WOMEN, CRIME AND SOCIAL HARM

This book is by and about women, the harms and crimes to which they
are subjected as a result of global social processes and their efforts to take
control of their own futures. It explores the criminogenic and damaging
consequences of the policies of global financial institutions and the effects of
growing economic polarisation, both in pockets of the developed world and
in the global south. Reflecting on this evidence, the editors challenge existing
criminological theory by expanding and elaborating a conception of social
harm that encompasses this range of problems, and exposes where new
solutions derived from criminological theory are necessary. A second theme
addresses human rights from the standpoint of indigenous women, minority
women and those seeking refuge. For most of these women a politics of
human rights emerges as central to achieving legal and political equality
and protection from individual violence. Women in the poorest countries,
however, are sceptical as to the efficacy of rights claims in the face of the
depredations of international and global capital, and the social dislocation
produced thereby. Nonetheless this is a hopeful book, emphasising the
contribution which academic work can make, provided the methodology is
appropriately gendered and sufficiently sensitive to hear and learn from the
all too often ‘glocalised’ other. But in the end there is no solution without
politics. What continues to be special about women’s political practice is the
connection between the groundedness of small groups and the fluidity and
flexibility of regional and international networks: the effective politics of the
global age. This book, then, is a new criminology for and by women, a book
which cannot easily be read without an emotional response.
 Oñati International Series in Law and Society

A SERIES PUBLISHED FOR THE OÑATI INSTITUTE

FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW

General Editors
Johannes Feest Judy Fudge

Founding Editors
William LF Felstiner Johannes Feest

Board of General Editors

Rosemary Hunter, University of Kent, United Kingdom
Carlos Lugo, Hostos Law School, Puerto Rico
David Nelken, Macerata University, Italy
Jacek Kurczewski, Warsaw University, Poland
Marie Claire Foblets, Leuven University, Belgium
Roderick Macdonald, McGill University, Canada

Titles in this Series

Social Dynamics of Crime and Control: New Theories for a World in
Transition edited by Susannah Karstedt and Kai Bussmann

Criminal Policy in Transition edited by Andrew Rutherford and

Penny Green

Making Law for Families edited by Mavis Maclean

Poverty and the Law edited by Peter Robson and Asbjørn Kjønstad

Adapting Legal Cultures edited by Johannes Feest and David Nelken

Rethinking Law Society and Governance: Foucault’s Bequest edited by

Gary Wickham and George Pavlich

Rules and Networks edited by Richard Appelbaum, Bill Felstiner and

Volkmar Gessner

Women in the World’s Legal Professions edited by Ulrike Schultz and

Gisela Shaw

Healing the Wounds edited by Marie-Claire Foblets and Trutz von Trotha

Imaginary Boundaries of Justice edited by Ronnie Lippens

Family Law and Family Values edited by Mavis Maclean

Contemporary Issues in the Semiotics of Law edited by Anne Wagner,

Tracey Summerfield and Farid Benavides Vanegas

The Geography of Law: Landscapes, Identity and Regulation

edited by Bill Taylor

Theory and Method in Socio-Legal Research edited by Reza Banakar and

Max Travers

Luhmann on Law and Politics edited by Michael King

and Chris Thornhill

Precarious Work, Women and the New Economy: The Challenge to Legal
Norms edited by Judy Fudge and Rosemary Owens

Juvenile Law Violators, Human Rights, and the Development of New

Juvenile Justice Systems edited by Eric L Jensen and Jørgen Jepsen

The Language Question in Europe and Diverse Societies: Political, Legal

and Social Perspectives edited by Dario Castiglione and Chris Longman

European Ways of Law: Towards A European Sociology of Law edited by

Volkmar Gessner and David Nelken

Crafting Transnational Policing: Police Capacity-Building and Global

Policing Reform edited by Andrew Goldsmith and James Sheptycki

Constitutional Politics in the Middle East: With special reference to

Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan edited by Saïd Amir Arjomand

Parenting after Partnering: Containing Conflict after Separation

edited by Mavis Maclean

Responsible Business: Self-Governance and Law in Transnational

Economic Transactions edited by Olaf Dilling, Martin Herberg
and Gerd Winter
 Women, Crime and
Social Harm
Towards a Criminology for
the Global Age

Edited by
Maureen Cain
and
Adrian Howe

Oñati International Series in Law and Society

A SERIES PUBLISHED FOR THE OÑATI INSTITUTE

FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF LAW

OXFORD AND PORTLAND OREGON

2008
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 Acknowledgements
The editors wish to thank the Overseas Policy Committee of the British
Academy for a grant under their International Collaborative Programme
and also the International Institute of Sociology of Law (IISL), Oñati, Spain
for their financial and administrative support. In addition we are grateful to
Mrs Alison Wagstaff for her tireless administrative work from the inception
of the proposal to the completion of the manuscript for this book.
 Contents
Acknowledgements ................................................................................. vii
List of Contributors ................................................................................. xi

Introduction: Women, Crime and Social Harm: Towards a

Criminology for the Global Age................................................................ 1
Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

Part I Position Papers

1. Criminogenesis and the War Against Drugs: (Another) Story
of Absented Women ........................................................................... 21
Maureen Cain
2. Violence Against Women: Rethinking the Local–Global Nexus
in Feminist Strategy ............................................................................37
Adrian Howe
3. Globalisation, Human Security, Fundamentalism and Women’s
Rights: Emergent Contradictions........................................................ 57
Peggy Antrobus

Part II Women on the Move

4. The Gender of Borderpanic: Women in Circuits of Security,
State, Globalisation and New (and Old) Empire ................................ 69
Suvendrini Perera
5. Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees: A
Gendered Perspective ......................................................................... 95
Liz Fekete
6. Dangerous Liaisons: Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality
and the State in Contemporary India ............................................... 107
Brinda Bose

Part III Human Rights − Limits and Possibilities

7. Global Rights, Local Harms: The Case of the Human Rights
of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa .....................................................123
Esther Kisaakye
x Contents

8. The Globalisation of International Human Rights Law, Aboriginal

Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law ..................137
Megan Davis

Part IV Rethinking Social Harm in a Global Context

9. Women and Natural Disasters: State Crime and Discourses
in Vulnerability ..............................................................................161
Penny Green
10. Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence ..........................179
Rhoda Reddock
11. Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge: What can
International Criminal Victimisation Surveys Tell Us About
Women’s Diverse Lives? .................................................................201
Sandra Walklate

Index.....................................................................................................215
 List of Contributors
Peggy Antrobus has worked in the field of women in development through
a variety of government and NGO programmes in St Vincent, Jamaica and
Barbados since 1974 when she was appointed as Advisor on Women’s Affairs
to the government of Jamaica. She was a founding member of CAFRA
(Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action) and of DAWN
(Development Alternatives for Women in a New Era). Her most recent book
is The Global Women’s Movement: Origins, Issues and Strategies (Zed
Books, 2004).

Brinda Bose works in the Department of English, Hindu College, Delhi

University and is Co-Director of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research,
New Delhi. She is currently a Fellow of the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library, New Delhi. Her recent publications include Gender and Censorship
(edited, 2006) and The Phobic and the Erotic: The Politics of Sexualities in
Contemporary India (co-edited, 2007).

Maureen Cain was Professor of Sociology at the University of the West

Indies, Trinidad and Tobago campus. Subsequently, she worked at the
University of Birmingham, UK. She is now retired. Her past works include
Society and the Policeman’s Role (Routledge, 1973); For a Caribbean
Criminology (editor) (double special issue of Caribbean Quarterly), 1996;
and Growing Up Good: Policing the Behaviour of Girls in Europe (Sage,
1986). She is currently co-editing (with Anthony Harriott) a two volume
work connecting mainstream and feminist criminology, designed primarily
for the use of criminology students in the Caribbean region (Jamaica, Ian
Randle Publishers, forthcoming). Maureen was President of the British
Society of Criminology from 2002 to 2005.

Megan Davis is Director of the Indigenous Law Centre, University of New

South Wales, Australia. She is a member of Australian Lawyers for Human
Rights and of the International Law Association (Australia Branch) and on
the editorial boards of the Journal of Indigenous Policy and the Australian
Indigenous Law Reporter.

Liz Fekete is Deputy Director of the UK Institute of Race Relations in

London. She is on the editorial staff of its international quarterly journal,
Race & Class and editor of the IRR’s European Race Bulletin. She heads the
xii List of Contributors

research of the European Race Audit. She has written widely on issues to
do with European refugee policy and European anti-terrorist laws and has
achieved international recognition as a critical theorist on issues of national
security versus human security in the context of both the war on terror and
the war on refugees.

Penny Green is Professor of Law and Criminology at Kings College,

London. She has published widely on state crime, state-corporate crime,
natural disasters, Turkish criminal justice and politics, transnational crime
and asylum and forced migration. Her current research interests include
illegal logging, torture and state violence, environmental harms and looted
antiquities. She is the author of a number of books including with Tony
Ward (University of Hull), the first European monograph on State Crime,
State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption 2004 (Pluto Press).

Adrian Howe teaches in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and
Planning, RMIT University. Her latest book is Sex, Violence and Crime –
Foucault and the ‘Man’ Question (Routledge-Cavendish Glass House
Press, 2008).

Esther Kisaakye is a lecturer in law based at the Human Rights Peace

Centre, Makerere University, Uganda. She is the co-editor of Human
Rights of Women and African Experiences (Zed Books, 2002). Her other
work, over the last twenty years, has focused on human rights, women’s
economic empowerment, family law, health law and HIV/AIDS. She has
also served as a consultant to several United Nations agencies and human
rights NGOs.

Suvendrini Perera works at Curtin University of Technology, Perth, Australia.

She has published widely on questions of race, ethnicity, multiculturalism
and refugees. Her most recent book is the edited volume, Our Patch:
Enacting Australian Sovereignty Post 2001 (Network, 2007).

