brutal counter-insurgency campaigns of the Salvadorean and Guatemalan armies. These refugees, accorded a welcome in Nicaragua, are regarded with suspicion and hostility by the pro-US regime in Honduras. At the same time Honduras has given a free hand to Nicaraguan refugees to arms and train for guerrilla raids back across the border. Guatemalan refugees who have crossed the border into Mexico have faced much harsher treatment from the authorities than have the refugees from more distant El Salvador.

For Central Americans the US and Canada are mostly countries of 'second asylum': countries which receive, from camps or holding centres, refugees who have been specifically selected through arrangements with embassies, scholarship programmes etc. While Cubans have been accepted readily in the US, asylum seekers from 'friendly countries' such as El Salvador, Guatemala and Haiti face deportation.

The majority of refugees in the US are the legacy of the combined military and economic penetration of South East Asia, people who worked for the Americans or who were unable to adjust to communist rule. With the exception of specific minority groups, like the Hmong whose traditional hostility to the Vietnamese allowed them to be recruited en masse as insurgents by the Americans and later abandoned, the majority of these refugees are from the more privileged and English-speaking sectors of their societies. As in other countries of second asylum, the welcome given to refugees is related in part to their political background and in part to the colour of their skin.

The smaller numbers in South America are a result of two factors. Firstly, a political relaxation in some countries has allowed some of the refugees to return since the major efflux of the 1970s. Secondly, many of those who became refugees during the peak period of military rule throughout the continent (particularly Chileans, Argentineans and Uruguayans, the latter being 10% of that country's population) fled further afield to Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It should also be noted that the South American figures do not include those internally displaced within their own countries, such as those fleeing deforestation, famine or ethnocide in Brazil.

Europe, with the exception of West Germany and Austria, usually provides countries of second asylum. Latin Americans, Vietnamese, Ugandan Asians and Poles jostle together in the statistics with others who 'jump ship' in Europe's ports - Rotterdam, Liverpool, Stockholm. Western European countries too tend to select the refugees whom they are willing to accept in large numbers, their level of generosity being related to colour of politics and skin. West Germany prefers to take those fleeing the Eastern bloc, not least to prove the desirability of Western life, as well as to receive 'ethnic Germans' back into the homeland. The numbers in Britain and France are swollen by their former colonial relationships. Ugandan Asians were airlifted to Britain, while France's wars in South East Asia, North and West Africa have provided successive governments with commitments to accept expelled expatriates, refugees and migrants. While the British government has an open asylum policy for Polish refugees, it has forcibly returned Tamils who have sought refuge despite evidence that their lives would be in danger if they went back.

Africa's conflicts, the result of the colonial legacy of national boundaries and competition for national resources, have created the greatest number of refugees in any continent. Algeria's numbers are created by the flight of Saharouis from Moroccan control of their phosphate-rich land, as well as by nomads and others escaping the man-made famine in the Sahel countries of Mali, Niger and war-torn Chad. Zaire's large refugee population is mainly from Angola and Namibia where South African and South African-backed forces are waging wars of attrition as they are also in Mozambique. Refugees from apartheid South Africa and Namibia are to be found in Angola itself, Lesotho, Swaziland and Tanzania. Ruanda and Burundi, beset by internal ethnic conflict, have exchanged portions of their populations, in addition to receiving refugees from Zaire. Uganda and Tanzania receive refugees from conflict and famine to their north and south. The numbers in Sudan have grown by several thousand people daily: 700,000 from Ethiopia; 100,000 from Chad; 250,000 from Uganda; and 5,000 long-standing refugees from Zaire. This has all come at a time when only 5% of Sudan's usual harvest was gathered and 5 million of the country's own 21 million people have been affected by drought.

The Middle East presents the world's oldest large-scale refugee problem: the 2 million Palestinians scattered throughout the region, together with over I million living in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. The simmering conflict in the Middle East has generated successive waves of refugees after each Arab/Israeli war and the externally backed communal violence that has torn Lebanon apart.

The single greatest concentration of refugees is found in Pakistan, which along with Iran is the refuge for those fleeing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Here too geopolitical concerns are to the fore. The aid that has poured in to support the refugees and 'freedom fighters' has been motivated more by Western desire to oppose the Soviet Union than by the needs of the Afghanis themselves. As with the publicity for the exodus of thousands from Tibet to India after the Chinese invasion of 1939, the rigid and feudal nature of the traditional social order has been romanticised. This was not to defend the violation of national sovereignty but it is a regrettable paradox, especially in its implication for women, that humiliating cultural practices are often defended in the name of national identity.

Other sources of refugees in Asia have been those fleeing from communal violence in Sri Lanka and repression in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most of these, like the Tibetans, have settled in India. But the other great exodus from Asia has occurred in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, ten years ago. More bombs (three and a half times as many) were dropped on Vietnam and Kampuchea (Cambodia) than during the whole of the second world war. The legacy of death, devastation and economic dislocation, which swept peasants and ethnic minorities in the geopolitical maelstrom has been a continuing one: the exodus of the boat people from Vietnam, the massacre of two million in Kampuchea under Pol Pot and the continuing war waged by the perpetrators of that massacre, now backed by the West and China. Thousands now wait on Thailand's borders, unwanted by their host countries or any other, for conflict in their shredded land to end. A further quarter of a million fled into China, while those 'boat people' who evade pirates on the high seas are crammed into holding centres in Hong Kong, financed by Japan in lieu of accepting actual people.

Throughout South East Asia there are smaller and lessreported wars, most notably the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia which has produced more deaths than any other conflict since the second world war, and perhaps consequently fewer refugees. Australia and New Zealand, have primarily accepted Latin American and Vietnamese refugees. From the 1970s Australia's whites only policy was liberalised in the 1970s.

Refugees are people suddenly cut loose from their community, deprived of the opportunity to contribute to its development and to the resolution of the crisis which prompted their flight. In seeking refuge they become subject to procedures and decisions not of their making: relations between countries and between power blocs; attitudes of host governments. They may be separated and sorted by receiving agencies on the basis of language, politics, race, class, sex, skills, age, relationships with others, or, sometimes, their actual need. They often find themselves in competition with each other, and with the local population, for food, shelter, resources and employment. Perceived as the object of charity, rather than victims of global problems, they may find themselves in competition with each other for the world's attention and measured compassion.

