How to approach this brief?
Create a campaign that highlights the issue of social isolation amongst refugees and asylum seekers. Refugees and Asylum seekers are reported the highest rate for loneliness, between 53-80% are reported to feel lonely.
Focus on any target audience experiencing loneliness, anywhere in the world-urban rural perspectives.
Research
What is a Refugee?
A person forced to flee their country because of violence or persecution.
Who is a refugee?
A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.
Two-thirds of all refuges worldwide come from just five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia.
57% of refugees come from three countries
Who is an internally displaced person?
An internally displaced person, or IDP, is someone who has been forced to flee their home but never cross an international border. These individuals seek safety anywhere they can find it- in nearby towns, schools, settlements, internal camps, even forests and fields. IDPs, which include people displaced by internal strife and natural disasters, are the largest group that UNHCR assists. Unlike refugees IDPs are not protected by international law or eligible to receive many types of aid because they are legally under the protection of their own government.
Countries with some the largest internally displaced populations are Colombia, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia.
40 million people are internally displaced around the world.
Who is a stateless person?
A stateless person is someone who is not a citizen of any country. Citizenship is the legal bond between a government and an individual, and allows for certain political, economic, social and other rights of the individual, as well as the responsibilities of both government and citizen. A person can become stateless due to a variety of reasons, including sovereign, legal, technical or administrative decisions or oversights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights underlines that “Everyone has the right to a nationality”.
10 million people around the world are stateless or at risk of statelessness
Who is an asylum seeker?
When people flee their own country and seek sanctuary in another country, they apply for asylum-the right to be recognized as a refugee and receive legal protection and material assistance. An asylum seeker must demonstrate that his or her fear of persecution in his or her home country is well-founded.
1.7 million new asylum claims in 2017
What is the 1951 Refugee Convention?
The 1951 Geneva Convention is the main international instrument of refugee law. The convention clearly spells out who a refugee is and the kind of legal protection, other assistance and social rights he or she should receive from the countries who have signed the document. The Convention also defies a refugee’s obligations to host governments and certain categories or people, such as war criminals, who do not qualify for refugee status. The Convention was limited to protecting mainly European refugees in the aftermath of World War II, but another document, the 1967 Protocol, expanded the scope of the Convention as the problem of displacement spread around the world.
What is a Refugee Camp?
Once a person becomes a refugee, they are likely to remain a refugee for many years. Many will be displaced for nearly two decades.
A refugee camp is intended as a temporary accommodation for people who have been forced to flee their home because of violence and persecution. They are constructed while crises unfold for people fleeing for their lives.
These hastily built shelters provide immediate protection and safety for the world’s most vulnerable people. Camps allow UNHCR to deliver lifesaving aid like food, water and medical attention during an emergency.
Facts
Primary, Secondary and Higher Education:
· 1.5 million refugee children were not in primary school and 2 million refugee adolescents were not in secondary school.
· 61 percent of refugee children, and less that 50 percent of refugee children in low-income countries, attend primary school. Globally, 91 percent of children attend primary school.
· 23 percent of refugee adolescents, and 9 percent of refugee adolescents in low-income countries, attend secondary school. Globally, 84 percent of adolescents attend secondary school.
· Only 1 percent of refugees enroll in college or university. Across the world, enrollment in college or university stands at 36 percent.
Gender Gap:
· For every ten refugee boys in primary school, there are fewer than eight refugee girls.
· For every ten refugee boys in secondary school there are fewer than seven refugee girls.
Pittaway, E. and Bartolomei, L., 2001. Refugees, race, and gender: The multiple discrimination against refugee women. Refuge: Canada's Journal on Refugees, 19(6)
The paper explores the intersectionality of race and gender in refugee situations, and the multiple forms of discrimination experienced by refugee women. A topic discussed is the idea of racism as being one of the main reasons why refugees exist and the “gendered nature of the refugee experience” (Pittaway and Bartolomei, 2001, p.21). Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001) explore how racism and sexism intersect, exploring issues such as sexual violence during an armed conflict and in a refugee camp. Women and children make up more than three quarters of the global population of refugees. Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001, p.21) state how “rape and other forms of sexual torture are now used routinely as strategies of war in order to shame and demoralize individuals, families, and communities.” The InternationalCriminal Court has recognised rape as a crime against humanity.
Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001, p22) argue that the experience of refugees is gendered, for instance, “majority of those who are killed or “disappeared” are men and male youths”. This results in the majority of the refugee population being women and children, therefore leaving them vulnerable to sexual and domestic violence. For example, The Genocide of Yazidis has led to expulsion, flight and effective exile of the Yazidis from their ancestral lands in Northern Iraq. Yazidi women and girls were forced into sexual enslavement and men were killed.
Charlesworth and Chinkin (1995) have argued the reason of why refugee women are more vulnerable, this being due to their gender. Intersectionality is a concept structured by discrimination and subordination. An example of discrimination is by racism, patriarchy, and class hierarchy which has structured groups such as women, men and race, (Pittaway and Bartolomei, 2001, p.22)
Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001, p.23) state the concept of “othering” which refers to a community being isolated as “the other”, for example refugees. This could also relate to the idea of a group being inferior compared to a dominant culture, this has developed the concept of the “fortress Europe”. The “fortress Europe” has stemmed from racism.
Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001, p.24) later go on to discuss the role of ethnicity and gender becoming the core component to steer discrimination towards refugee women.Refugee women are often not respected because of their race and ethnicity. They are “othered” and seen separate from society. The notion of “others” initiate women as the targets for sexual violence, doing this also plays a role in humiliating males from the same community. This humiliation of males could be the husbands of the women being raped.
Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001 p.25) discuss how some women feel forced to have sexual intercourse in exchange for food to survive. Women are raped by military men, they may feel forced into having sexual intercourse in exchange for food to survive. The acts of sexual violence can to gang rape. Individuals who have suffered sexual abuse have been reported to keep their trauma a secret, in the fear of being labelled prostitutes or being denied refugee status. This trauma can lead individuals suffering from depression, insomnia, frustration and a fear of strangers. This problem is most likely left unrecognised and untreated. The issue with refugee women being raped is not highly recognised therefore leads to a lack of treatments available for these women dealing with such trauma.
Pittaway and Bartolomei (2001 p.27) state how Trafficking is one of the main targets towards Refugee women and children. Trafficking is the trade of something illegal, an example of this is fraud.
Primary Research into Refugees
My parents became refugees during the Idi Amin crisis in 1972. In early August 1972, the President of Uganda, Idid Amin, ordered expulsion of his countries South Asian minority, giving them 90 days to leave the country.
My mum was eight years old at the time and doesn't remember her experience as the experience was very traumatic to her. To develop my practice further, I was gong to record questionnaires to gather my families experiences. However, this is a very sensitive topic with my family to discuss issues which involve violence. Therefore, I decided to focus on secondary research, as I considered ethics check, which I feel some people would not feel comfortable with their experience being published openly.
Primary Research into Refugees
My parents became refugees during the Idi Amin crisis in 1972. In early August 1972, the President of Uganda, Idid Amin, ordered expulsion of his countries South Asian minority, giving them 90 days to leave the country.
My mum was eight years old at the time and doesn't remember her experience as the experience was very traumatic to her. To develop my practice further, I was gong to record questionnaires to gather my families experiences. However, this is a very sensitive topic with my family to discuss issues which involve violence. Therefore, I decided to focus on secondary research, as I considered ethics check, which I feel some people would not feel comfortable with their experience being published openly.