Rhoda Reddock is Professor and Head of the Centre for Gender and
Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine
campus. Her publications include Women, Labour and Politics in Trinidad
and Tobago: A History, (Zed Books, 1994) which was named a CHOICE
Outstanding Academic Book for 1995; Plantation Women: International
Experiences (Berg, 1998) co-edited with Shobhita Jain; Caribbean Sociology:
Introductory Readings with Christine Barrow (2000) and the edited collection
Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities (2004).
 List of Contributors xiii

Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University

of Liverpool. Her research interests over the last twenty-five years have
been focused primarily on criminal victimisation and her most recent work
is concerned with the impact of terrorism on people’s everyday lives. Her
recent books include Imagining the Victim of Crime (McGraw-Hill, 2006)
and Handbook on Victims and Victimology (Willan, 2007).
 Introduction
Women, Crime and Social Harm:
Towards a Criminology for
the Global Age
MAUREEN CAIN AND ADRIAN HOWE

INTRODUCTION: BACKGROUND TO THE DISCUSSION

I
n 2003, the editors convened a workshop on ‘Women, Crime and
Globalisation’ at the International Institute of the Sociology of Law in
Onati, Spain. Maureen had already written about the deleterious effects
of structural adjustment loan conditionalities which she observed and lived
through in Trinidad and Tobago.1 Adrian, having migrated from Australia
to the UK, had become interested in the possibilities of global solutions
to the ‘glocalised’ (Bauman, 1998) and raced problem of violence against
women. At that time it was still possible to argue that criminology had at
best a blinkered response to the global dimensions of its field. We therefore
invited a wide range of participants whose publications resonated with
our theme. The papers from the workshop have since been substantially
updated, since the meeting achieved its main objective of refocusing atten-
tion on the relationships between the terms in the workshop title. Eleven of
the papers have been reproduced in this volume.
Our book—being the first on this theme—is broad in its approach. Some
of the chapters deal with the effects of global policies and processes; others
consider responses to these at the local level; still others consider interna-
tional or cross cultural issues rather than addressing the global dimension.
The papers are collected here because all are concerned with issues which
are central to an emergent criminology of the global: the impact for good
or ill of the practices of global agencies, from the United Nations (UN)
to the International Monetary Fund (IMF); the practical and theoretical
problems involved in doing transnational research; how people cope with
everyday harms and opportunities produced by global shifts, including
responses ranging from local political organisation to attempts to activate

1 Cain and Biju (1992); Cain, (2001; 2006).

2 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

human rights protections and to the adoption of criminal solutions, or

those characterised as deviant in the local context. While in most chapters
women appear as having been harmed, we also demonstrate how they have
struggled against their victimhood both locally and internationally, some-
times creating entirely new forms of politics as they do so.
In this introduction we have chosen to problematise and discuss the sec-
ond and third terms—‘crime’ and ‘social harm’—in our book’s title. Most
of the contributors have worked with a common sense understanding of the
term ‘women’ which remains adequate for the purposes of this collection.
However, contributors have discussed the global dimensions in many and
diverse ways including the powers and activities of global agencies such as
the IMF, WTO and the World Bank or the various agencies of the United
Nations and international movements of people and local responses. They
have also discussed international law which, although much of it has been
formulated within the UN, remains conceptually distinct from the organi-
sation itself; and international political movements which seek to produce
change in the policies and practices of global institutions. The tension
between global and local in life, methodology and theory is apparent from
all the contributions. The topic list alone demonstrates that the ‘global’
involves a more abstract understanding than the ‘international’, embrac-
ing as it does both an abstract concept (potential capacity for the total
planetary reach of political and economic fractions), and the contradictory
discourses and ideologies empirically observable within global agencies (see
also Cain, 1983). The possibility and potency of instantaneous worldwide
communication is central to all three dimensions at both of these levels.
In this conceptual context it is also worth reminding ourselves of the axiom
that wherever there is power there is resistance—that structures with global
reach may be locally, regionally and internationally contested. Examples
spring readily to mind: the continuous re-shaping of capital in the global mar-
ket places; the politics of terror; the export of ‘Western’ notions of the ‘family’
and also of the ‘individual’. The global may seem a behemoth, but it is a site of
negotiation and struggle, as indeed are the various processes of globalisation.
Which brings us to the main questions of criminology: what is ‘crime’ and
what can be done about it? These are the central concerns of this collection.

OF CRIME AND HARM

It is twenty years since one of us argued that the concept of ‘social injury’
might be useful for those feminists working within the disciplines of crimi-
nology and socio-legal studies who were interested in developing the idea
of the ‘social’ in social justice policies (Howe, 1987).2 Harms to women, so

2 A recent account of the demise of the social in socio-legal education in the Australian uni-

versity where the notion of social injury was first teased out in relation to feminist legal strategy
provides the broader context for the demise of the social injury strategy. See Thornton (2006).
 Introduction 3

the argument went, might be better understood if they were conceptualised

as social injuries—as injuries endured by virtue of membership of a
minority status social group. Within this conceptual framework, harms to
women as women are not sporadic, experienced by injury-prone individu-
als adept in the art of victim-precipitation; they are endemic. While she
did not pursue this line of research and legal strategy, a recent reconsidera-
tion of criminal trials in which men pleaded not guilty to murdering their
wives and former wives and women partners on the ground of provocation
gave her pause to return to the question of social harm. That twenty-first
century criminal courts continue to indulge the lame excuses of homi-
cidal men for slaughtering ‘their’ women not only enrages feminists and
families of the dead women—it has led to reviews of the law of homicide
in several Western jurisdictions. It has also given weight to the argument
that victim-blaming provocation tales told in femicide cases by thwarted
and possessive men posthumously harm all women, thereby perpetuating
a social injury against us all. That thought in turn leads inevitably to a
query as to whether it is time to revisit the ‘social injury’ strategy (Howe,
2004: 74−75).
In this introduction we start where it all began, with the work of Edwin
Sutherland (1949), leaning on his final elaboration of his position. Harm,
like all other concepts, both has a place in theory and is negotiated. We are
happy that the discipline of criminology engages in political debates about
which activities should be criminalised and which should not, and likewise
about which activities should be characterised (with consequences) as social
harms or not. Here, however, as a first step, we build on Sutherland’s care-
fully constructed concept, as this clarifies part of what has been achieved to
this point in the formal identification of social harm, and aids identification
of what so far has been lacking.
Sutherland argues that a strict concept of a social harm requires the ‘legal
description of the act as socially harmful’ and also the ‘legal provision of a
penalty’ (1949: 31). Harmful acts, he argues, are variously characterised in
law as crimes, misdemeanours, or infringements; as unfair or discriminatory
behaviour; as actions which are false or unlawfully restraining. Whether a
noun or an adjective is used, all these acts involve an injury. In these, and
indeed in many other cases, harm language is used in the law to identify
what has taken place and to describe the fact that it is contrary to ‘the
common welfare of society’ (1949: 32). The differences in the descriptive
terminology, Sutherland argues, relate to the relative power of those who
are likely to be perpetrators. A notion of a politics of how an act which is
contrary to the common welfare is officially described is therefore integral
to the concept of that which is to be studied. The terms used by the law are
variable outcomes of the social processes involved. For this reason, neither
‘crime’ nor any other particular legal term can stand as the general concept
which is theoretically necessary to underpin the discipline. What can so
stand is the concept of harm as an act which, if generalised, is contrary to
4 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

the common welfare of society and which has been legally defined as such
by the use of harm language.
Green and Ward (2000) argue that a widespread definition of an act as
socially harmful is also sufficient for it to be regarded as a social harm for
criminological purposes, following the analogous concept of social devi-
ance. There is a strong case for this which we accept, although the harms
considered in this book mainly fall within some level of legal definition fol-
lowing Sutherland’s interpretation. By using this narrower definition we are
able to highlight the problems of enforcement in relation to globally recog-
nised harms. Nonetheless, and because of these very enforcement problems,
the concept of global institutionalised deviance also proves necessary to an
understanding of global harms.
Sutherland is equally cautious in relation to his second criterion, the legal
provision of a ‘penal sanction’ (1949: 26). Such sanctions do not need to be
immediate, nor do they need to fit present day conventions. A court might,
for example, make an order for redress or desistance, or even a reorganised
practice, whereby those harmed (or an inspectorate or some other agent on
their behalf) could apply to the court should the party so required fail to
desist, make redress—that is, fail to comply with the order. Sutherland is
explicit that the court’s ability to apply a sanction for such non-compliance
would fall within his definition of a penal sanction and so confirm the
original act as a social harm.
As Sutherland found, even the narrower definition of the concept of harm
brings many activities not formally defined as criminal within the scope of
criminology.3 It is central to the purposes of this book because, as we shall
argue, most of the issues affecting women which are discussed here are
capable of falling within the narrower definition. The exception—the case of
institutional deviance—stands out more clearly as a result. Is it a harm, we ask,
to reduce a family’s income below subsistence level? Is it a harm to do it again
or to some other family once the effects of the policy are known? We take the
view that such culpable harms are the proper subject matter of criminology.
Sutherland writing from a site within a nation state—the United States—
identified no difficulty in relation to the final step in the process, the enforcement
of the penalty. Certainly he did not raise the issue for discussion. It is, however,
an issue that we feel warrants attention in the present instance, for harms to
women perpetrated in a global context must raise the issues of what is to be
done and who is to do it. We return to this concern after the contributions to
this volume and the harms identified in them have been discussed.
The final definitional point, again discussed further after we have
indicated the issues with which our contributors are concerned, is that a

3 Besides Howe (1987), Brogden (2001), Cain (2006) Green and Ward (2000) and Hillyard

et al (2004) have all recently elaborated the criminological concept of social harm and these
arguments have greatly assisted our analysis here.
 Introduction 5

harm, like a crime or a tort, must be culpable. Harms which could not
reasonably have been foreseen will not fall within the definition. Harm
language, sanction, culpability: these are key ingredients of a crimino-
logical concept of harm. Harm language may be found in the two great
international covenants which found much of contemporary international
law: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and
the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights (ECOSOC).
The latter, famously, has made considerable efforts to protect women from
harm. The Committee for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW) receives regular formal reports from states and
also hears reports from recognised women’s organisations. The reports of
CEDAW meetings with national representatives are made public, which is
to say that the sanction is the published documentation of, for example,
less than satisfactory progress. This is negative publicity. Such ‘naming and
shaming’ may have diplomatic or other political consequences.
Thus we have harm language and a response which may be conceived
as a sanction, albeit one designed to improve behaviour rather than to
cause pain. In the case of nation states we also have identified culprits:
Green and Ward (2000) and Cohen (1993) have elaborated the concept of
state crime, and Green builds on that concept in her contribution to this
volume. In this text, as we shall see, the nation state may indeed be the
(culpable) perpetrator. However, in the case of violence against women,
for example, the responsibility of nation states is to put systems in place
to address the problem. We now know what we always guessed: that the
state may enhance the level of violence—even of murder (against men in
this instance)—by its choice of economic policies. This is an example of
something which has been definitively proved only recently. From this
point on, any state administering policies which are known to exacerbate
inequalities in an extreme way may be deemed to be culpable. As Dorling’s
research (2004) demonstrates, a sudden increase in inequality in a society
increases the murder rate (that is, the rate of being murdered) among those
most harmed. His example is that of young males whose chances of find-
ing work on leaving school were crushed by structural adjustment in the
UK in the early 1980s. Moreover, Dorling demonstrates that this cohort
of men remains throughout their lives at greater risk of being killed than
other men. It seems that as research along these lines progresses, two levels
of culpability will need to be addressed: the state’s culpability (if this is the
case) for a policy known to produce harms, and the (lesser) culpability, in
causal terms, of the individuals committing harmful acts.
So, we have state crime. In other instances discussed in this volume, how-
ever, notably by Antrobus, Cain, and Kisaakye, the perpetrator of the harm
is not only the nation state, but an international financial institution—from
the 1970s the IMF and more recently also the World Bank and the WTO.
In these cases we have a harm, we have an institutional culprit, but we
6 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

have less possibility of sanction than in the case of nation states. Technically,
then, in terms of Sutherland’s strict concept, these knowing (or culpably
unknowing) activities are not harms. In Green and Ward’s formulation
(2000) however, if the acts excite widespread opprobrium, they may be
classed as deviance, and the perpetrators as deviant agencies—these are the
cases of what we have termed ‘institutional deviance’. We will return to these
important points in our conclusion.

