Executive Committee
of the High Commissioner's Programme

GLOBAL CONSULTATIONS ON INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION

Palais des Nations,
Geneva, 22-24 May 2002

NGO STATEMENT ON REFUGEE WOMEN
Prepared by:
Wendy Young,
Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children
in consultation with other NGOs

Introduction

On behalf of the NGO community, we welcome the focus on the protection and assistance needs and human rights of refugee women as part of the Global Consultation process. Although this statement does not necessarily reflect the views of all NGOs, it does represent key issues of concern to a large part of the NGO community.

The challenges that continue to confront refugee women and girls around the world have been the subject of increasing debate since adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol. This dialogue has more recently also embraced the concept of gender equality, placing the protection of women in the larger context of the changes in gender roles and power relationships that occur in crisis situations and create protection problems.

UNHCR has issued multiple guidelines that elaborate standards to enhance the protection of refugee women. The Policy on Refugee Women (1990), the Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women (1991), and the guidelines on Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence (1995) together offer comprehensive guidance to UNHCR staff and UNHCR protection partners on how to ensure the protection and empowerment of refugee women and girls in all aspects of field programming.

Problems, remain, however, in terms of the consistent implementation of these guidelines. In part, this is a reflection of the lack of full institutional commitment from UNHCR, its implementing partners, and the international community as a whole to systematically addressing the myriad obstacles that continue to impede the protection of refugee women and girls. It also results from inadequate monitoring of compliance with existing standards and lack of staff accountability for implementation of gender-sensitive measures.

The UNHCR paper provides a very thoughtful overview of these challenges. However, while recognizing that this is difficult to do in a short paper, we believe that some key issues confronting women are either missing or inadequately addressed.

The Context for the Protection of Refugee Women

It must be noted that UNHCR's ongoing budget shortfall seriously hampers efforts to improve protection efforts on behalf of refugee women. Donors should restore funding for refugee protection to adequate levels. They must also give more attention to the linkages between assistance and protection when anticipating the impact of funding decisions. The budget process utilized by UNHCR should be systematically assessed to ensure the maintenance of gender-sensitive programs and to analyze the connections between expenditure and beneficiary impact.

However, at the same time, shortages in funding cannot be used to excuse systemic failures; protection of refugee women and girls is, by definition, refugee protection in all its components. Much can be done even in the context of limited resources. UNHCR's ongoing budget deficit must not result in a deterioration in protection and assistance programs on behalf of refugee women.

Detention

The detention of women is an increasing and worrying phenomenon in many states. Detention creates serious protection concerns for women asylum seekers and refugees. Language barriers, cultural norms, and the trauma caused by displacement exacerbate the risks that detained women confront, which also include the problems incarcerated women generally face, including sexual abuse and harassment.

The paper's recommendation that detained women "never be placed in dangerous proximity with unrelated men" falls short of addressing the many problems confronted by women detainees. It must be reinforced with a strong statement that discourages 1) the detention of women refugees and asylum seekers; 2) the use of secure facilities, particularly penal institutions; 3) the commingling of women with criminal populations; 4) the separation of families while in detention; 5) barriers to access to asylum systems created by detention; and 6) the use of prolonged and arbitrary detention.

Registration and Documentation

The paper correctly identifies the many problems created for women when they lack registration. Registration was also addressed as a separate agenda item during the Global Consultations last year and has been the subject of Executive Committee Conclusions. However, it is our sense that registration has been given insufficient attention by UNHCR, partly due to staff turnover. The need remains for UNHCR to systematically move forward with registration efforts in the field that are gendered in their approach.

Trafficking in Women and Girls

We agree with the paper's recommendations on trafficking in women and girls. Trafficking affects refugee women in two fundamental ways. Refugee women are frequently at risk of trafficking while in the host country, as international criminal rings prey on the women's precarious situation. In addition, receiving countries increasingly approach trafficking as an issue of migration control, often limiting the access of victims of trafficking to asylum procedures. Instead, they should facilitate such access. It is critical that UNHCR demonstrate leadership by encouraging states to abide by their obligations under the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol when attempting to deter trafficking.