An article from Azeema Mag- Undocumenated women in Britain words by Evar (2018)
Evar (2018) discusses the concept of ‘othering’ means to alienate those that are naturally different from the perfect perception of a human being, and to treat them in an unfair way. ‘Othering’ is created through two parts, in the terms of how everything in society have polar opposites, for instance, ‘absence/presence’, and ‘hot/cold’.This theory explains how society is dependent on dependent on binaries of ‘masculine/feminine’. These “genderised binaries” then encouraged ‘white/black’ within race, but how people are treated from different race groups.“The masculine/feminine binaries come to represent: Human/ unhuman, Deserving/ undeserving, civilised/ uncivilised and powerful/unpowerful” (Evar, 2018).
Evar (2018) discusses how the feminine group is ‘othered’, becoming perceived as ‘unhuman’, ‘undeserving’, ‘uncivilized’ and ‘powerless’. Anyone who’s appearance is different is then stereotyped and marginalised. Internationally, women are the main subject of harassment. Consequently, in UK women of colour are largely seen as ‘othered’, but in particular migrants of colour.
Case Studies
There are currently ten detention centres scattered around Britain. These detention centres hold different types of violence. Yarl’s Woo Immigration Removal Centre, located in Bedford, is one of them and accommodates 400 people; the largest proportion are women.
Since the opening in 2001, the conditions at Yarl’s Wood have provoked 6 events of protests, riots and hunger strikes, the most occurring in February 2018. 100 women from the detention centres joined the protest and stated their reasons for the hunger strike, “ Victms of torture, human trafficking, modern slavery, asylum seekers and sick and disabled people continue to be detained.” Some women are help without legal decision. The British government’s response to the women’s form of resistance was to threaten them with, “accelerated deportation” should they continue with their demonstration. Yarl’s Wood signifies the complex issue on why violence is committed towards undocumented migrant women. “Otherness” has an important role with this case.
Detainment is a certain type of violence used in Britain. The open letter circulated by Detained Voices states: “The Home Office refuse to accept that rape is torture, we find this fundamentally offensive as they continue to detain victims of sexual and gender-based violence”. Detention centres then act to isolate migrant women, as well as expel and exclude them from society.
Britain is dependent on the isolation and expulsion of ‘othered’ undocumented migrant women. Britain’s use of violence is a specific device of power, Evar (2018). The allegations of abuse, the exploited labour, detaining of pregnant women, insincere health care, death and detaining of vulnerable persons, especially those who have mental health issues and have experienced sexual torture at Yarl’s Wood, are all examples of violence in Detention centres in Britain (Evar, 2018)
Due to migrant women being perceived as ‘unhuman’ it is made acceptable for these devastating acts as there is a lack of empathy, sensitivity and support, Evar (2018). On the 28thof July 1993, Joy Gardner’s home was raided by police. She was handcuffed, bound by body-belts, had her thighs and ankles strapped, had 13 feet of tape wrapped around her head and was gagged with adhesive bandage. She died 4 days later in hospital. Joy was an undocumented migrant from Jamaica. The police officers involved stood trial for manslaughter, however they were acquitted. It was stated that the Home Office, in fear that she would run away, deliberately postponed any correspondences addressed to her, that would be provide any information of her deportation. Instead they saw fit the unnecessary and cruel attempt of forcible deportation (forced ‘movement’) which resulted to her death.
Activists from Azeema Mag
Sisters Uncut
Saffiyah Khan
Nadia Murad
Vida Movahed
Amanda N. Nguyen
Marchu girm
Ahed Tamimi
Nadia Murad
Nadia- Interview
BBC HARDtalk, 2018, ‘Nadia Murad speaking to BBC HARDtalk in 2016’, Youtube, 5 October. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRbHxsPLmkg (23 January 2019)
Can you tell us what happened when the Islamic Militants came into the village estate?
On 3 August 2014 Daesh attacked the Yazidis in Sinjar. Previously they had attacked places like Tal Afar and Mosul, and other communities like Shias and Christians and forced them to leave their homes. They gave then two options, to leave the area or pay a levy. Most people left. When they attacked the Yazidis in Sinjar they killed the men and took the women and girls. Some Yazidis fled to Mount Sinjar as it was close to their villages. That day 3,000 men, elderly people, children and disabled people were massacred by Daesh. Our village was far away from the mount, we were besieged by Daesh and could not escape, they had cut us off.