THE CONTRIBUTORS—THINKING ABOUT WOMEN,

CRIME AND GLOBALISATION

We start our discussion with three position chapters. First, Maureen Cain
argues that in discussions of global harms women are once again being
‘invisibilised’, sometimes because they pick up additional burdens in the
domestic sphere as a result of global economic policies, and because there is
little chance of this harmful effect being acknowledged when women’s nor-
mal level of work is under-valued in any event. Furthermore, the secondary
effects of structural adjustment, such as increases in illegal economic prac-
tices and in interpersonal violence from strangers, also have an impact on
women, both directly through increased vulnerability and indirectly, through
the additional burdens that are created if their menfolk are imprisoned or
become addicted. Finally, Cain argues that women’s contributions may be
neutralised in the global economic agencies. Nonetheless, this is not an argu-
ment about who is hurt most, irrelevant when the poor of both sexes suffer.
It is an argument that better policy will be made if information about the
consequences of structural adjustment policies is collected in a gendered way
and if women as well as men are fully involved in the policy making.
A feminist-influenced flurry of policy and consultation activity around
‘domestic violence’ in the UK provides Adrian Howe with the occa-
sion to explore, in the second chapter, the changing dynamics of anti-
violence work. This work, she notes, has been given a global inflection by
NGO and UN-sponsored campaigns to reconceptualise women’s rights
as human rights. Simultaneously, there has been a profound rethinking
of what it means to do ‘local’ feminist politics under the rapidly chang-
ing conditions of globalisation. Commencing with an early twenty-first
century claim by the UK government that it is committed to confronting
and eradicating violence against women, Howe argues that the concep-
tual framework of the proposed interventions is flawed. Violence against
women in a local setting can only be understood in the context of global
economic processes and more specifically in the context of the harms
faced by vulnerable women trapped into states of ‘dis-welfare’ in ‘global’
sites (after Bauman, 1998). Within the UK, as elsewhere, this means that
violence against women must be recognised as profoundly racialised.
 Introduction 7

When Western governments with reformist agendas fail to understand the

broader political-economic framework of interpersonal violence, the prob-
lems of ethnic minority, migrant and refugee women are not addressed,
despite the promise of a new ‘integrated’ strategy against violence against
women. Howe, like many contributors to this volume, welcomes the rec-
ognition of violence against women as an abuse of women’s rights, indeed
as one of those few extremely serious abuses which trumps the (male?)
right to the ‘protection of culture’ justification at international law. This
international recognition of women’s bodily inviolability provides a pos-
sible mechanism for progressive change.
Peggy Antrobus’ discussion reiterates and strengthens the arguments
about the increased vulnerability of women and the aged in a ‘structurally
adjusted’ world. But she goes beyond this all too sadly familiar story to
address some frequently overlooked and unrecognised connections. Her
argument is that not just acute poverty but also many of the other harms
inflicted on women, the poor as a whole, and much of the economic south
arise from liberal structural adjustment policies deployed as both an ideo-
logical and an economic weapon in the 1980s and 1990s. The battle was
fought by the Western powers for the prize of a greater share of the south’s
economic resources: their oil and mineral wealth, their farm products, their
natural resources, their markets and their cheap labour. As we saw in Cain’s
chapter, immediate immiseration was the inevitable result of such policies
of super-exploitation, and of the ideological pretence that poor states could
and should compete as pretended equal powers with the rich and in areas
selected for competition by the rich. Antrobus goes beyond this not only by
arguing that women disproportionally picked up the burden of supporting
these impoverished populaces, but by pointing out that it was the religious
organisations that provided support, thereby placing large numbers of
people in a situation of dependence on sometimes extremist organisations.
Structural adjustment strategies are thus intimately linked with the expan-
sion of fundamentalist and extreme religious groups. Since in most such
groups the power of women is weakened they are also responsible for
reducing the security of women in particular but also of us all.
Meanwhile state sovereignty has been continuously undermined, by
everything from global powers seeking to police the very problems they
created (Vasciannie, 1997) to outright invasion of territory; by the loss
of control over their national budgets as a result of loan conditionalities
(Brautigam, 2000), to separatist movements as the struggle for control over
natural resources such as oil and minerals becomes extreme: witness the
situation in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The
mushroom growth of terrorist movements in both developed and less
developed worlds can also be understood only in this global context.
Feminist analyses and movements have linked freedom from want with
freedom from fear. The UN has accepted this analysis, but is unready to
8 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

confront its most powerful member states with the evidence that the policies
they advocate are generating the terrorism and increased support for religious
extremism which they deplore. There are, however, anti-globalisation move-
ments located in the south and there is evidence of a new academic feminist
analysis that will not be restricted by conventional academic disciplines.
There are places, therefore, for women to make a significant contribution by
continuing to make incursions into this hostile terrain and to build a series of
progressive redouts, whether political, economic or intellectual, from which
an alternative practice and vision can be forged.

WOMEN ON THE MOVE

In the second part of the book, three contributors consider ‘women on

the move’. Liz Fekete and Brinda Bose consider the situation of trafficked
women, while Suvendrini Perera considers the powers of the state to repre-
sent, expel and punish female bodies which are characterised as too numer-
ous or too (differently) raced. The state defines itself, including both its
geographic and its cultural borders, in terms of those who do not belong,
creating in the process a ‘political economy of gendered bodies’—for after
all, some of those who do not belong are useful. Domestic workers and sex
workers fall into this last category.
Most shocking perhaps is the distortion of legal protections to produce
their opposite—exposure and vulnerability—as Perera demonstrates so well
in her scathing indictment of the Australian government’s ‘borderpanic’
in the face of attempts by ‘illegal’ migrants to make unauthorised moves
across state borders. Those who are delivered to offshore spaces which do
not ‘count’ as Australian territory are not eligible for any of the protection
provided for refugees by the Australian legal system. Again, a policy of
‘temporary protection’ for refugee men who arrive alone means that their
families are denied legal means of joining them. And yet again, within the
courts themselves in Australia, a legal challenge on behalf of detained chil-
dren was presented as ‘competing’ for court time with local (real?) children.
The High Court overruled the Family Court’s decision to hear the case: the
suburban home where the children lived was re-classified as a detention
centre and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the Family Court! In sum,
the border is a mythical and mobile allocation of bodies in space and time:
some who ostensibly cross it nonetheless remain forever outside it. Thus
the media and the law continue to criminalise and demonise women and
children who seek refuge.
Liz Fekete points out that displacement is profoundly gendered, inas-
much as 80 per cent of internally displaced people are women and chil-
dren. Only 34 million of the 125 million displaced people living outside
their country of origin are officially refugees. Many are trafficked, willingly
 Introduction 9

or unwillingly. Here again we see efforts to criminalise which have no legal

basis. The European Union (EU) justifies its preoccupation with traffick-
ing as a preoccupation with organised crime. However, Fekete argues, the
Geneva Convention does not consider smuggling people across a border
to be organised crime: the criminality of such an action depends on the
purpose. In this interpretation, smuggling to join a partner already work-
ing would be acceptable; smuggling for illegal employment as a bonded
worker would not. The second contradiction, she argues, is that it is the
EU’s own policies which create the market for the labour force which its
other policies criminalise—and round again in an insane cycle of reciprocal
justification.
But this is not just a contradictory tale. It is a dangerous and sometimes
lethal one as more hazardous routes are chosen. Moreover, the immisera-
tion produced in Africa and other poor regions by global economic policies,
themselves supported by the very nations which do not want to receive
refugees, enhances the reasons for flight. As criminologists we have to ask
here, who is responsible for the originating harm? Fekete’s final legal point
concerns the adequacy of the protections available under international law
itself. Citing the post-war situation in Kosovo, she indicates that women
fleeing increased levels of rape, abduction and domestic violence did (and
do) not fit in neatly with the categories available under the Convention, for
such violence is deemed random rather than systemic.
Brinda Bose’s focus is on sex workers in India and on trafficking and
migration within the sub-continent as well as internationally. Importantly
in the context of this collection, her chapter challenges some key taken-
for-granted distinctions: between forced and voluntary sex work, for
example, or between legitimate trafficking for marriage and immoral
or illegitimate trafficking for sex work. For Bose, all sex workers are
exploited, a condition they share with all other low paid workers and this
is of greater significance than the forced/voluntary distinction. Further
exploitation also results from the interventions of politicians, police and
bureaucrats, all needing on occasion to demean sex work for personal
gratification or for career enhancement. At transnational levels, the legiti-
mate/illegitimate and criminal/non-criminal debates about sex workers
travel through a range of knowledge networks, while economically the
tourism industry, the entertainment sector and drug and other criminal
networks benefit from exploiting these needed, deplored and always
exploited women. In India the law constructs the female sex worker as a
victim without agency, so activities such as trafficking are criminalised.
Convictions for trafficking, however, are very hard to get, so the law is
used as a tool to harass the sex worker instead. In these ways, as migra-
tion becomes feminised, more and more vulnerable women become avail-
able for exploitation, whether as domestic labourers or as sex workers
(see also Anderson, 2000).
10 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

HUMAN RIGHTS—LIMITS AND POSSIBILITIES

For all the contributors to this volume, developments in international law,

especially those relating to human rights protections which promise to
improve the situation of women, are welcome. Indeed, as our final section
shows, it is the women’s movement which has struggled, for more than
thirty years, to achieve these advances. Nonetheless, the chapters which
we have included in the third section of our volume reveal that the gains
made so far are not enough. Esther Kisaakye discusses the inadequacies of
the existing human rights framework as it affects women, focusing first
on human rights violations affecting women in developing countries, with
special reference to sub-Saharan Africa. These acts, described in harm lan-
guage in international law, are acts the consequences of which could indeed
have been known in advance. Potentially, at least, they fall within the strict
definition of a social harm which we formulated above. Crimes against
women in conflict situations are familiar, yet steps are not taken to avoid
the rape, torture, mutilation, or enslavement of the women of the defeated.
The extent of domestic violence is known, yet in spite of CEDAW nation
states have not deemed it fit to institute effective preventive or enforcement
measures. Kisaakye argues that there are layers of culpability here: the
perpetrators, the leaders of the warring parties, the states which take no
action and importantly, the facilitators of these conflicts, such as purveyors
of armaments.
Kisaakye’s second concern is the poverty of women in sub-Saharan
Africa. She points out that a commitment to human rights is scarcely
possible in a situation of widening economic inequality. Having already
explored the role of creditor nations and the global lending agencies in the
exacerbation of poverty, we ask again: who is responsible for the originat-
ing harm? On the question of the handling of the HIV AIDS crisis in Africa,
Kisaakye again sees many levels of culpability including, for example,
those engaging in armed conflict when it is already known that the rate of
HIV infection always increases in such situations. And this leads to more
poverty and compounds the original harm. As for harms created by global
corporations and trafficking—namely, worse health care, more HIV AIDS,
more orphans and more poverty—human rights documents are inadequate
to protect the vulnerable, especially women. Many governments have not
passed local legislation which would enable them to implement these rights,
such as laws on domestic violence and marital rape, on property rights
for women or law to criminalise customs and traditions that subordinate
women. Moreover, not only is the human rights framework unable to hold
nation states accountable for their violations, but in addition multinational
corporations and international financial institutions cannot readily be held
to account and may even have their business interests protected. Nor are
the arms manufacturers capable of being held accountable or the nations
 Introduction 11