Gradually women refugees are being counted. Ninety per cent of the Ethiopian refugees in Somalia are women and children under 15. Eighty per cent of the Kampuchean households along the Thai-Kampuchean borders are headed by women, as are over half of Palestinian households in Lebanon.' Over 80 per cent of the Salvadorean refugees in Nicaragua are women and children.2 Most of the 11,000 people from Guatemala, who have sought asylum in Mexico, are women, children and old people.3 And while for centuries the warrior tribesmen of Afghanistan crossed the mountains of Central Asia to the plains of the Indian sub-continent, today the arduous trek is undertaken by refugee women and their children.4

Attempts at defining refugee status began in 1951, with the United Nations Convention relating to the Status of Refugees. A refugee was defined as:

Any person who, owing to a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.

This Convention and the 1967 Protocol remain the main international instruments for recognising and responding to refugees. However the original concept of political persecution has been broadened considerably, and while the UNHCR now speaks of refugees and displaced persons, the OAU Refugee Convention reads as:

The term refugees shall also apply to every person who owing to external aggression, occupation, foreign domination or events seriously disturbing public order in either part or whole of his country of origin or nationality, is compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality.5

These Conventions are essential in providing the context for the recognition of refugee status and refugee needs, yet there are many limitations to international law in its present form. For example Frances D'Souza and Jeff Crisp note:

1. The international legal instruments cannot prevent the root causes of refugee exodus: persecution, repression, discrimination, war and natural disaster.
2. Not all states are party to the international network designed to protect refugees.
3. The Conventions and the Protocol are open to different interpretations and are not ultimately enforceable.
4. The Conventions and the Protocol cannot guarantee the psycho-social welfare of the refugees, and in many poorer parts of the world, cannot guarantee their material well-being.
5. The safety of refugees cannot necessarily be guaranteed, as shown by the killing of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon and Namibians in Angolan camps.
6. It is also not possible to legislate against host country hostility towards refugees.6

This report argues, however that there is a further crucial, underlying limitation to international law. It ignores the persecution that girls and women endure, even die under, for stepping out of the closed circle of social norms; choosing a husband in place of accepting an arranged marriage; undergoing an abortion where it is illegal; becoming politically active in a woman's movement. Women are also abandoned or persecuted for being rape victims, bearing illegitimate children or marrying men of different races. It ignores women's specific needs; in policy terms it is gender-blind. There is no recognition that the majority of refugees are female, and no recognition that they need legal protection and refugee status both as individuals in their own right and as women. This conceptual, practical and legal blindness has extremely serious consequences.

Whose criteria define legitimate fear for purposes of recognising refugees? The decision that persecution on grounds of race or religion may lead to 'a well-grounded fear' is recognised. Yet women who may be stoned or burnt to death for not bringing enough dowry - itself an outlawed institution - or for choosing their own husband, which according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights they may, have no rights or protection. Why is a girl who is threatened by violence and who attempts to escape by fleeing from her country, and from her family who may even be her persecutors, not part of UNHCR's responsibility? Since neither national governments, nor international bodies offer the right to protection to such women and the right to life with dignity, this is their shame.

The failure to recognise that women's rights activists are human rights campaigners is also a source of shame to the international bodies established to protect or promote the rights of human beings, and to the governments which influence them. For without this recognition, feminist activists and women's groups are persecuted with impunity. These victims of persecution are therefore not offered sanctuary as refugees, because campaigning for women's rights is not a recognised form of 'political opinion'. There are no international champions for persecuted women, and no funds given over to campaigns for their release or relief. The world is left in ignorance about women who act in their own cause. "

A small study identified some of the consequences, related them to the overall position of women in the societies from which they come and which they enter:

1. Discrimination on the grounds of sex and marital status:
2. The assignation of restricted socio-economic roles;
3. Economic disadvantage;
4. Domestic and child-care responsibilities
5. Health problems associated with stress, childbirth and malnutrition;
6. Many women are de-facto heads of households;
7. The destruction of social support networks;
8. Sexual abuse in prison, in flight, as part of torture, including resulting pregnancy;
9. Their subordinated legal and political status;
10. These factors make the women less likely to express their needs to agencies.8

In refugee camps, in addition to the inevitable squalor of overcrowding, women refugees face the insecurity of sexual vulnerability, discrimination, harassment and rape. Many are without the protection of a family, or the social network with which they identify. If pregnant, they give birth to children 'outside the clan', children who then come to lack a certain social identity. Nationality and ethnic identity are usually passed through the father, whose absence leaves children's legitimacy and 'belongingness' open to doubt - which reflects back on the mother's security and self-esteem. Women's needs are practical too: a report by the International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC) lists among them: grinding mills, the improvement of water supplies, special education and training courses and separate housing for unaccompanied women with children.g Equally important is the need to involve women substantially in decision-making in camps, in planning and administering, for example, food distribution as well as developing real income-generating projects. As two out of three illiterate adults are female, extension services and training are usually aimed at the men, and women have extra disadvantages when they reach camps or exile.

The physical and social vulnerability of women makes them more likely to bear the brunt of deprivation, discrimination and abuse in situations of hardship. Women are especially vulnerable to various forms of sexual intimidation and exploitation,. particularly when they are dependent on outside assistance and have to compete with others for relief and external aid. Both en route to, and in camps, women must live with the ever present danger of violation and rape'". There is extensive evidence of brutal pirate attacks on Indochinese women and girls in the seas around Thailand, and the abduction, harassment and detention of Palestinian and Lebanese women in Lebanon. 11) 'To talk about the experiences, and opportunities of women refugees without discussing the matter of sexual abuse is to ignore a fundamental dimension of the dilemma of women refugees. Actual or potential sexual abuse affects refugee women's action and perceptions during their flight and... search for asylum'·12) Young refugee girls have been sold by their protectors into the massage parlours of Bangkok. Elsewhere, others have had to sell their bodies to obtain the assignments of food and clothing which were their due.

