Social and Gender Norms in Refugee Camps

A 2017 study by the Refugee Rights Data Project found that one in every two female refugees in Greece said that they felt unsafe in their camps because of incidences of rape, forced marriage, forced prostitution, and trafficking. The idea of a refugee camp is to create a safe shelter from those fleeing the dangers of war and persecution, but many female refugees find that they have escaped one form of victimization only to face another. Women refugees are denied the same access to resources as men, are subject to the worst human rights abuses, and have little to no legal recourse. Serena Parekh, in the Moral Significance of the Refugee Regime, argues that the nature of a refugee camp as an artificial community normalizes violence against women. Exploring this further, I argue that the conditions in refugee camps- artificial communities pervaded by patriarchal social norms, which are dependent on aid- amplify traditional gender roles and leave women even more vulnerable within them than without.

One argument for the violence that women face within refugee camps is the breakdown of social norms. Even before fleeing their homes, most refugee women face oppression in their daily lives. With the lack of regulations and communal support in camps, the vulnerabilities that women are subject to are aggravated. The Human Rights Watch observed in a study on Tanzanian refugee camps that one of the leading causes of sexual violence against women was "…the collapse of traditional societal support mechanisms…in particular communal support systems for the protection of vulnerable individuals." This is compounded by the fact that male refugees are also dealing with a change in their status, since they are no longer in a position to support their own families. This pseudo identity crisis may cause men to try to prove their masculinity and fulfill their traditional role in society by asserting their dominance over the women in the camp. The high incidence of domestic violence and the belief that men turn to such belligerence because of the stress from lack of gainful employment is related to the idea that males may attempt to overcompensate if they feel their positions in society weakening. Domestic violence thus becomes a way to regain power and control.

Parekh's argument that "camps are spaces beyond the rule of law," placing them in a legal limbo, also contributes to the impunity with which gender-based violence continues in camps. The laws of the host country are rarely applied, the court systems are inefficient, and, according to Parekh, sexual violence is often considered to be too commonplace to require prosecution. This simultaneously reduces safeguards for women and constraints on men. Although camps technically fall under the legal jurisdiction of the host state, refugee camps are spaces where the law does not apply, and even the UNHCR has been unable to protect human rights in camps. In fact, government officials and aid workers themselves have been a source of abuse by being complicit in rape and forced prostitution, one of the most notable examples being the collaboration between camp officials and prostitution rings in Tanzania.

It is, however, vital to remember that the plight of female refugees are not exceptional but rather part of a systemic problem that extends far beyond the camps themselves. Patriarchal conceptions of the female sex as weaker and more submissive are exacerbated, not caused, by the social conditions in refugee camps. The power of female refugees to build new lives for themselves is severely restricted by the opportunities they had in their former lives. Most female refugees' lack of experience in the public sphere and the workplace hurt their abilities to get jobs as refugees, leading them to be dependent on aid institutions for survival and unable to access resources within the camp itself. Parekh argues that this causes many refugee women to prostitute themselves, often to other refugees, locals, and even aid workers. Not only do almost all refugees come from developing countries, especially Middle Eastern, African, and South Asian countries, but over 87% of refugees are also resettled in countries of the Global South, which have patriarchal traditions. A study on Syrian refugees in Lebanon by Oxfam and the ABAAD-Resource Centre for Gender Equality found that women were resorting to extraordinary measures in order to keep their families alive, while men did not feel that same expectation. A poignant example of this is that approximately ninety percent of women interviewed said that they regularly skipped meals and went hungry so that their husbands and children could eat the limited food they had.

The social conditions within refugee camps reinforce and even strengthen traditional gender roles. This leaves women at extremely high risks in an environment which is meant to provide safety to them. Parekh says that the very label of a refugee woman becomes a "marker of exploitability" and that their mistreatment is viewed as "unfortunate but inevitable." This attitude is not just because of the conditions within the camps but because of societal traditions long before. What is needed is for women to have greater access to decision-making in the camps and for aid workers to not just be held accountable for their crimes but to actively work to prevent human rights abuses. It will take years before patriarchal conceptions of gender roles cease to exist, but, till then, the least we could do is prevent the amplification of these oppressive beliefs in places of refuge.