within which they are incorporated. Even full implementation of human

rights protections could not guarantee security while such major players
remain unaccountable.
Human rights may not be enough, but in some situations they are the
best we have. Megan Davis chronicles attempts by the indigenous people of
Australia to secure their human rights and above all their collective rights
by means of a permanent forum on indigenous issues attached to the UN
Commission on Human Rights Working Group on Indigenous Peoples
and by local engagement. She focuses in particular on the struggles of the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and the tensions between individual
and collective rights evidenced in these struggles. In the course of a complex
argument three key issues arise. The first is the question of women’s rep-
resentation. The second concerns the incommensurability of the concepts
of customary law and individualised Western law as applied in Australia.
Thirdly, there are deeply gendered questions about who owns Aboriginal
culture. To take just one example of the egregious situation of Aboriginal
women in Australia, legal services give priority to defending criminal cases,
thereby allocating state resources to the perpetrators, not the victims, of
domestic violence, a massive problem in Aboriginal communities. The cus-
tomary law applied in the courts is most frequently enunciated by Aboriginal
men, often supported by white anthropologists. Male defendants exploit
the power given by the congruence of their claims about customary rules
with white ideology about the non-development of aboriginal legal systems.
Finally, this rigid understanding of ‘custom’ enables men to announce and
develop what Aboriginal women refer to as ‘bullshit law’—the successful
evocation of a ‘traditional’ right to abuse women that never was.
What Aboriginal women want is the right to develop their customary
law in line with their continually evolving harms and contemporary circum-
stances. Confronted with these local myth interpretations, some Aboriginal
women look to international human rights to offer a way forward. Once
again, however, they may be thwarted because there are few rights protected
in Australian law. Davis argues that while this may be the case, a necessary
first step is the creation of gender equality in educational opportunity and
in institutions of both private and public governance. Both Kisaakye’s and
Davis’s chapters then confirm us in our view that human rights offer an
opportunity in that they provide a site of struggle for equality and dignity
and also a new political beginning, rather than an automatic end to women’s
problems.

RETHINKING SOCIAL HARM IN A GLOBAL CONTEXT

We begin the final section of this book with Penny Green’s chapter explor-
ing how globalisation has impacted on populations which are vulnerable
12 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

to natural disaster. Green expresses concern that in relation to harm from

natural disasters, some feminist analysts have overplayed their argument.
First, the evidence that women fare worse in such tragic events is open
to question, although in the particular situation which she analyses this
may well be the case. Her concern is less with this evidence than with the
possibility that such a focus on who fares worst in the event of a ‘natural’
disaster may distract attention from the larger question of culpability. This
question must be addressed for reasons of natural justice, for reasons of
adequate theorisation, but above all in order to make prevention possible.
Green’s argument is that some extreme natural phenomena, such as earth-
quakes as in this case, become disasters only because of human interven-
tion. In the Turkish earthquake which she describes, the death rate was
high because housing had been built in an area of known risk and without
adequate, or indeed any, attention to the building standards ostensibly in
force. According to Green, the regime which allowed this is endemically
corrupt on many levels both locally and up to the highest reaches of the
state. The multiple breaches of the regulations, the corrupt regime which
made them possible and the social harm which resulted make the building
of the unsafe dwellings and the resultant deaths, in Green’s view, a clear
case of state crime. To focus attention solely on the sex/gender of the dead,
she argues, may mean that the true culprit is not identified and crucially,
not publicly named.
This timely reminder that feminist work must engage politically and ana-
lytically with the impact of globalisation on all socially vulnerable classes
and racial/ethnic groups had, we felt, to find an explicit place in a collec-
tion such as this where the focus has been not so much on ‘all women’ as
on women in specific sites and locations who emerge as peculiarly vulner-
able, if also incredibly feisty. Women and men who die at the hands—once
removed—of the Turkish (or any) state are entitled to an acknowledgement
in these pages. The lesson is of global relevance, as is feminism itself.
The second reason for starting the final section with this methodological
lesson is that it keeps the concept of social harm clearly in the centre of
the agenda. Social harm rather than ‘crime’ as the proper object of study
of feminist work is the unstated link between these contributions. The
negligent failure to anticipate the drowning of refugees outside Australian
waters is not a crime. The increased risk of ill health and criminalisation
for men and women as a result of a sudden reduction in their life chances
relative to other people is not a crime either, for the global perpetrator is
not legally accountable. Nor is the increased risk of violence experienced
by immiserated ethnic minority women in a prosperous society. But all of
these events are social harms identified either by the official use of harm
language, or by a substantial body of opinion that regards them as deviant
(Green and Ward, 2000). That is why this book is a further development of
that committed criminology which studies social processes in order to help
 Introduction 13

make the world a better place. The further point that should have become
evident here is that all harms are gendered—or sexed4—some as between
perpetrator and victim, others by differential patterns of victimisation, oth-
ers in terms of the extent of the damage inflicted. To discover the ways in
which social harms are gendered should become normal for our discipline,
part of the routine critical engagement with patterns of social ordering that
constitutes criminology. Green’s chapter reinforces this point, by focusing
our attention so firmly on the perpetrators.
At first glance, the next two chapters take us in a different direction, the
first focusing on the achievements of the women’s movement rather than on
the perpetrators of gendered harms and the other focusing on the nature of
the research that will be increasingly necessary in a globalised world. Both,
however, identify strategic ways forward, whether political or professional.
Rhoda Reddock’s chapter is a celebration of women’s political gains over
recent decades. Her argument is grounded in her own long experience of
local, regional and international feminist struggles and as her argument
develops, it reveals how closely integrated these levels are. In Trinidad and
Tobago there has been a long tradition of feminist action both in the trade
union movement and through the churches. Reddock’s earlier published
work retrieved this forgotten practice from labour history (Reddock,
1988). In the 1980s there was a mushrooming of groups throughout the
Caribbean, all grounded in their specific local circumstances and deeply
concerned with the issue of violence against women (see also Morrow,
1994). At the same time this concern led to the formation of both regional
and national groupings. As these regional alliances developed, so they re-
structured and the centre of gravity in feminist politics shifted from the
north to the global south. However, the north−south alliance has remained
strong at the international level, as evidenced in Reddock’s discussion of
the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership. Although the centre began with
leadership programmes in training and advocacy, those attending have also
developed a focus on women’s human rights and regional institutes have
been organised in the south. Two of these, for example, held in Turkey
and Nigeria, focused on women living under Muslim laws. Similarly, the
White Ribbon Movement began in Canada, but is supported by feminists
in Latin America and the Caribbean. The Women, Law and Development
International group, however, grew out of the Third World Conference on
Women held in Nairobi in 1985, and has been primarily concerned with
feminist legal work, first by supporting the development of appropriate
legal frameworks for addressing domestic violence and more recently con-
cerning itself with the human rights of women.
As indicated above, Reddock’s carefully chosen examples include the
White Ribbon group of pro-feminist men. Women’s groups in Trinidad

4 See Howe (1998) for an elaboration of the concept of sexed crime.

14 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

and Tobago have always been open to the possibility of male membership,
inasmuch as both women and men have been and still are shaped by the
experiences of slavery and racial and colonial exploitation. Thus the inclu-
sion of this organisation in the discussion makes an important political
point, albeit unstated and perhaps taken for granted by the author. So far so
celebratory, but Reddock concludes with a note of warming. There is a fear
that leaders trained and experienced within local and regional networks are
being ‘creamed off’ to staff pro-feminist agencies at the international level.
Again this is complex, for these are the best women to fill such posts, but
if the grass roots wither then the agenda will cease to be set as hitherto by
women’s experience on the ground; policy making will be influenced more
by general feminist ideas, rather than by generalisation from the ever chang-
ing experiences of women in particular local circumstances. In the process
what is so special about feminist policy and practice and what keeps it
relevant over time and place, may be lost.
Our final chapter reminds us that, since we approach these complex
issues as scholars as well as activists, it is essential to pay careful attention
to questions of both research methodology and political sensitivity. The
women’s movement has been strong in its celebration of diversity, in its
post-1970s recognition that not all women are white and/or middle class.
Globalisation and the strength of organised feminist praxis in the developing
world, as documented in this book by Reddock and Antrobus in particular,
guarantees this. Thus Sandra Walklate castigates international crime victim
surveys which, being based on what is thought to be known in the West,
can make no sense of either ‘crimes’ or ‘victims’ when violence, to take one
example, has no fixed cross-cultural meaning. The interpersonal relations
which are the foundation of social life must be approached in terms of the
cultures which in part constitute them. Close attention must be given in
any research—and by implication in any political activism—to cultural dif-
ferences. She therefore suggests that to understand women’s problems it is
necessary to study ‘locales’ rather than nations, and to explore lifestyles as
adaptations to such locales. The ‘one (Western) concept fits all’ approach
causes the rich variety of womanhood to disappear and with it both the
range and the specificity of women’s problems and the inventiveness of their
responses to them.
We have concluded with this call to high quality knowledge produc-
tion, with its close attention to particularity, because such an understand-
ing of knowledge underpins the contributions in this collection. Some
authors have described a local political moment in their struggles: Perera,
Bose, Cain, Green and Howe, for example. Others extrapolate from a
broader range of times and places: Fekete, Antrobus, Davis, Reddock
and Kisaakye theorise in this way. The point that Walklate reminds us of
is that castles are only as strong as the ground on which they are built
and that ground, for us, has been the diversity of lived experiences. In
 Introduction 15

the conclusion to this introduction we continue our quest for a way of

theorising these experiences which acknowledges the women’s own sense
or knowledge of having been either harmed or, indeed, as for Reddock,
Davis and Antrobus, empowered.