In refugee camps, 'processing centres' or settlements women suffer discrimination which may leave them feeling isolated. There are many reports about women at the end of queues during the distribution of relief supplies. The patterns of food distribution in the camps often repeat custom within families: men eat first while women remain undernourished. Abuses of women remain unreported due to fear. Finally, long-term camp life and exile often affect the structural relationship between the sexes. The tensions of being aliens in a new land, without the norms of their own cultural life, can magnify domestic conflict; or the different social or economic status of women in the 'host' country can threaten men's perception of their roles and status. Refugee camps increasingly become places for isolated and unwanted women, children and the elderly. These are some of the issues which this report documents.

2. Refugee women in camps

The Refugee Context

Refugee situations are not new. Large population movements have taken place in every century, and the causes then were much the same as they are today: war, intolerance, and persecution. The main difference is that national frontiers are now more sharply defined, and more closely guarded," and communities can no longer move with ease. Nor are there new continents to receive a population, fleeing disasters like the nineteenth century Irish potato famine. The modern refugee situation is the price that is paid for nationalism, for the development of states, and of restrictions on movements. Asylum now requires formal permission.

Seeking refuge and the concomitant uprooting of communities is a last resort of people who have nothing left to lose. In the 1980s this decision is largely being taken by people who lead rural, marginal lives in the poorest countries. 14) The consequence is further pressure: families are split up, new unfamiliar patterns of social organisation are imposed, social roles are confused, customs and traditions rendered irrelevant, and children abruptly deprived of their childhood. At the same time international protection is becoming less generous. Many of the wealthier, Western countries, are implementing restrictive policies while in the poorer countries, traditionally generous hospitality is disturbed by attacks from neighbouring armies or from pirates, and the sharing of poverty means inadequate standards of living for all. In theory, the physical safety of the refugees is the responsibility of the host country. International protection, however is different, and is the responsibility of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR): it means making sure that refugees are given asylum and are not sent back against their wishes.

The origin of a refugee camp is an emergency. The first step is to provide relief: this means food, water, shelter, medical care, as well as physical security. This is clear for example in the case of one group of refugees:

'Fleeing from the Moroccan army and the Mauritanian militia were the Saharouis, again mostly women, children and old people. They were bombed by the Moroccan airforce, the camps attacked with napalm. The women are now housed in tents in the desert, and the tents wear out quickly in the sandblown desert. The water is unsafe and the whole of the infant population in danger of dying. "An indescribable tragedy", the Red Cross reported, "an exodus, leaving in its wake hundreds of innocent victims, children and women and old people, who have died of fatigue, thirst and the hardship of the long trek."'15

Women's Social Roles

'From the moment they decided to flee their ancestral farmlands and abandon care of their ancestral graves, they began severing the links that bound them to their past and their culture. They started breaking family laws the moment they stopped planting the rice'. 19 Director of the Bakaan Cultural Programme.

Refugee situations are characterised by disruption, upheaval and deaths. Social roles and social organisation have all been disrupted and destroyed and refugee camps are often institutionalised settlements, requiring conformity to norms which are foreign. The shelter and the clothes provided may be inappropriate to the climatic conditions as well as the cultural requirements of the refugees, for example American jeans sent to refugees in Ethiopian camps. Unacceptable foods may be provided, while male doctors may be taboo for female patients. Even though women have often not been given the legal or economic power over their own children, they are expected to hold the remains of the family together.20

New social roles have to be built on the remnants of old ones. One survey found fewer women than men in selected lndochinese camps. The survey showed these women to be particularly vulnerable, as they not only lacked their traditional family to draw upon for support, but their small numbers made it virtually certain that their needs were neglected. They received little help in the reconstruction of their lives''

Most camps, however, have large proportions of women. In camps in Somalia, for example, there were three times as many women as men. Two thirds of the households were headed by women. They set up co-operatives and they formed women's committees. The gender imbalance upset the old social order, and adaptation to camp life seemed to have given rise to new types of social relations. There were changes in the institution of marriage and in the married lives of the refugees: traditions and social roles had had to adapt to the realities of the camp.

As a consequence of cramped conditions, the loss of family property, and women's increased public visibility, arranged marriages were gradually replaced by love matches. The traditional bride-price paid by the husband to the wife's family which was between 15 and 35 camels - was replaced by a gift of food rations and some money. And to give an example of 'neutral' gender blindness, a report on these Somali camps notes: It is no problem finding a wife, given the surplus of women in the camps. ,22

For many women it has been difficult to adapt to camp life. Afghan women in Afghanistan were never allowed to be seen by strangers. In this traditional Islamic society, it is the men who meet officials, buy food in the markets and take the children to school. However widow's needs have been recognised. They used to have no one to collect their food rations and no means of obtaining supplies. As a result, the Pakistani government set up a widow's camp in Nasir Bagh where over 300 women live with their children. Within the camp the women are free to move, and to go to the special all-female dispensary and school. And there the widows wait for their sons to grow up, and take over the role of the head of house. Only then will they be a real family in the eyes of their community. The women will then have their assigned place in the village, and a home to live in.23 There, as everywhere else, refugee women in camps suffer uncertainty, disorientation, the loss of their loved ones, and the loss of the rhythms of life.

Books, official reports and newspapers refer to camps as temporary. According to experts and officials, most rural refugees are either 'spontaneously self-settled', or are placed in 'organised' small-holder settlements. The spontaneous settlements tended to be more popular during the 1960s and early 1970s, but more recently small-holder settlements have been promoted. Robert Chambers, for example argues that 'the best solution may be to provide small-holder settlements or camps for those who cannot settle themselves amongst their kinfolk'. 16)

While the first step is to provide relief, the second is to provide a means of livelihood. This, or what UNHCR somewhat clumsily refer to as 'durable solutions', means a longer term perspective on refugee problems. There are some situations where refugees can return to their home countries a short time after fleeing from them. In most, however, they cannot. Durable solutions involve clearing the land, constructing irrigation networks and feeder roads, the provision of seeds and tools and the introduction of agricultural extension services. They involve the development of self-sufficiency.