Later, they separated the men, about 700 of them. They took them to the edge of the village and started shooting them. They took nine of my brothers, which six of them were killed along with other men. Three of my brothers were wounded but managed to escape. We witnessed this from the windows of the village school, we could see all the men being shot.
They took the young boys, those over four-year-old to training camps. Then the younger girls, those over nine years old were taken. Then around 80 women, all over the age of 45, including my mother, were taken away. Some say they were killed and said not. However, a year later, when part of Sinjar was liberated, a mass grave containing their bodies was discovered. 18 members of my family have been killed, or are missing.
What did they do to you and the women? Where did they take you?
They divided us into groups. There were 150 girls including me and three of my younger nieces. That night they took us by bus to Mosul. On the journey they were touching our breasts and rubbing their beards in our faces. We didn’t know whether they were going to kill us or what they were going to do to us. But we know that nothing was going to happen to us.
What happened when you got to Mosul?
The next evening, a group pf Daesh militants arrived. Each fighter picked one of us for himself. Some of the girls were younger than me, between 10 and 12 years old. The girls resisted but were forced to go with the men. The younger girls were clinging to the older girls. One of the younger girls was crying and clinging to me.
One of the military men then took me to his place, he had bodyguards. He raped me, it was very painful. None of the men showed any mercy. All the men were violent rapists. They raped the girls in a very inhumane way. They wouldn’t keep us for more than a week. Often, they would sell us an after a day or even an hour. The things they did to us were terrible. We had never imagined such terrible things could possibly happen to us.
How young were some of the girls you were with?
The girls with me were all under 16. Some of my brothers’ wives pregnant when we were captured, and a couple of them gave birth while in captivity.
You were held for 3 months, in that time did you have any normal conversations with these men which were holding you?
I asked them, “Why have you killed our men? Why are you violently raping us?”
They said to me, “Yazidis are infidels, you are not people of the book, now you are spoils of war. You deserve this, you are infidels. Yazidis should be destroyed, we tried to destroy you but some of you ran away. We are doing our duty.”
How did you manage to escape?
The first time I tried to escape I was with the first man who raped me and treated me badly. I thought to myself I must run away although I did not believe I would succeed. Daesh militants were everywhere in Mosul. I tried to escape through a window but I was immediately caught, by one of the guards who put me in a room. Under their rules a captured woman becomes a spoil of war if she is caught trying to escape. She is put in a cell and raped by all the men in the compound. I was gang raped.
The final man that I stayed with in Mosul lived alone. When he decided to sell me on he went to get me some clothes. He told me to wash myself and get ready to be sold to someone else. Even though I thought it was impossible I managed to leave the compound. I called at a house, a Muslim family with no connection to Daesh lived there. I asked them for help, I said to them that my brother would give them whatever they wanted in return. The family told me that they did not support Daesh and had no connection with them. They gave me all the help they could. They gave me a black abaya and an Islamic ID and then they took me to the border. There are a lot of Muslim families who helped me, who do not support Daesh. International forces must stop Daesh and bring them justice.
Since Nadia’s escape, she has visited America, Britain and some Arabic countries to tell her story to members of parliaments and world leaders. She states how these politicians listen but make no promises. A year after her escape, still no action was taken place. By 2016, only one Yazidi family were taken in and given asylum in the UK. German have accepted 1 million refugees, 70,000 was Yazidi. Overall there are half a million Yazidis, they are from Iraq and Kurdistan.
The Atlantic, 2017, ‘Yazidi Girls: Prisoners of ISIS’, Youtube, 7 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Te6HOtiBcf8 (23 January 2019)
Researching into similar experiences from from the Daesh invasion
Perwin Story
What happened when they captured you?
As the militant member told me to get up, I asked my father what he had said, as I don’t speak Arabic. My father translated it to me. The man said my father had to shut up, or he will kill him.
What happened when they took you to Syria?