DREAM ON

In Peggy Antrobus’ ‘dream’, women create local spaces of resistance and

from these islands they supplement their power by creating alliances. These
are the sites from which another vision and another practice can be forged.
This book has taken Antrobus’ dream as its purpose—a purpose which the
editors glimpsed only in an inchoate way when they called this multidisci-
plined, multipracticed group of women together. Our authors have sought
to unpick the ideologies justifying extremist ‘liberal’ economics, and the
ideologies of fear and the levels of private and public violence which sup-
port and derive from them. In this final section of our introduction, we have
to re-phrase our question and ask instead, in the light of this analysis, why
on earth criminology? This returns us to the question of social harm. `
Social harms against women, as feminist analysts pointed out so long ago
(Howe, 1987; Pitch, 1995), are quite frequently not defined as crimes and
when they are so defined it may well be on terms that do not adequately
redress the injury. Some of the harms we have discussed here—from violence
in the home to rape by soldiers—are crimes. But conceptual problems arise
even here, for what if it is a rebel army? Where is the state that will enforce
the law? This is an empirical question with a range of answers, but in some
reported cases the uncertainty as to where the civil power lies is the crux
of the problem.
The merit of human rights conventions is that, while many obligations
are located at the level of states parties, others apply to individuals even
where no effective state power is present. Rape of the defeated is a war crime
and in the case of war crimes there is even an enforcement mechanism—
the International Criminal Court at the Hague. However, for the range of
harms that our contributors have discussed in this book, the situation is
rarely so clear. In each instance the following questions have to be addressed
and it is because Sutherland’s and Green and Ward’s definitions force these
questions that they have such value. First, is the act defined by harm lan-
guage in a legal rule (Sutherland, 1949) or is it defined as a harm, as devi-
ant, in a public way by a large number of people (Green and Ward, 2000)?
Secondly, is there a sanction provided in law or widespread social censure?
Thirdly, in the case of a legal sanction, is there the capability of enforcing
the sanction and if not why not? Let us explore the harms alleged in these
chapters in these terms in order to expose the unity underlying these osten-
sibly diverse contributions.
16 Maureen Cain and Adrian Howe

The contributors to this volume are clear that they are discussing social
harms, but a harm, like a crime, must have a perpetrator and here we
run into difficulties. Some outcomes—internecine fighting, more extreme
forms of poverty, deteriorating standards of health including HIV AIDS
epidemics, the re-empowerment of extreme religious groups and the conse-
quent disempowerment of women—result from the policies of a particular
government or the practices of a particular ethnic group. Some harms are
punishable by local law; rape, for example, or engaging in terrorism. But
in this text contributors such as Antrobus, Cain and Kisaakye have argued
that behind the immediate perpetrators there stand other individuals and
organisations whose policies and practices have, in a sense, called the
immediate perpetrators into being. The perpetrator problem is therefore a
complex one. The policies of international financial institutions such as the
World Bank, IMF and WTO are seen to have, in a sudden and extreme way,
impoverished many countries in the global south, and those in sub-Saharan
Africa in particular. Accordingly, theoretically guided research in each case
is needed to identify the ‘ultimate’ perpetrator. This is not a legal concept
but a social and criminological one. It is necessary to identify ultimate as
well as intermediate and direct perpetrators, in order to solve the problem
in a constructive way, ie to stop the harm, identify a way forward and
secure redress.
Others of the harms discussed here—the increase of violence in ‘glo-
calised’ sites for example, or the failure to protect indigenous women sex
workers, or those entitled to a safe dwelling place—have a clearly identifi-
able perpetrator at the level of the national or local state, although here
too, as the chapters reveal, theoretical work is necessary to uncover the
precise nature of the harm (failure to protect or the use of ‘custom’ to justify
crimes against women, for example) and the complex layers of responsibil-
ity as between local capitalists, local authority, employees and the nation
state. Only in the case of the Turkish earthquake, discussed by Green, is the
absence of harm language at the site of harm a difficulty. In such cases the
role of the criminologist must be that of moral entrepreneur.
This brings us to the second question, that of the sanction. These stud-
ies show a very limited correlation between the presence of a sanction
and the presence of a harm. In Green’s case, sanctions for corruption are
available, but prior to her work the harm of failure to protect as a result
of corruption had not been identified. In other cases the harm has been
clearly identified, for example that of the immiseration resulting from the
stringent conditionalities attached to IMF loans (see Chossudovsky, 1997;
Cain and Birju, 1992; Cain, 2006; Przeworski and Vreeland, 2000). But
known perpetrators cannot be held to account. International corporate
capital is notoriously hard to hold to account at law, but for commercial
organisations the court of public opinion can have an effect. This is more
problematic for the global financial institutions (IMF, WTO, World Bank)
 Introduction 17

as constitutionally they ‘belong’ to their most generous donors, in the sense

that voting rights within these institutions are proportionate to the size of
each nation’s contribution. There is no superordinate power. Moreover, it
is hard to see how public opinion could impact directly on these private
but public bodies. In these cases, therefore, the use of our strict criterion
for a social harm has exposed a very serious problem. There is therefore
no mechanism at all for holding these institutions to account. We cannot
resolve this, so it is a problem that must now go on the agenda of the
international feminist movement. In the meantime, the harms perpetrated
by these global agencies, given the widespread recognition of them, entitle
us to characterise them as deviant institutions: a case of censure without
sanction.
The plight of refugees is a state-induced harm, albeit that these move-
ments of people may themselves result from the policies of the global
institutions. Interpretation of the Geneva Convention remains largely a
local matter, although the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is
anomalous here since technically it is a transnational court established by
the member states. The chapters in this volume reveal that the treatment of
refugees in would-be host countries is both raced and sexed and almost as
deadly in its effects as the IMF loan conditionalities. The perpetrators of
the harms described are nation states. Feminist action within nation states
is essential, not only on humanitarian grounds to reduce the abuses revealed
by Fekete and Perera, but also to shift policy from the historical favouring
of political over personal grounds for victims of state-condoned violence
and for refugee families, to insist that the unit of admission should be the
family rather than the individual worker and perhaps to call for a more
extensive review role for a new UN agency.
Whatever we do the two methodological lessons arising from this text are
to listen to what the women affected want and where men are victimised
too, to harness their contributions as allies. Much of this book makes the
reader want to bury her face in her hands. We, as editors hope that the
outcomes both for research and action will be more constructive than that,
though there must be time to weep as well.

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Australian Feminist Law Journal 3−18.
Vasciannie, S (1997) ‘Political and Policy Aspects of the Jamaica/United States
Shiprider Negotiations’ 43(3) Caribbean Quarterly 34−53.
 Part I

Position Papers
 1
Criminogenesis and the War
Against Drugs: (Another) Story
of Absented Women
MAUREEN CAIN

INTRODUCTION

I
n this chapter I argue that from a criminological perspective the
impact on women of global economic policies has largely been ignored.
The first two sections deal with the impact of structural adjustment
conditionalities as imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and
the World Bank on nation states seeking loans, with special reference to the
Caribbean. Although the terms of those loans have been similar for developed
countries, my focus here is on less developed countries. In the first section
I demonstrate that this impact has been both harmful and criminogenic.
One of the responses to sudden immiseration in less developed countries
has been to seek a lucrative alternative income by trading in illegal narcotic
substances. In the second section I reveal that this response exacerbates
the crime related problems of the recipient states. Although women are
largely absented from the narcotics literature, I argue in the third section
that women not only pick up the workload abandoned by the shrinking
post-adjustment state (as has been demonstrated) but that they are also
negatively affected by the narco-trading response to structural adjustment
programmes. I also speculate briefly on the processes which can lead to the
absenting of women from research and policy in these areas. It is necessary
for women to play a part in the financial institutions of the global state so
that these issues may be fed into the debates about global economic policies,
and appropriate changes in strategy adopted.

CRIME, HARM AND GLOBALISATION IN TRINIDAD

AND TOBAGO AND THE CARIBBEAN

It was in Trinidad that I was first exposed to the impact of the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) loan conditionalities on the economy of a developing
22 Maureen Cain

country. Trinidad and Tobago took its first IMF loan in 1987, having
experienced a declining economy since 1983 when the Organization of the
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) induced boom in oil prices came
to an end. One condition attached to this loan was a floating of the cur-
rency (hitherto pegged to a fixed rate of exchange with the US dollar). As
a result the rate of exchange fell sharply: fewer imported goods could be
bought with the same wages. Trade and currency restrictions were also lifted,
with two equally harmful consequences: outflows of investment capital to
overseas banks and unlimited access to the local market for many foreign
goods. The latter put small producers out of business, most particularly
producers of commodities produced for import substitution, such as dried
local fruit. Many goods were priced out of the range of the poorest quartile
of local consumers. Meanwhile, state enterprises were required to reduce
their workforces and some, such as water and telephone services, were sold
off. Jobs were therefore lost in both the public and private sectors. The tax
regime was changed: tax on high earners was sharply reduced (from which
I personally benefited) and a purchase tax on a wide range of commodities
was introduced, shifting the burden from the better off to the relatively
poor. At the same time, the oil price remained low.
The result was instantly apparent in the official statistics, with the
median income for men dropping by TT$ 200 per month between 1987 and
1989. There was also a readily apparent polarisation in the society, with
the numbers in the highest income bracket of TT$ 5,000 per month rising
from 5600 to 8000 males and doubling from 700 to 1400 females, while
the numbers in the lowest income bracket (less than TT$ 250 per month)
also increased, for males from 6000 to 9200, and more than doubled from
4600 to 10,900 for females. No further evidence is needed to support the
argument that structural adjustment had particularly negative effects on
women. (See Table 1.1.)
There were also indirect negative effects on women as well as the absolute
loss of earnings recorded above. Deere et al (1990), Ellis (2003) and Sparr
(1994) have all pointed out that in the Caribbean (as worldwide) women
carried the burden of replacing reduced public health care services with
home care, of feeding families in a situation of higher prices and smaller
domestic budgets, of finding a cash resource to buy the school books, and
so on. Mothers, partners and sisters, as one may guess, also gave succour
to newly unemployed men.
The economic safety valve was the informal economy. Anything that
could be grown or homemade was produced and sold. The ‘huckster’ trade
in imported goods continued. Sidewalk trading in surplus fruits and vegeta-
bles or the products of home baking boomed. Le Franc (1994) reports that
as a result of the much earlier structural adjustment programme in Jamaica
and the opening of the borders there some women were able to vastly
expand their import businesses. People used whatever social, political,
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 23

Table 1.1 Earnings of those Employed in Trinidad and Tobago, 1987−1991

Year Mean income Median Numbers in Numbers in Numbers

per month income per top income bottom income employed
month bracket bracket (less
($5000 pm*) than $250 pm*)

M F M F M F M F M F

1987 1,800 1,500 1,500 1,200 5,600 700 6,000 4,600 251,000 121,000
1988 1,700 1,500 1,500 1,200 5,500 800 6,700 4,600 248,000 123,000
1989 1,700 1,400 1,300 1,200 6,600 800 5,800 4,300 246,800 118,700
1990 1,600 1,400 1,300 1,200 7,000 1,200 6,200 3,900 253,200 120,600
1991 1,700 1,400 1,400 1,100 8,000 1,400 9,200 10,900 265,300 135,500
*permonth.
Source: Annual Statistical Digest 1991.
Data re-analysed by the author for the Sampson Committee (Sampson, 1994).