However resources for durable solutions increasingly compete with emergency needs. While in 1970,83 per cent of UNHCR's programme funds were geared to the promotion of durable solutions, in 1977 the proportion was 54 per cent. In 1981, following renewed crises in South East Asia, the Horn of Africa and Pakistan, the proportion was merely 26 per cent."

Ethiopia

Marriage, whereby individual women become subordinated to particular men, is the ultimate assertion over women's fertility and work. Both monogamy and polygamy are widely practised in Ethiopia, and in most places marriage can be dissolved. Only among those who organise around the age-set system, divorce is impossible because there is no life' outside its conventions. Even where separation is possible, as among the Sidama and Darasa, children belong to a woman's (first) husband. There is evidence that in the past Oromo (at least in Boranal used to practise infanticide if children were born to married men who were at the gada stage when they were not allowed to produce children. Female children were left to the elements, while some males were fostered with the Wata, the despised community who live just to the north of the Borana country. By the same token the Amhara unwanted children are fostered with the Oromo.

Tsehai Berhane Selassie: In Search of Ethiopian Women, CHANGE 1984

Bangladesh

The urban middle class image of rural harmony in the golden Bengali countryside has given way to the realisation that it is an environment that is often violent and brutal, where the class that wields social and economic power controls and coerces the lives of those around it. It is also clear that women's position in this context is grounded in the structural constraints that deny them access, not only to social power, but also to any form of autonomy over their own lives. Purdah, or female seclusion, is a key element of this structure. It creates a sexually segregated world that identifies men with the public/social sphere and women with the private/domestic sphere; its outward symbol is the burkah, a concealing garment that women don when they leave the household and signifies that they have entered 'male space'. Together with other mutually reinforcing elements of the system that operate at both ideological and structural levels, purdah sets and maintains the limits to women's access to power and autonomy.

The average age of marriage is about 13 in the rural areas.The first child is born within the first couple of years of marriage and subsequent births are spaced two or three years apart. Women can expect to have an average of seven births by the time they reach the end of their reproductive years. At any point in the year, one-fifth of the female population between the ages of 15 and 49 is pregnant. The long periods of breast-feeding practised in the country - averaging two years - means that women spend a considerable portion of their lives pregnant or breast-feeding. Very little concession is made to their extra nutritional needs during these periods, so they are usually the most deprived members of the family. Frequent childbearing takes its toll on women's lives. Maternal mortality accounts for 27% of all death among women in the 10-49 age group. The most vulnerable are girls who bear children between the ages of 15 and 19; among them the death related to childbirth accounts for 57% of the total.

In spite of these risks, and the dearth of legal rights in their children, there are concrete reasons why a woman will conform to traditional norms about her fertility behaviour. She is given a social-recognition for her reproductive role that is withheld from her productive contribution. Naila Kabeer: Minus Lives, Women of Bangladesh, CHANGE 1982

Thailand

Uganda

On marriage, in most societies a woman left and still leaves her patrilineal clan and converts to her husband's clan, where she belongs only for as long as she remains married to him. Her participation in clan affairs is dictated by a set of rules which are formulated to exclude women from the centre of power. If she has been married for cattle, she remains an object in exchange for those cattle and is not allowed to own them. Her base has shifted from the authority of her father's home to the authority other husband's. In neither is she allowed to own property which might lead to less dependence on the male power structure.

To gain a sense of achievement, she must exert herself to prove that she is capable of fulfilling the demands of traditional society on womanhood. To be proud of her own existence she must have the approval of her society: she must be proud of her own subordination. An adult woman who dissents, will first and foremost receive the disapproval and criticism of her female kin. before the men join in. While it would appear that women have instituted their own justice against another, such condemnation represents the comprehensiveness of the subordination that women act to condemn this dissenting female on behalf of the males. Evidence that there is no yardstick for female worth other than that dictated by the male kin.

Grace Akello: Self Twice Removed. Ugandan Woman, CHANGE 1983

Chile

Machismo, the cluster of male traits related to masculine honour, is a sensitive plant. It prevents men from helping in the home or undertaking tasks associated with 'women's work'. A man is unlikely to allow himself to push a pram, remove plates from the table, or be driven in a car by a woman. Machismo's essence lies not in being female or feminine rather than just being born male. It requires emphasis of gender differences, and constant reinforcing of traditional roles. This will bring a reluctance to open certain spheres of enterprise or occupations to others, different in origin, sex or race. just in case the competition is too strong. It is individualistic, a self-perception, yet it is also a personal response and a conditioned mode of thought finding approval in society's perception. Very closely associated with potency and virility, it will affect birth control decisions within and outside marriage.

A study (1978) of attitudes to, and within, marriage indicates that most women in Chile assume their 'vocation' to be marriage, Men interviewed from all social backgrounds agreed that domestic authority should be shared but there was class variation in the responses. Some 75% - 80% of rural or peasant men agreed that authority should be shared, half of the urban males agree, but only 10% of the traditional upper class. Sharing of 'domestic authority' is not the same as sharing work roles, but perhaps these figures reflect the inverse reality of Chilean women's lives.

Anon: Military Ideology and The Dissolution of Democracy

Afghan Refugee Women

In reply Cheryl Bernard said that the minimal survival needs are being provided by various international and voluntary aid organizations and the Pakistan government for almost one million refugees, the majority of whom are women and children, but the situation of the women was critical. Given the tribal and religious background of the Afghan refugees the women were victims of prejudice, traditional mores, and were often quite simply dispensible. For example, refugee papers, which are necessary for food rations and tents, are only issued to the male head of each family, which meant that widows, for example, depended on the charity of their male relatives for any food. Women could not move anywhere outside the camp and, since the food ration was first divided automatically among the various male members of the family, often the women or girl children received only the left-overs, if any - in others words they came last in the hierarchy of distribution. .Thus they suffered acutely from malnutrition. In addition, few men would allow their womenfolk to be examined by a doctor, no matter how ill they were, and this also applied to female children. Then, the education situation was deplorable since the schooling was inadequate. Of the many schools in the camps only five admitted girls; in fact, only 150 girls were attending some sort of school, but in most camps girls were not permitted to attend any lessons. Authority within the camps is extremely traditional, being in the hands of Afghan religious leaders, landowners, and leaders of various rebel organizations. The strict segregation of women was even more acute in the camps since they were among strangers, not their own villagers. Consequently, for the women, psychological, emotional, mental and medical survival was immensely difficult.