When they took us to Syria, they would come by regularly to pick out and take away the prettiest girls. It didn’t matter how old the girls were, they would do it to 7-year-old girls. We had to do everything they demanded. We were forced to do everything.
How did you escape?
There were about 30 Daesh members on the base. Some were sleeping when I noticed that, I phoned my cousin in secret. Two of them were patrolling on the roof. They were busy with their cell phones. Around 11pm I escaped from the Daesh base with another girl. We worked until 7am. We were not wearing any shoes, it rained that night and there was mud everywhere.
My cousin explained the escape route to me. We crawled through the valley on our stomachs. Dogs chased us, the Daesh members had flashlights and followed the dogs. We hid behind trees. Not until they went we continued to flee, we started to run like crazy. At 7am we arrived at the top of the mountain, Mount Sinjar. We were picked up by a helicopter and taken to Darebin, Kurdistan. The Pershmerga brought us to Kurdistan.
Ilham was 17 years old when she was captured and used as a sex slave, she was held for 2 months.
Ilham’s Story
Whether someone was 9-20 years old it didn’t matter to them. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, it was so distressing. It is hard to carry around this burden. Suicide would have been a blessing.
My first attempt to escape, I was arrested. I was tortured and my hands were tied. Then it became even more difficult for me. At first, I was locked into a house by myself. After my escape attempt my owner took me to his house where his family lived as well. I was locked up in there for two months. One evening I escaped.
I jumped over the wall without shoes to the neighbours. From there, I was able to access the street. I came to a house, asked for help, but they didn’t let me in. I ran to the next street, where I entered a yeard. In that yard, I begged a few men to protect me.
They asked, “Are you Yazidi?”
I replied, “Yes.” I begged them not to hand me over to the Daesh. They said they wouldn’t. One of them said, “I swear on your God, Melek Taus.” That’s is why I believed him.
With a fake Arab ID, I took a taxi to Kirkuk. A Yezidi man picked me up and we went to the security service in Erbil. From Erbil, I went straight to Baba Sheikh, our spiritual leader. I told him what happened to me and asked him, whether I’d still be accepted in the Yezidi faith. They baptized me again, I felt the way I used to feel.
Why there is conflict with Yazidi religion?
Since the late 16th century, some Muslims have accused Yazidis of devil worship due to the similarity between the Quranic story of Iblis and the account of Tawûsê Melek's refusal to bow to Adam.
Whereas Muslims revile Iblis for refusing to submit to God and bow to Adam, believing that his defiance caused him to fall from God's grace, Yazidis revere Tawûsê Melek for loyalty towards God and believe that God's command to Tawûsê Melek was a test to see who is truly devoted to God alone.
This narrative led to many misinterpretations, also made by Western scholars, who interpreted the Yazidi faith through their own cultural influences.
Further accusations derived from narratives attributed to Melek Taus, which are actually foreign to Yazidism, probably introduced by either Muslims in the 9th century or Christian missionaries in the 20th century.
Accusations of devil worship fueled centuries of violent persecution, which have led Yazidi communities to concentrate in remote mountainous regions of northwestern Iraq.
There is no evidence to show that Melek Taus is evil when infact Melek Taus is known to be identified with Gabriel.
The "Yazidi Black Book" directly identifies Melek Taus with Azazil or Azrail. However, Yazidis identify Melek Taus with Jibrail (Gabriel). In one Arabic manuscript, the name "Jabrail" is used in secondary reading, instead of "Melek Taus”. The title "peacock of paradise" was also applied to Gabriel among Islamic traditions.
Yazidism
Sacred Yazidi type from the 'black' book in Yazidism.
Yazidi Type
Traditional Yazidi girl, wearing the traditional outfits and hairstyles.
A Yazidi girl begging outside the Temple, fighting for her justice.
Sacred Yazidi Type: A collection of sacred text
The temple where Yazidi people go to pray.
The "Peacock Angel", the main angel from Yazidism.
Initial Ideas
Critique Feedback
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