cultural, and economic capital they had to deal with the situation—and
those who already had social and economic capital in terms of trading
networks and access to loans or other financial capital, were set fair.
Brown, whose ‘before and after’ study of a structural adjustment loan
remains the only one available, also discovered something more surpris-
ing and in the longer term more damaging—a value shift (1994: 61). In
her follow-up study, the parents and children of middle class families in
Jamaica no longer considered education to have intrinsic value, to be worth
having in its own right, as had been the case before the IMF loan. Instead
they came to see education as an instrumental value, a means to achieving
a higher income and nothing more. Transpose her findings on education
to the wider social order and some of the more harmful consequences of
the instant immiseration caused by structural adjustment policies can be
explained.
In terms of their self images, their long-term plans, and the opportunities
(or various ‘capitals’) available to them, people make their everyday tactical
choices (Bourdieu, 1987; Jenkins, 1992). When their means of life are sud-
denly reduced, it is argued, they have to make alternative arrangements, to
find alternative ways of getting where they want to be. From Merton (1957)
to Lea and Young (1984) and Lea, Mathews, and Young (1989) and the
subsequent work of the new left realist group, crime has been seen as a way
of achieving economic status and identity goals when other possibilities are
reduced. This theory at least makes common sense, but has never accounted
for enough of the variance. Nor has it ever adequately explained the appar-
ently non-rational, non-goal directed responses so well documented in
Trinidad and Tobago, namely the massive increase in non-acquisitive, non-
instrumental crime which occurs when the economic rug is pulled out from
24 Maureen Cain

under the feet of those on lower incomes and also of public servants, whether
low waged or middle class. Note that the most dramatic increase concerns
not property crimes but offences against the person. (See Table 1.2.)
But let us suppose that, as in the case described by Brown (1994) for
Jamaica, it is not, or not just, people’s opportunities that change but people’s
fundamental values about what is worth having. If the objectives change,
as she documents in the Jamaican case, then there can be no stable or well
understood or, in Merton’s terms, ‘socially approved’ means of achieving
high status. This is a much more disorienting and profound destabilisation
of the social order, similar to the post-revolutionary phenomenon Foucault
and his students reported in France, where ‘in a prodigious reversal of all
signs’, all that was familiar was inverted, and among other things, a wave of
murders by women—‘ogresses’—as well as men resulted (Peter and Favert,
1978: 175–98).
We have known for a long time that sudden and marked changes at the
economic level affect both suicide rates (Durkheim, 1952) and crime rates,
but our theoretical explanations have been more akin to Aristotle’s than to

Table 1.2 Serious offences reported to the police (excluding traffic offences)
1980–1992

Year Offences Breaking Other Forgery Other Total

Against and Offences Offences
Persons Entering Against
Property

1980 439 5,463 6,262 56 18 12,238*

1981 595 6,306 4,678 34 8 11,621
1982 691 6,877 3,018 94 17 10,697
1983 716 7,261 3,287 94 38 11,396
1984 643 7,743 3,542 83 14 11,725
1985 686 9,089 3,978 216 10 13,979
1986 741 8,861 4,603 125 31 14,361
1987 844 8,707 6,021 136 524** 16,232
1988 976 9,352 7,723 164 1,167 19,385
1989 1,171 8,278 7,436 187 911 17,983
1990 1,098 7,543 5,916 129 1,516 16,202
1991 1,161 7,313 3,280 245 1,406 16,157
1992 1,254 7,938 7,267 236 985 17,680
*The published total is 12,233. This appears to be an error.
**Part way through 1987 certain drug offences were reclassified as serious rather
than minor crimes. For comparability the annual totals should therefore be adjusted
down. This was not done here because exact numbers are unknown.
Source: Taken in part from Cain and Birju (1992: 143). Data from Central Statistical
Office, reanalysed by the author for the Sampson Committee (Sampson, 1994).
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 25

those of Copernicus or Galileo, because we thought that values were a fixed

point. In fact as Brown’s work reveals, values too are responsive to sudden
and extreme changes in the means of life. What we need, therefore, is a socio-
logical theory of relative motion, a theory without constants. By a different
theoretical route, therefore, we have arrived at the postmodern condition.
It is in this context that the data about crime rates in Trinidad and Tobago
should be interpreted. A growing part of the economic slack was taken up
by a trade in stolen goods. Property crime reached an all-time high in 1988,
the year of the loan, while crimes of violence rose steadily from 976 in 1988
to 1254 four years later (Sampson, 1994). The trade in cocaine took off in
these years. Trinidad is a trans-shipment rather than a producer country for
drugs, but this was the period when the trickle down to local users became
an issue of serious concern. It was widely believed that the drug use and
the increased violence were related. It may be so, or it may be that they are
independent consequences of the social dislocation just described. Be that
as it may, the point I want to secure by this excursion into recent Caribbean
history is that the IMF conditionalities had criminogenic consequences.
Supporting data are available from Nigeria, where Green (1998) describes
the aftermath of a structural adjustment programme, reporting the story of
a school teacher who had invested all his available resources in narcotics,
and was at the time of interview successful in his alternative occupation as a
trader. We have even more significant data from Jamaica, where the unpre-
dictability of the effects of SAPs becomes even clearer. In the Jamaican case,
the outcome was shaped by long-standing networked links, both familial
and trading, between Jamaica and the United States, and also by the terri-
tory-based politics of that nation (as opposed to the more familiar (to me)
class-based politics of England and Wales and Scotland or the ethnicity
based politics of Northern Ireland and Trinidad and Tobago). In brief (but
see also Campbell, 1976; Harriott, 2007; Headley, 2009) territorial ‘bosses’
were empowered both by their political connections and by the drugs
money, which together helped them to deliver the vote and to acquire weap-
onry. This enabled territorial groupings connected to the two major parties
to compete for followers both directly and in terms of favours/patronage.
Over time, according to Headley, gangs became embedded in their areas,
an apparently permanent part of the everyday social structure, the politi-
cal structure and the illegal trading structures involving mainly money and
guns. Gang leaders or ‘dons’ became the obvious people to turn to in any
kind of domestic emergency, and so on.
I have discussed in detail elsewhere the other harms brought about by
structural adjustment programmes (Cain, 2006; 2009), so they can be very
briefly noted here: an increase in civil strife (Fitzgerald, 1999); a marked
increase in corruption and a disempowering of the central state and its
agencies (Brautigham, 2000) are the most thoroughly documented, apart
from the long-term nature of the harmful economic effects, persisting
26 Maureen Cain

beyond the moment of successfully ‘coming out’ of the final SAP. Indeed,
the long-term damage of structural adjustment, even when it is imposed on
the people by a democratically elected government rather than an indepen-
dent global agency, has most recently and fearfully been documented by
Dorling (2004), who demonstrates using data for England and Wales that
the probability of being murdered for males leaving school into a ‘moment’
of structural adjustment induced unemployment remains higher throughout
their lives than that of other males. Just another datum in search of a good
enough theory? On the contrary, we now have the theory, and knowing
this, to repeat the mistake would be nothing less than a moral outrage
perpetrated on the poor.
Is there indeed the possibility of such a repetition, when allegedly the IMF
leopard changed its spots in 1999 when the Enhanced Structural Adjustment
Facility was re-named the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility? Recent
work from within the World Bank itself suggests at best that the jury is
still out (Easterly, 2005). Indeed, the weight of informed opinion at the
time suggests that the poor and their spokespeople were not adequately
consulted about the change, and that ‘the efficacy of the economic reforms,
on which so many lives and livelihoods now hang’ is unproven (UNCTAD,
2000, cited in Peet, 2003: 103). Another study cited in Peet (p 102), came to
the conclusion that over the longer term the IMF has ‘failed to improve the
economies of less developed countries, and that in many cases it has hurt
them’ (Johnson and Schaffer, 1999: 102). Most telling of all for the argu-
ment here, knowing as we now do not just the immediate but the long-term
personal, as well as structural and cultural effects of structural adjustment
programmes (respectively death, enhanced inequality, and a shift to instru-
mental values) is the clear evidence of Garuda (2000) and Lundberg and
Squire (2003). Both analyses demonstrate conclusively and cross nationally
the tendency of IMF programmes to enhance inequality as well as the fact,
familiar to residents of the UK in the 1980s, that an ‘economy’ can grow
while the poor continue to become relatively, and sometimes absolutely,
poorer. A beneficiary, in all cases, is global capital, in both its industrial and
its abstract (financial) forms.
As regards the ostensible state beneficiaries, structural adjustment loans
weaken them in many ways. Birdsall et al (2002) and Brautigam (2000)
have argued cogently that as a result of international agencies donating off-
budget to particular departments and institutions of state the central policy
making, budgeting and accounting functions have been weakened and the
resultant by-passing of parliament has reduced accountability and encour-
aged corruption. Arias and Logan (2002) argue that the reformed PRG loan
scheme, by insisting on wider consultations in civil society, achieves little
beyond further bypassing an already weakened state. This distrust of states’
powers is a relic of the heyday of structural adjustment in the 1980s, based
on a fear both of the emergent autonomy of post-colonial states and of state
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 27

power itself as being suspect, too close to the Soviet model. Post-colonial
governance now uses a rhetoric of empowerment to disempower the less
developed nations.

ON THE CONTRADICTORY POLICIES OF GLOBAL INSTITUTIONS:

THE CASE OF PROSCRIBED NARCOTIC SUBSTANCES

The Bretton Woods Institutions (IMF, World Bank) were created in 1943,
followed by Gatt1 (later WTO) in 1947, in much the same international
climate as the post Second World War United Nations, and both have the
US, as the global victor in that conflict, as the key player (Kiely, 1998). But
whereas since the 1980s the economic triumvirate has operated with an
increasingly clear and singular ideology (economic liberalisation), the UN
institutions have a procedural ideology of participation and representation
which of its nature tends to undermine singular claims about substantive
policies.2 Contradictions between the two sets of institutions might there-
fore be expected. However, in the area of drugs and drug control there is
a remarkable convergence of policy. The contradiction here is internal:
between economic policies that generate and sustain the drugs trade, stem-
ming from the global economic agencies, and policies that seek to eliminate
it stemming from the political agency of the UN. The argument goes like
this: first, IMF/WB/WTO economic policies, doubtless unintentionally,
enhance the development of the informal economy, in both legal and illegal
aspects. In the Caribbean context as elsewhere these policies have encour-
aged the trade in narcotics. This trade is outlawed by the United Nations,
with US support. Secondly, the narcotics trade also distorts the pattern
of legal economic development, which yet other UN agencies such as the
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) seek to
encourage. The policies of different agencies of the global state are therefore
in contradiction. These contradictions exist partly because ideological and
political disagreements are inscribed in the policies imposed on the poor
and partly because of the desire to control, through the WTO, which trades
shall be free and which unfree. Thirdly, a further contradiction lies in the
fact that the illegality of drug trading weakens trading states in the face
of a rhetoric of enforcement as strength because it corrodes the state legal
institutions (Kirby, 1992; Crane Scott, 1995; Griffith and Munrow, 1995).
Fourthly, the final and most tragic and perhaps the only contradiction
based on the reality of the lives of the non-trading poor, is that between the

1 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organisation.