In Human Rights: Women's Rights and Development International Women's Day, 1982

Women's Economic Roles

There is increasing information on women's central yet previously unrecognised economic role. 24 The failure to take into account the value of women's work outside the formal economy has been matched by the widespread underestimation and stereotyping of women's participation within the economy. 25 The same failures are reproduced in refugee situations. The Western male-head-of-household model has often been exported by non governmental organisations for use in camps. In camp censuses, statistics, skill-listings, training opportunities and selection procedures, it tends to be the man whose name is registered and through whom the camps are administered. Until an alert woman economist visited a camp of Angolans in Zaire, the Belgian camp administrators had not in three years thought to register the women, or the encourage them to organise amongst themselves; there was malnutrition amongst them, and neglected skills as well as needs. Unless specifically arranged for women, training and literacy classes by-pass them, as they are all too often thought to have domestic roles only. As a result many women have no access to credit or to extension services and employment projects. Even agriculture in African refugee settlements is mostly geared towards men organising and running food production, although traditionally it is the women who undertake the majority of the tasks in the production of food crops.

Productive occupations are rarely seen as necessary for women in camps. As a result women refugees not only have to depend on others for physical survival, but also become dependent on their husbands or on outside assistance for their livelihood. For many African women this means their status as independent workers, as economic contributors, disappears. For the first time they are wholly dependent on their husbands or teenage sons, and sometimes the reward for their labour, whether food or financial, may be paid to the men as well, effectively making women family employees.

Nor is there any recognition of the economic value of domestic work. Women in the camps still cook, clean, fetch water, as well as look after the children and the general welfare of the husband. They continue with these responsibilities even though resources are scarce and the needs are much greater.

The refugee family depends heavily on the ability of the women to adapt. The cost of failure is increasing hardship and suffering for the whole family. A report on refugees from El Salvador and Guatemala in Honduras states that specific positive steps are needed to remedy women's problems.26 Special action is needed because women will remain included in all the work, and excluded from all the income, even when there is no purposeful discrimination; gender-blind policies are sufficient to create the problem.

Thus the creation of employment projects for women in camps must be a priority. For refugees in camps in Thailand there are two main income-producing activities: trade and services. In the camps of Nongkhai and Songkhia 'in the service sector, jobs offered by the voluntary agencies or camp personnel, tend to go to the men, because of the nature of such jobs'.27 These include construction, translating and sanitation. In the meantime the women trade in the markets. There is no policy for the employment of women.

Refugee Women and Health

Refugee women's health care involves two related issues. First, it is important to recognise that each woman comes from a culture which has its own system of beliefs on health and disease, and that Western ideas on health intervention must work with, not against, such systems. Second, it involves recognising that women's health needs, as both givers and receivers of health care must not be lost in a general policy.

Women's ill-health patterns are substantially different to those of men. Not only are there chronic problems from gynaecological infections and frequent child-bearing, but women's state of nutrition is often worse than men's. Not only are there customs which prevent women from eating certain foods, often the most nutritious, but in many societies women eat after the men. In times of scarcity they are the first to go without, even when nursing babies, and social relations within society determine access to food even when it is provided free. From chronic malnutrition comes a limited resistance to other disorders like tuberculosis, malaria, measles and parasites. This is compounded by the effects of wounds and violence: they may never heal enough for the victims to join food queues, reach water points or participate in meetings.

Shock and grief from losing infants - which are often the only source of status in many communities - combined with malnutrition, may cause menstrual disorders and infertility. Although unremarked by television cameras who seek out challenging images of starving children, it is often their mothers who die first. Although no voluntary agency or government will publicly admit to a policy of triage (allowing the weakest to die and preserving medical supplies for the strong), doctors admit that it does take place;28 and the value of female life is less than that of the male in most societies.

Only very slowly is the value of traditional medicine, along with modern methods of treating refugees, being accepted in Western-organised camps. Traditional medical centres operate in some of the Kampuchean holding centres in Thailand, due to the recognised importance of traditional healers and the strong cultural beliefs. The importance of the beliefs has also been recognised in the UK, where Simon Phillips, medical officer to the Indochinese refugees, has argued that illness must be examined in terms of the cultural background and beliefs of the refugees.29 But these are rare instances. When the results of headaches treated traditionally by the rubbing of specific areas of the forehead, and of coughs by pinching the throat, are mistaken for child abuse, there has been a breakdown in understanding between two systems and two cultures.

In Southeast Asia, different ethnic groups each have their own system of medicine. Chinese medical philosophy is highly developed and in many ways it is different from the medicine influenced by Western ideas. One voluntary organisation, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has recognised the value of traditional Khmer medicine; rather than setting up a Western-style psychiatric unit for mentally ill Kampuchean refugees, ICRC has sought collaboration with Khmer healers who are themselves refugees in the camps. The ICRC is also convinced that many illnesses are best treated within the context of the patients' own culture. Over 200 'Krou' doctors have been placed in traditional medical centres, and special dispensaries have been established for traditional medicines."" There was however little concern with women's needs. Nor is there much concern in more traditionally Western models of health care.

Family planning is another area fraught with difficulties. Should one promote family planning for women whose experience is characterised by loss? Women refugees have lost their homes, their security, and often their children, husbands or relatives. There are no universal answers. Women from El Salvador, having discussed family planning measures in the Honduran camps decided they did not want to participate. Each woman had experienced loss of life in her family, and expressed a desire to have more children - children who represented a hope for the future.3 In many cultures women are judged by their fertility, especially in the bearing of sons. On the other hand, in refugee situations which have stabilised, which provide income-generating activities, opportunities for planning one's life and participating in decision making, some women decide that family planning is important. And in a wider development context, a wave of backstreet abortions has been the consequence when countries have decided to increase their population, closing family planning clinics, and removing intra-uterine devices without the knowledge of the women. As a general trend, the more opportunity women have for planning their futures in an economic, social and political context, the more they may want to plan their families.