We would also suggest that UNHCR include a focus on smuggling of women and girls, which can also create protection problems.

Protection of Women with Special Needs

The paper fails to point out the protection problems confronted by women with special needs. Such women include pregnant women, single heads of household, survivors of sexual violence including rape, elderly women, disabled women, and women who are part of polygamous households. These cases require special care and attention in the implementation of field programs.

Prevention of Sexual and Gender Based Violence

The need to adopt a multi-sectoral approach to ensuring gender-sensitive prevention and response mechanisms to sexual and gender based violence must be emphasized. Protection efforts must be oriented toward not only legal protection but also physical protection.

The critical role that host states play in the prevention and response to sexual and gender based violence must be emphasized. Domestic laws must be in place to protect women from such violence, including domestic violence, and those laws must be fully enforced. Refugee women must be given unrestricted access to these domestic legal systems.

Gender Sensitive Refugee Status Determination Procedures

We support the paper's recommendations on gender-sensitive application of refugee law and procedures. We particularly welcome UNHCR's reference to domestic violence and trafficking as forms of persecution that may qualify under the refugee definition. We also appreciate release by UNHCR of the new Guidelines on Gender-Related Persecution and the Guidelines on Membership in a Particular Social Group. We urge states to move forward on the recommendations in both the Global Consultation document on refugee women and the guidelines and to be proactive and flexible in their interpretation of gender persecution under the Convention.

Increased Implementation of the Guidelines on Protection of Refugee Women

It is critical that the international community, with UNHCR's leadership, move beyond words and into action with regard to the protection and empowerment of refugee women. UNHCR field offices should develop specific plans of action with objectives to be met to ensure that gender is adequately recognized and implemented as a priority in their programs. These plans of action should be developed in partnership with the NGO community, UNHCR's protection partners, and governments. These should be reinforced with centrally coordinated and rigorously applied plans of action to ensure that best practices are developed and implemented.

We urge UNHCR to move forward with the revisions of the Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women. We further encourage the incorporation of the findings and recommendations of the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children's 10-year assessment of the Guideline's implementation, as well as the findings of the recent evaluation of implementation of the Guidelines on the Protection and Care of Refugee Children, into the updated Guidelines.

UNHCR Staffing

Critical to the protection of refugee women and girls is the adequate deployment of protection officers to the field. Such officers should view both legal and physical protection of women as their mandate. We welcome IRC's surge capacity project as an innovative approach to increasing protection resources in the field.

The role of community service officers in the protection of refugee women and girls must also be recognized and supported. They serve as vital bridges between refugee communities and UNHCR and play a critical role in information gathering.

We support the role that the Office of the Senior Coordinator for Refugee Women and Gender Equality has played in raising awareness of the rights and needs of refugee women and implementing a gender equality approach to UNHCR programming. We encourage UNHCR and donors to not only maintain their commitment to the continued existence of the office but to encourage its expansion. Too often, the need for the Office has been called into question and downplayed.

While the paper mentions the need to make female staff (i.e., interviewers and interpreters) accessible to refugee women during the refugee determination process, it fails to acknowledge the overall need to recruit and retain female staff at UNHCR. Such staff can play a critical in facilitating refugee women's access to services and in monitoring and reporting rights violations against women.

The paper fails to point out the critical importance that gender-sensitive training plays in the advancement of the protection of refugee women. This includes both staff training for UNHCR and its implementing partners, as well as training of others who work with refugees, such as government officials, police, border guards, and peacekeepers.

Ensuring Accountability in the Field

UNHCR must develop mechanisms for accountability and responsibility to incorporate into the terms of reference for all staff. While we recognize the difficulties UNHCR confronts when working within the UN's civil service system, we urge that staff be held fully accountable when it fails to adequately address the protection of refugee women and gender equality principles or when it is found to be a perpetrator of sexual violence against refugee women and girls. This includes disciplinary action against those staff determined to be responsible for sexual abuse against women and children in West Africa as identified by the recent UNHCR-Save U.K. report. We also support efforts to develop codes of conduct for both UNHCR staff and staff of implementing partners as a prevention tool.