2 This is why core human rights documents such as the Geneva Convention of 1951 have
such moral force: all the nations of the world have agreed them without imposition.
28 Maureen Cain

needs of producer and consumer nations where narcotics are concerned. I

will deal with and document each of these points in turn.
In relation to the question of IMF policies encouraging the irreversible
development of an alternative illegal economy including the trade in nar-
cotics, I have discussed the pressures encouraging this development in the
case of Trinidad and given evidence about an increase in violence. More
evidence comes from Jamaica, where Stone (1988) has noted that in rural
areas those villages which are prosperous are those where a drug dealer
dwells. There are other reasons for the territorial and gang based politics of
Jamaica (Campbell, 1976; Headley, 2009), but Harriott (1996) has noted a
qualitative change in the nature of violence in that country in that stranger
violence, usually a rare phenomenon, is increasing. He attributes this
qualitative shift in the character of violence to an expansion of the narcot-
ics trade, as well as to continuing immiseration. Harriott points out further
that patterns encouraged by economic or political developments are not
readily reversible. There are better or worse ways forward, but once the
structure has been developed, the state infiltrated, the networks formed, the
higher income experienced, the legal loopholes identified, the capital built
up, there may be a change of strategy or venue but no reversal unless the
bottom drops out of the market and the trade ceases to be lucrative. In the
next section I argue that only legalisation of production and de-criminalisation
of distribution could produce such a massive fall in price. That is not at the
moment either US or UN policy.
Women are visible here in two capacities: first, they are known to fill the
low level roles in the trading networks; and secondly, the role of women
in sustaining the families involving husbands, sons, brothers or grandsons
who are users is understood in the structurally adjusted societies but has
not been studied.
Ivelaw Griffith argues that the narcotics trade is related to an increase
in violent offending and a consequent increase in the numbers imprisoned
for the Caribbean as a whole (1993; 1996; Griffith and Munrow, 1995; see
also Crane Scott 1995; Kirby, 1992). This corresponds to the results for
Trinidad and Tobago documented earlier. The penal systems are inevitably
overstretched. Research in Trinidad (Cain and Birju, 1992) suggested that
in these structurally adjusting years the length of sentence was increasing as
well as the numbers involved. Moreover, Hagley shows that eight men in a
cell was normal; a dozen or fifteen were reported, with no plumbed sanita-
tion and insufficient floor space for all to lie down (Hagley, 1996: 11). Order
was maintained in the prisons with the aid of dominant prisoners—that is,
the worst men. The reports of Stern (for Caribbean Rights, 1990) and of
Stern (1998) present a similar picture throughout the region. Here there is
another contradiction: between the effects of IMF/WTO policies on impris-
onment levels and the UN’s continuing efforts to improve prison conditions
(UN, 1996).
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 29

Griffith (1996) refers to a backlog of cases in the courts and of men and
women languishing on remand for up to four years—and this in a system
which takes no account of time already served when administering the sen-
tence and in which the level of violence in the remand prison, in Trinidad
at least, is notorious (Hagley, 1996).
At the same time the number of women in prison also rises, and so does
the number from other islands or even from beyond the Caribbean. These
‘foreign’ women, cut off from family and friends, are almost all minor nar-
cotics traders, presumably finding a way to make ends meet. So the system
is creaking, even without corruption.
Corruption of officials and professionals at all levels—police, judiciary,
prison officers, customs officers, lawyers, is also reported by Griffith (1996)
and for Jamaica by Harriott (2006). Corruption of elected politicians is well
documented by Bullington (1991) and by Block (1991). All this weakens
the state in terms both of its administrative competence and of its legitimacy
both at home and abroad. The economically weak state becomes weak
politically too. In a weak state social services are not a priority and women
carry the extra burdens arising from, for example, half day education and
inadequate health care, while working at low paid jobs to make ends meet.
Routinely they pick up these invisible burdens. In Trinidad and Tobago a
determined attempt to take violence against women seriously as a policing
problem has been made at national and local levels (see Cain, 2000). But
while resources are diverted into the policing of narco-trading, many states
feel unable to divert serious resources into the problems of interpersonal
violence. Certainly in South Africa, international donors targeted resources
into the policing of the narcotics trade in the face of local policing priorities
which included more attention to family and other interpersonal violence
(van der Spuy, 2000).
Women appear only as minor dealers, relatively unimportant from a
policing point of view. As important for feminists concerned about the drugs
trade and the post-colonial state is that this is the context in which women
are struggling to create a normal home environment, buy, make, alter the
uniforms, purchase school books, pay the light bill, feed the family and save
enough to take a small gift of fruit to their men in gaol. In Trinidad’s main
gaol (Port of Spain) wives, mothers and sisters get the opportunity to stand
in a line and shout at the men across two glass barriers and a space rendered
inaudible by the cacophony of their cries. They are allowed to bring two
pieces of fruit and certain small necessities, no more. The above litany of
the deleterious effects of illegalising narcotics is relevant precisely because
men’s doings at the political level impact so profoundly on women’s invis-
ible lives. When we think crime and globalisation we are dealing with a pre-
feminist body of research, even when the papers bear a twenty-first century
date. We are therefore returned to the first task of feminism: to identifying
invisible women, to noticing the effects on women of men’s doings in the
30 Maureen Cain

power-wielding global economic and politico-legal spheres. It is seeing

the effects of these policies and practices from the standpoint of that very
female environment, the prison visiting room, where mothers hold back the
tears to catch a near silent sight of their son, as they share his degradation
while trying to share the family news in this massive inaudibility of noise.
Political/economic decisions, policing, worklessness and imprisonment may
be men’s games, but as in war women carry the emotional, care providing
and reproductive burdens imposed by these practices. Feminists more than
anyone have argued the need to study white male power structures and
their impact on women of colour in particular. Criminology, as we said in
the raison d’être for the conference which led to this volume, has been slow
to go global: it cannot go global without re-discovering the first principles
of feminism.
However, going global does not entail a return to monolithic theorising,
but rather an enhanced sensitivity to the particular. Nowhere has the
error of one size fits all solutions to a problem been more apparent than
in the narcotics trade (Cain, 2001). In relation to narcotics use and abuse
Western nations have opted for a demand reduction strategy, by and
large, in spite of increasingly persuasive evidence that organised narcotics
trading generates both more and new forms of violence (Stevenson, 1994;
Transform Drug Policy Foundation, 2007). For more than a decade it
has been made clear that the main beneficiaries of the criminalisation of
narcotic use are those who sell drugs. Criminalisation keeps the supply
if not scarce then at least risky and it therefore keeps the price high and
the dealers rich. It increases the costs to the state not only because of
the high costs of policing and imprisonment, but because of the reduced
willingness/ability of users to control the quality of the drugs supplied to
them, or to access the health care they need or to continue to ‘pass’ as
‘normal’ members of the society. The risk of the vicious cycle is enhanced:
identified user; social exclusion; alternative means needed to sustain use;
and round again.
The arguments are resisted because the UK is a signatory to the 1988
Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic
Substances (UN, 1989). They are also resisted because the effect that legis-
lation or de-criminalisation would have on demand is unknown—the case
can be argued either way. Nonetheless, in the big user nations, the ‘war
against drugs’ is patently being lost. Legalisation would have certain posi-
tive consequences: a massive drop in price and a movement out of drugs
to more lucrative trading opportunities by organised crime. Organised vio-
lence would decline, and low-level pushers who put pressure on children
and young people would become redundant. Moreover, users could more
readily receive reintegrative help if they chose.
For people in Latin America, the Caribbean and South East Asia, the
issues are different. Here low-level pushing is likely to be a main job, not
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 31

a sideline. For those who become addicted there is no adequate healthcare.

Here, too, violence at a communal level becomes endemic, with the quali-
tative shift identified by Harriott (1996) generating widespread caution, if
not fear. At the societal level as we have seen, whole areas of state activity
may become destabilised. Toxic spraying of drug-productive land and the
dumping of constituent chemicals in rivers in producer countries pollutes
the environment (del Olmo, 1998). In these nations de-criminalisation on a
global scale would free narcotics capital for more creative uses, ‘save land,
reduce the amount of money available for corruption and take pressure off
youth in the inner cities’ (Cain, 2001: 35). There appear to be no uncertain
outcomes, except maybe those for agrarian producers, who might prefer to
be supported in the transfer to an alternative crop to poppies or cannabis or
coca, though the poppies, coca and cannabis would now be once again legal
crops, fetching a reduced but possibly an adequate market price.

GLOBAL POLITICS, GLOBAL ECONOMY AND WOMEN

This returns us to global politics, the global economy and of course to

women and their conspicuous absence from policy and policy making
in relation to the criminogenic effects of global economic policies. The
transnational crime of narcotics trading brings into sharp focus the need
for multiple rather than singular understandings of criminalisations and
their effects, and the corresponding need for solutions based on hearing
this diversity of voices. These understandings should take into account the
damage to women’s well being, their education and health, which arises
from the additional burdens they have to carry when sons, lovers, partners
and husbands are trading or in jail. One of these burdens is the additional
violence found throughout a society which makes its living illegally: the
violence of absences; the violences of extra work; the violences of drug
induced fighting and of fighting about money; the violence resulting from
the instrumentalisation of interpersonal relationships; the violence of extra
work, of being always tired and of seeing no better future. Amid all this I
suspect—and data in the area are so notoriously lacking in validity that one
can do no more—that the ‘old fashioned’ domestic violence, as rife in the
Caribbean as elsewhere (cf Danns and Parsad, 1988) is exacerbated by the
illegalisation of so many people’s means of livelihood.
Feminist scholars have recently begun to do the important work of iden-
tifying how and why women have so little impact on the policies, such as
structural adjustment, which impact so markedly on their lives. Jawara and
Kwa (2003) analyse the build up to and proceedings at the Doha ‘ministe-
rial’ of the WTO. The work of these two women is based on documentary
research and ‘semi-structured interviews with thirty three Geneva-based
missions’ across a spectrum of countries plus ten members of the secretariat
32 Maureen Cain

and staff of the WTO. We now know the processes of inclusion and exclu-
sion in invitations to quasi-private agenda setting and pre-drafting meetings
(pre-ministerials),3 we know how timetabling can exclude, we know how
domestic, political and social movements can affect negotiations. We know
how the ‘Quad’ (EU, US, Canada, Japan) manage to dominate while using
neutral formal procedures, despite being a small minority in a majority
voting regime.4 Crucially, and almost inadvertently, we know how women’s
voices (as well as the officially present voices of less developed countries) are
excluded. One ploy of the powerful in relation to less developed countries is
to bypass their experienced ambassadors and do business directly with their
inexperienced politicians, more readily flattered by the attention and less
familiar with the detailed implications of the issues raised. For women, the
following example cited by Jawara and Kwa is telling. A female minister,
Tebeleto Seretse from Botswana, was simultaneously set up and excluded
when appointed at the last minute by the main body (the Conference of the
Whole, or COW) to be a main facilitator:

…with only a day and a half to go before the end of the conference, she was
asked to cover labour standards, TRIPS,5 biodiversity, WTO internal transpar-
ency, dispute settlement reform, and the need for working groups on trade, debt
and finance, and on technology transfer’ (2003: 97).

As a result, she was unable to answer questions and to report back

adequately on the proceedings in these matters. What an urbane and
sophisticated way to squeeze out and belittle someone who is both female
and black!
So—we need more women researching the hard stuff in the high places,
and doing it their own way. And we need to create our own ‘rooms’, off
stage spaces within and alongside the global institutions, where our views
as women can be negotiated among ourselves, before being brought into
the ‘male’ debate.