In addition to medical problems like infectious disease, women's health needs in camps and settlements are characterised by anxiety - uncertainty about separated families, strained personal relationships and the safety of pregnancy. All advice, particularly on nutrition, hygiene and child-care touches upon and challenges the women's deeply held beliefs, cultural traditions and modesty. Female health teams are essential for many Islamic cultures, but also desirable in many other refugee situations. Childbirth, for example, in many cultures is not a matter for a doctor-patient relationship; women would normally rely on the knowledge and skills of experienced female relatives or traditional birth attendants. For young refugee women who may lack the knowledge about how to care for themselves during pregnancy and childbirth, advice from women professionals may be more acceptable. Marital problems may also be common, particularly for those women who have been raped or assaulted: they may be living not merely with emotional trauma, but with physical and social rejection by their husbands. In every refugee situation, sensitive health care for women has tremendous unrecognised curative, preventive and developmental potential.

Refugee Women and Education

One of the most constructive forms of direct assistance, according to the International Catholic Migration Commission, can be in the field of education.33 Access to educational opportunity represents for many women one of the few positive aspects of being in a refugee camp.

There are, however, many obstacles. Adult education projects are a luxury which many camps cannot afford. Where education does exist, it is offered predominantly to men, since they are thought to be heads of households and therefore more in need of education. In South East Asia education is often largely language training for resettlement; its employment orientation leads to a concentration on men. Other camps offer educational projects which are irrelevant to women, and which undermine, rather than strengthen, the roles which refugee women have been accustomed to playing in their countries.

Under certain circumstances, the UNHCR offers scholarship assistance. However only a quarter of these have gone to female students.34 Additionally the majority of post-primary educational opportunities are academic, and not technical or vocational: this makes finding employment difficult. Female students, having faced the problem of access to higher education, find further problems at the end of their studies. For example, for some, being unmarried and without the protection of a husband or a family in their mid-twenties is contrary to their social customs. To others, the absence of child-care completely prevents them from practising their professions. This is particularly true of countries of second asylum. Britain, for example does not separate refugee statistics by sex, and consequently women refugee's educational needs are not specifically recognised. In Egypt, which has a generous policy of offering educational opportunity at its university and technical colleges, experience also suggests that it is when studies have been completed and the period of uncertainty and waiting follows, that problems begin. Which country will accept them for resettlement? Do they have a future?

Participation in Camp Decisions

'The cowed and silent refugee squatting on inhospitable terrain awaiting a refugee handout has become an image of our lives' UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies

In its handbook for emergencies,35 UNHCR continues: 'Too often the refugee remains daunted, a passive recipient of relief, whose system he or she does not understand... Improvements in the techniques of relief alone, that are not matched by an increased refugee involvement can be self-defeating'. The words reflect several decades of experience where refugees were seen mainly as receivers of aid not as active participants.

Only gradually have there been attempts to encourage cooperation, self-help and participation in camps. There are few examples of successful projects, and many explanations and excuses: camps are seen as temporary residences even though some Palestinian camps have been in existence for over thirty-five years and other refugee communities are older than ten years.

Furthermore, where refugees have been involved, it has tended to be men only. In Thailand the predominance of men in the governing structure was thought to reflect 'traditional concepts of appropriate division of labour'.36 Equally though, they reflect the camp administrators' stereotyped concepts. As a consequence, women's needs are overlooked and they rarely become involved in decision-making in the camps, even though they have a vital interest in the organisation and distribution of supplies and services.

A positive example of women's involvement in camp management comes from Solumuna camp, run by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). The camp is run by a People's Assembly, which is elected by camp dwellers. The great majority of the Assembly members are women, reflecting the composition of the camp. Women rear chickens and work on small gardens. They organise literacy classes as well as a few production projects, including a small factory which makes sanitary towels for women. The EPLF report that the experience of women refugees in Solumuna has led to important changes in their outlook. They discovered many hidden skills and now regard themselves as having a role to play in the future of their country. This has been made possible by the fact that they are responsible for themselves and the camp is administered in the general framework of self-determination.37

In many other contexts, self organisation is far more difficult. Afghan women, for example, may find it impossible to organise publicly. Yet one report suggests that village clinics have in some camps, created a 'revolution for many women. For the first time, women have a place to go: the clinics have become public meeting places. Officially the women's needs may be for pain-killers. Unofficially they may be to see other people.38

Julius Holt also argues for the importance of viewing refugee camps as potential communities which implies the fostering of leadership among the refugees.'"* Naturally there are problems in developing leadership within a refugee context where many people may come from different places, may have conflicting interests and may be suffering shock and bereavement. However, it is not only efficient to enable women in their own organisations to develop self-determination within the context of camp norms and the host government's laws; it is essential for self-sufficiency. It can also transform a place where people exist passively, institutionalised, into a lively community which generates its own activities and finds its own solutions to the practical problems of refugee life.

A Woman's Right to Learn

Refugee women enter formal education at a severe disadvantage. The vast majority have already been excluded from educational experience at home by a combination of actors: cultural, religious, social and legal custom and gender stereotyping. Throughout the Third World boys spend between twice and ten times as much time in schooling as girls; girls are three to four times more likely than boys to drop out of school. There is great pressure on girls to help their mother and to look after younger siblings. Early marriages and pregnancy interrupt their formal education and often terminate it altogether. Many families consider girls' education a poor investment, since they will earn less than men and since they will move to their husbands' families when they marry.

As a result, two thirds of the world's illiterates are women. Lack of educational qualifications is a tremendous handicap in the competition with men for educational opportunity in the camps. They are much less likely to get refugee scholarships to study in a second country of asylum and their special needs are rarely recognised within the camps. A rare exception is the literacy programme with Hmong women in the Thai camps, which recognised that the students remained silent when taught by a male instructor but spoke freely with other women.

The U.N. Decade for Women placed educational and training opportunities for women high on the list of priorities, and the need for women's education is vital in the camps. Recent research has shown that a mother's educational level has as much influence on the health of her children as does the provision of clean water and primary health care.