The Empowerment of Refugee Women and Girls

Greater effort should be directed at educating refugee women and girls about their rights. Complaint mechanisms should be developed so that refugee women have an avenue of recourse when their rights are violated. Such procedures must ensure full confidentiality.
Donors should prioritize funding of local refugee women's NGOs, which are playing critical roles in such programs as the prevention and response to sexual and gender based violence.

Education efforts must also be directed at refugee men and boys, who should also be involved in prevention and protection activities.

Refugee Women in the Context of Durable Solutions

There is a noticeable disconnect between the papers being presented on the three durable solutions and the paper on refugee women. For example, the paper on refugee women fails to recommend the expansion of resettlement opportunities for women at risk and the need to facilitate women's access to resettlement procedures, particularly in emergency situations in which a woman's life is in danger in the host country. The paper also fails to address the critical need to promote local integration that encourages women's self-sustainability.

The paper should also recommend that the repatriation of women only be encouraged when it is voluntary and women are fully informed of their options. Repatriation should also be facilitated with strong reconstruction and reintegration efforts. These programs should take into account, and encourage the full expression of, the changed roles and enhanced skills that women may have acquired while in the country of asylum Experience has shown that the "women's initiatives" can serve as important tools to assist in reintegration and reconstruction efforts. Building on lessons learned from these initiatives, the international community should consider implementing women's initiatives in other locations, such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone. These programs should be established with clear goals to achieve gender equality and mainstreaming.

The High Commissioner's Five Commitments to Refugee Women

The High Commissioner announced five concrete commitments to refugee women at the Refugee Women's Dialogue in June 2001. These commitments include: 1) developing integrated country-level strategies to address violence against women, including domestic violence; 2) individual registration of women; 3) 50 percent representation of women in management committees; 4) the participation of women in the distribution processes for food and non-food items; and 5) the standard provision of sanitary materials to women. We urge the international community to support these commitments and move expeditiously toward their implementation.

Conclusions and Recommendations

We wish to offer the following recommendations to UNHCR and the international community to advance the protection and empowerment of refugee women:

• States should renew their commitment to adequate funding for UNHCR. In turn, UNHCR's budget process should be systematically assessed to ensure gender-sensitive programming. Targeted funding should be provided when necessary to ensure the protection of refugee women and girls.

• States should refrain from detaining women asylum seekers beyond the short period of time needed to verify identity and to ensure national security.

• UNHCR must move forward with comprehensive registration processes that are gender-sensitive.

• States must refrain from implementing migration control efforts designed to curtail trafficking that do not provide adequate access to asylum procedures.

• UNHCR must ensure that not only legal but physical protection measures are in place, including protection of refugee women and girls from sexual and gender-based violence. This includes a comprehensive and sustained global effort to prevent sexual exploitation of refugee women and girls.

• States must advance their interpretation of the refugee definition to encompass protection of women and girls who have experienced gender-related persecution.

• UNHCR must move forward with revision of the Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women. These revisions must include addressing the needs of IDP women, returnee women, and urban refugee women and must address all forms of sexual and gender-based violence as well as detention. The Guidelines must also embrace a gender equality approach to programming.

• UNHCR must improve its staffing and management structure to ensure staff accountability for the protection of refugee women and girls. This includes enhancing the roles of protection and community service officers as well as increasing female staffing.

• The search for and implementation of durable solutions for refugee populations must encompass a systematic assessment of the needs and rights of refugee women and girls.

• UNHCR must act on the High Commissioner's five commitments to refugee women.

On behalf of the NGO community, we wish to thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the Executive Committee, for considering our views on this critical protection issue. We look forward to working with UNHCR and the international community as we move toward ensuring that policies addressing the protection of refugee women are translated into action.