There are some signs that women's educational needs are being recognised at last. Adult education packs are being produced for use in the Namibian camps in Angola, Botswana and Zambia by World University Service (UK) and the SWAPO Women's Solidarity Campaign. The packs, designed by and for women, help develop new skills and confidence as well as literacy in English. Starting with issues that are relevant to women's lives, such as pregnancy and nutrition, the material provides in both pictures and words the tools for women to increase control over their own lives. The choice by SWAPO, the Namibian liberation movement, of English as a future national language, reflects an effort to overcome the isolation and segmentation of the society imposed by South African education in Afrikaans or the many vernacular tongues.

The choice of language in which to educate refugees is a difficult one. Many host governments insist that teaching should be in their language and following their curriculum. Where refugees wish to resettle permanently in the host country, as with the Ugandan Asians and Vietnamese in the U.K., this is unproblematic. Others however wish to remain near their home countries and prepare for a time of return. This is especially true in situations where the refugees are a product of wars of national liberation, as with the Namibians in Angola and the Salvadorans in Nicaragua and Honduras. Many of these refugees want their own curriculum in their own idiom. In general, whether refugees hope to resettle or return, education is an important means by which communities in exile can preserve their own language and culture and learn their own history.

Jane Goldsmith, WUS-UK, 1984

Ethiopia

Potter women, go to all village markets in all directions to sell their products, with their men 'helping' to transport the enormous pots for storing grain or for brewing beverages, but keeping income. It is difficult to gauge how far they travel to sell their own produce, and they do not seem to have developed co-operation among themselves. The pressures on despised groups would not encourage co-operation anyway. No one in history nor the present has provided protection for them as Church or State did for blacksmiths, carpenters and masons. Even though pottery was taxable its use never went beyond the household; unlike salt, which could also be used as currency, pottery was never transformed into an object of value or prestige reflecting well on its markets.

The physical energy expended by women is often under-rated, mostly by associating their work only with 'household activities'. Yet all over the country women travel at least ten kilometres a day only to fetch water in pots which, with water, weigh 40kgs. They then travel to collect firewood from progressively more distant places, or go to market to sell and buy produce - and the markets' distance varies each day of the week. They may be pregnant, and often have no one to look after the small children whom they will then have to take with them. When all the travelling is done, they have to prepare flour and spices as well as cook the food, and look after everybody in their household. Time and time again these chores have to be described as part of women's difficult lives in Africa. Conditioned by beliefs about themselves, women also feed their men first. These factors have to be taken into account when discussing cash cropping or 'integration' into a wider economy.

The difficult and additional farm work women perform in the past as now is not to be dismissed but it must nevertheless be seen in relation to women's overall contribution as peasants. Nomadic women's work on land is also as vital as their men's cattle herding. Mistakenly, the dominant economic activity, namely that performed by men - ploughing among the agriculturalists or cattle herding among the nomads - has guided the state's policy to the detriment of the general economy as well as that of the communities concerned. When the state tries to settle nomads or push them out of their 'grazing grounds' for the benefit of agricultural development. It ignores the vital issue of women's so called 'supplementary' cultivation of crops, for which reason nomads run the risk of starvation.

Tsehai Berhane Selassie: In Search of Ethiopian Women. CHANGE 1984

Thailand

In the light of a Thai woman's circumstances in today's world, it is worth noting the following: The excessive exploitation of female and child labour is possible because of the pressure of numbers on the slender resources available to the working class families. With the rapid growth of population, the slow growth in agriculture, and the spread of market economy in the rural areas, migration to cities increases. The supply of labour particularly of the unskilled type grows faster than the demand keeping the general wage level depressed. The women and children as supplementary earners in the family have a low reservation price. Whatever they get is extra and adds a bit to the easing of their distress. The absence of a strong trade union movement and the severe competition for jobs make these weaker social groups particularly vulnerable to undue exploitation.'

Khin Thitsa: Providence and Prostitution, Image and Reality for Women in Buddhist Thailand, CHANGE, 1980

Bangladesh

Poor women who are forced by economic need into public forms of work, are especially conscious of the discrepancy between the social ideal of purdah and the economic choices they have to make - and they see it as a luxury that only the wealthy can afford. As one of the women interviewed while working for a Food-for-Work project said 'When I first started working to support myself people had much to say against it. I knew that no one would give me a meal, so why would I care about their opinions? They said the world had become a hell, with women working in the fields and roads. I paid no heed to them. People with empty stomachs do not have to worry about social norms. If begging does not hamper my self-respect, why should hard work erode my dignity?'

A study of vagrants in the capital of Dhaka estimated that 71Ck of the males, and 83% of the females were recent migrants, mostly belonging to the rural landless class. Half of the women were married, a few were single and the rest were divorced or widowed. Many of them sought employment in the city because it was less acceptable or available in the areas from which they came. Another study in 1977 of prostitutes in Dhaka also found that about two-thirds of those interviewed came from outside Dhaka district, mainly from the most densely populated areas of Bangladesh. Since only about a quarter of them were over the age of 20, it can be assumed that migration was generally quite recent. Half of those interviewed quoted poverty as their main reason for becoming prostitutes, 8% had been deserted by their husbands looking for jobs, and the remainder had been sold either by pimps, husbands, stepmothers, lovers or abductors.

Naila Kabeer: Minux Lives - Women of Bangladesh, CHANGE 1983

Division of labour between men and women: rural Africa (percentage of total labour in hours)

We want to go on learning and sharing

The refugee camps along the Salvadoran / Honduran border, perhaps precisely because they have made such progress, have become the object of a series of plans to close them down. They including repatriating the refugees to El Salvador or relocating them to a variety of different (and equally unacceptable) places further inside Honduras.

I arrived at one of Colomoncagua's six camps just as Mass was finishing on Sunday afternoon. The refugees were streaming away from the hilltop chapel and through the camp in a procession. Many women wore the white headscarf of the Mothers of the Disappeared.

In fact, most of the people at Colomoncagua are women and children. Three women, all health or nutrition co-ordinators in the camps, talked to me of their experiences in coping with health care for the refugees. From very rudimentary beginnings in 1980, when doctors and nurses from international organizations 'were attending to the sick under the trees', they told of a gradual, steady growth towards the creation of health and nutrition centres organized by the refugees themselves. Aided and trained by various groups, they gained expertise and gradually became independent of constant help from outside medical staff: 'By 1982 we were able to diagnose malnutrition, and nutrition centres were set up. The doctors didn't have to come in except in cases of major diseases.'

Presently, the refugees have clearly achieved a great deal in terms of environmental hygiene, primary health care, and nutrition. The nutrition centres have been providing supplementary food for children, pregnant and nursing mothers, and the old. They have also been giving training in nutrition to mothers. They even have a small lab where they can detect various diseases such as TB. But, although the vegetable gardens, fruit trees and chicken runs I saw show that they are increasingly able to provide important foods themselves, they are still heavily dependent on international relief aid agencies for staple foods like beans and maize, and for medical supplies.

Now, according to the three women I talked to, these big steps towards self-sufficiency are being undermined by the very organization they feel should be supporting them most UNHCR

One of the health co-ordinators told me trouble in the nutrition centre had started in 1983, when UNHCR had tried to close them, threatening to put them under lock and key and literally shut the refugees out. The refugees protested and the centres were reopened; but now the budget for 1985 has been cut, leaving only milk for pregnant women. The rations of supplementary food have already been reduced. 'You can already see the difference,' Rafaela said, 'now women aren't eating well, and the babies are born underweight. Some even die.'

UNHCR's response is that the most valuable service they can offer is education in nutrition; but according to the women, 'no amount of education will help if you can't get the right food.' They also argue that UNHCR's proposal to offer nutrition education to mothers, family by family, is in effect striking a blow at their more collective approach to the problem - 'They suspect collective ways of working,' one woman said. UNHCR has, in fact, claimed that there is not longer any malnutrition in the camps, but the refugees disagree. On the one hand, they say, it is probably only the supplementary food programme that keeps malnutrition down; and on the other, new refugees are constantly arriving - 700 that month, fleeing the airforce's bombing, which was audible from Colomoncagua. They came in exhausted, injured, and starving, often after walking for days over gruelling mountain terrain.

The women also felt that their hard-earned skills in health care were being devalued. 'Now some of the international doctors say we're not qualified to do curative health work any longer, only prevention. They go off and leave us with nothing but a few aspirins.' 'Because we're peasants,' said another woman, 'they say we know nothing; but we've been clever enough to learn a lot. In fact, the doctors from outside don't understand the health situation here at all.'

Rafaela said to me as I was leaving the camp at sunset, 'We women have had to learn new kinds of work and now we want to keep working. Here in the camps we've been given a value we never had in El Salvador... we want to go on learning and sharing, not just here but when we return home. If they take away our health work and our nutrition centres now, four years of hard work will be undone.'

Central America Report, January 1985

Durable solutions

The UNHCR's goals involve moving away from refugee aid to the promotion of self-reliance leading to 'durable solutions'. They speak of 'programme evolution': the move from 'refugee camps' to 'food producing settlements'. However refugee camps themselves appear fairly durable.

In Pakistan it is nearly six years since UNHCR .began its assistance programme for Afghan refugees. Initially relief was provided for 25,000 people. By June 1982, the Pakistan government's figures for registered refugees stood at 2,762,000. Tents were distributed and they gradually covered entire plains and valleys. Now tents are giving way to 'katcha' houses made out of mud. There are katcha schools and incomegenerating schemes teaching small boys ancient carpetknotting skills. However for the vast majority of people, and especially for the women, it remains, and will remain a long dreary camp life.

An ambitious programme in Swaziland, settled 5,000 refugees of South Africa's 'homeland' policy in a rural settlement in the south east of the country. The bush was cleared, fields were cultivated and planted with the hope of raising cotton as a cash crop. Then the drought came. There was no cotton, and the cattle skulls lay in the dust. This became another durable dependency situation.

Nevertheless local resettlement remains currently the only viable solution for the. majority of the world's 12. or more million refugees. This, as Ahmed Karadawi argues is not, as in the response to most disasters, a restoration of normality. It is an attempt at creating a new normal situation for refugees and anew abnormal situation for the hosts.40 Governments are increasingly recognising the impact that local resettlement programmes have on the local host community. And the term community here as elsewhere, encompasses women hosts. Inevitably social tensions and political problems arise among the local community due to resentment about the perceived preferential treatment of refugees. Thus more and more refugee work is, in theory, moving towards regional development, building infra-structure which serves both refugees and the local community. It is caring for the carers.

In the meantime the cared-for continue to live in camps, some of which may not be very different from prisons. These can be isolating, punitive and frightening places. 'Despite its convenience in terms of the ease with which assistance can be delivered to people congregated in one place, a camp creates as many problems as it solves: however well run, a camp limits people's activities to help themselves, it throws up artificial social and economic relations and too often breeds apathy and dependency', argues Mark Malloch Brown.41 Camps should only be a long-term solution of the last resort.

Grains of sand

'Sudan has been very generous towards the refugees, with an open-door policy and very little friction between Ethiopians and Sudanese. But all they have to share is their poverty' an aid worker remarked. 'The Sudanese themselves are struggling to survive. The refugees are doing worst and the women who are trying to fend for themselves, worst of all. Sudan can't begin to cope with its own problems, let alone half a million refugees.'

The plight of Ethiopian refugees in Sudan shows the limitations on refugee programmes, even where there is the best will in the world. Predictably, women's disadvantage is intensified in this crisis situation. Though the Sudanese government stresses the importance of self-sufficiency for the refugees, a combination of poverty and cultural oppression leave women at the bottom of the pile.

The majority of refugees live not in camps but in catch-as-catch-can settings in the towns or rural settlements. Employment options for women are extremely limited, being confined largely to prostitution or street trading. In the past women were able to earn some money by brewing Ethiopian beer, but the Sudanese government has clamped down on alcohol production since the introduction of Islamic Sharia law under exPresident Numeiri. Women in the camps situated near to urban centres face the same employment difficulties.

Most of the camps, however, are land settlements where it was hoped that the refugees would be able to sustain themselves by subsistence agriculture. Here women face a different set of problems. Families headed by women do not have enough labour to support themselves. Women are hampered by a combination of weakness due to ill-health and the custom in some parts of Ethiopia which reserves to men the right to use oxen for ploughing. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that a significant proportion of refugees were pastoralis