CONCLUSION

I have argued that women in the developing world are the victims of the
policies of the global economic institutions, both directly through immis-
eration and indirectly as a consequence of the enhanced criminality gener-
ated by structural adjustment policies. Sometimes this criminality is within

3 ‘Pre-ministerials’ (meetings before, or outside, formal meetings of ministers) are referred

to in the WTO as ‘green room’ discussions.

4 Albeit weighted by the size of each nation’s contribution to the budget (Kiely, 1998).
5 Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
 Criminogenesis, the War Against Drugs and Human Rights 33

their own families and sometimes it is in the wider society. As values are
seen to change in the face of a sudden polarisation of incomes in society,
women’s status within families is destabilised. The global criminalisation of
responses to structural adjustment, such as trading in illegalised narcotics,
I have argued, exacerbates women’s vulnerability rather than ameliorat-
ing it. Moreover, although women carry additional burdens as a result of
global policies, they are relatively silent (or silenced) in the processes of
global policy making. Women need to enhance their influence within
the global economic institutions as they have in the United Nations. Women
are no longer hidden from history. On these grounds I conclude that they
should not be hidden from studies within a criminology of the effects of
globalisation.

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 2
Violence Against Women:
Rethinking the Local–Global
Nexus in Feminist Strategy
ADRIAN HOWE

INTRODUCTION

A
t the turn of the new millennium, violence against women became
a policy priority in the UK. Responding to three decades of feminist
campaigning, the Blair Government pushed through a raft of new
policies in the field it had begun, in the late 1990s, to call ‘Violence Against
Women’ (VAW). After a wide-ranging consultation led by the Home
Office, it published Safety and Justice: the Government’s Proposals on
Domestic Violence in 2003. In November 2004, the government followed
up with the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act which provided
more protection to domestic violence victims by criminalising breaches
of non-molestation orders and common assault. There is now an Inter-
Ministerial Group on Domestic Violence, and a national report, published
in 2005, setting out the government’s progress, including the establishment
of a Forced Marriage Unit. The report also details a National Action Plan
that promises to further improve support for victims, for example, by inter-
vening earlier with offenders; by improving the handling of cases that fall
within the domestic violence provisions of the Immigration Rules and by
expanding a network of specialist domestic violence courts. By recording the
road travelled so far and signalling future directions, the Home Office minister
hoped that the report would convince those working in the domestic vio-
lence field that their work has been recognised and that the government was
fully committed to confronting VAW in Britain (Home Office, 2005).1
Whether or not the government is doing enough about this pervasive
social problem, the feminist-influenced flurry of policy and consultation
activity around ‘domestic violence’ provides the occasion to explore the

1 See the analysis of these policy initiatives in Howe (2006).

38 Adrian Howe

changing dynamics of anti-VAW work in the UK today. This work has

been given a global inflection by NGO and UN sponsored campaigns to
reconceptualise women’s rights as human rights. Simultaneously, there has
been a profound rethinking of what it means to do ‘local’ feminist politics
under the rapidly changing conditions of globalisation. One of the most
crucial developments within the British VAW sector has been the very
effective intervention of local minority ethnic feminist groups, especially
Southall Black Sisters (SBS). Their campaigns have brought the plight of
women who are subject to immigration control and so without recourse to
public funds—asylum-seeking women, migrant and minority ethnic women
trapped into forced marriages and other violent relationships—to the heart
of feminist engagement with the questions raised by the changes wrought
by globalisation and its numerous ‘discontents’ (Sassen, 1998; Stiglitz,
2002).
These women—non-citizens or ‘partial’ citizens living for the most part
outside the public sphere and support networks, yet subjected to intoler-
able levels of male and state-sanctioned violence—are the new subalterns
of Britain’s globalising communities. SBS campaigns on their behalf have
helped the feminist movement to rethink ‘domestic’ violence as violence
with a global inflection, and to recognise that reform to immigration laws
must form an important aspect of feminist policy. In the process, they have
also forged a rethinking of the local/global nexus within feminist strategy.
Such a rethinking is absolutely vital today, especially when, in response to
feminist demands, UK policy-makers are ‘increasingly addressing domes-
tic violence and other forms of interpersonal violence as crimes’ (Walby
and Allen, 2004: 42)—a policy development which will inevitably punish
the poor. To understand the situation of the most marginalised women in
Britain, it helps to think in terms of ‘glocalisation’ a concept capturing
the intrinsic yet deeply unequal relationship between the globalisation of
productive and finance capital and ‘localisation’, a process of immiseration
that locks the poor into local lowly statuses. As Maureen Cain points out,
policy developments that ‘abuse the poor … while extolling the virtues of
globality, inevitably enhance the polarising relations which give rise to the
problems of social exclusion on a global as well as a local scale’ (2004: 418;
her emphasis).2
Does this mean the prospects for buoyant feminist advocacy work for
battered women are diminishing? Not necessarily. As Beck argues, the
depoliticising spell of globalisation can be broken. Most crucially, it can be

2 Cain borrows ‘glocalisation’ from Bauman, 1998. Robertson (1992) developed the con-

cept of the ‘glocal’ to denote the inextricable connections between global and local processes.
See also Adam’s (2002) work connecting gender-neutral discourses of globalisation with femi-
nist analyses of development in order to render visible the gender politics of globalisation.
 Violence Against Women 39

reconceived as opening up the space for political action. Globality means

that ‘from now on nothing which happens on our planet is only a limited
local event’. Accordingly, we must ‘reorient and reorganise our lives along
a local-global axis’, but precisely because globalisation always involves a
process of localisation, there can be a new and invigorating emphasis on
the local (Beck, 2002: 6−11). Stuart Hall agrees. Not only is globalisation
not a new process; it is ‘almost impossible to think about the formation of
English society, or of the UK … outside of the processes that we identify
with globalisation’. But new forms of global economic and cultural power
are emerging that have contradictory effects. While some are reaping the
benefits, others have gone ‘underneath’ globalisation, to the local and,
paradoxically, ‘marginality has become a powerful space ... a space of
weak power but it is a space of power nonetheless’. Moreover, it is a space
in which new subjects, ethnicities, regions and communities all hitherto
excluded now emerge and acquire through struggle the means to speak for
themselves for the first time. So, in Hall’s view, the marginal and the local
can be empowered under the new globalisation (Hall, 1997: 173, 183). An
exemplary instance is that of migrant and ethnic minority women trapped
in violent relationships. Thanks to SBS and other local feminist advocate
groups, they are finally getting a voice and, in the process, transforming
feminist understanding of ‘local’ feminist campaigning against violence
against women.

NEW CHALLENGES—NAMING VAW IN THE ERA

OF GLOBALISATION

It is well to register the rapidly changing political landscape against which

British-based feminists are highlighting ‘the consistent lack of sanctions’
against violent men through low levels of prosecutions and high attrition
rates across all forms of VAW (Womankind Worldwide, 2004: 3). The
broader context in which anti-VAW feminist groups operate today is one in
which ‘a process of world-wide restratification’ is redistributing privileges
and deprivations, wealth and poverty, power and powerless, freedom and
constraints in the developed as well as the developing worlds (Bauman,
1998: 304; his emphasis). Despite disagreements about the magnitude of
the changes being wrought by globalisation (eg Scott, 1997), most commen-
tators agree that economic globalisation is ‘one of the most important con-
textual factors shaping current welfare state developments’, if not because
of its constraining impact on nation states, then because of its ‘perceived
impact and the use that politicians make of that’ (Lister, 2002: 45). Even the
sceptics who dispute the extent to which globalisation has dented the power
of nation states recognise that the UK is in ‘the grip of economic dogma’,
namely, the inevitability of globalisation and a concomitant need to reduce
40 Adrian Howe

the size of the public sector (Hirst and Thompson, 1999: 172). Cutbacks
on social rights and the dismantling of the welfare state rights have been
widely chronicled, especially in Anglo-Saxon nations where, according
to Mishra, a situation of ‘diswelfare’ prevails (1999: 50). In Britain, new
Labour’s preoccupation with ‘welfare dependency’ has led it to embrace the
North American welfare-to-work model. Yet what is often ignored in the
globalisation debates is that structural adjustment policies influenced by
perceptions of economic imperatives have a differential impact on women.
Welfare cutbacks affect women as the primary recipients of state services;
they also retract the space in which feminists can make claims on the state.
Accordingly, viewing the state as the primary site of women’s resistance
to globalisation and to violence against women becomes problematic,
inasmuch as the ‘state’s role in protecting women from the negative effects
of global capitalism has been increasingly called into question’ (Bergeron,
2001: 991−92).
As if all this were not enough to give pause for reflection, the new-
millennium flurry of anti-VAW policy and consultation activities in Britain
coincides with a new wave of critical assessments of interventions in the
field. In the United States in particular, there has been a profound question-
ing of whether intervention works to improve women’s lives. According to
one commentator, the North American domestic violence movement has
‘stalled’. While severe violence has decreased, overall discrete episodes have
actually increased and more evidence is required to show that survivors’
quality of life has improved with interventions (Starke, 2003). Moreover,
the whole field, including especially conventional strategies and even the
practice of calling domestic violence ‘domestic’ is said to be in need of
radical reconceptualisation. At the empirical level, many incidents do not
occur in the domestic sphere, but rather at a woman’s workplace or at other
non-domestic sites, especially when she has left her abuser. Moreover, the
‘violence’ of men against women in the home is not always physical vio-
lence, but rather verbal abuse and threats, leading some analysts to suggest
that the problem be described as ‘coercive control’, rather than ‘domestic
violence’ (Starke, 2003). At the policy level, the Blair Government response
to the impact of global processes, especially new immigration patterns, has
led to restrictions on access to welfare benefits that discriminate against
immigrant women at risk of violence (Womankind Worldwide, 2004: 6),
suggesting it is no longer appropriate, if it ever was, to call VAW a ‘domestic’
problem.
It is then, notable that at the close of the twentieth century, the Blair
Government started addressing the problem of men’s violence against
women under the rubric of ‘VAW’ and recommending that domestic violence
forums become VAW forums by 2002. Its 1999 policy document, Living
without Fear, promised an ‘integrated approach to tackling VAW’ that com-
mitted the government to reducing crimes of domestic violence, rape and
 Violence Against Women 41

sexual assault (Home Office, 1999: 6). Starting with the now well-known
British Crime Survey finding that one in four women experiences domestic
violence at some stage in her life, Living Without Fear had focused exclu-
sively on VAW. This enabled the government to state categorically that vio-
lence against women is a crime and to note that 70 per cent of women fear
rape, that domestic violence starts off and escalates during pregnancy and
that rape had increased by 165 per cent since 1989 (Home Office, 1999).
Certainly, when the primary concern becomes that of making ‘Britain a
place where we can live our lives without fear’, violations of family life take
precedence over violations of women (1999: 5; emphasis added). Yet VAW
in its myriad forms remained the overarching framework of the problem to
be addressed in Living without Fear. Yet just four years later, the Safety and
Justice consultation paper reverted to naming the problem as ‘domestic vio-
lence’, thereby foregoing an integrated strategy and omitting rape and sexual
assault in the process. While repeating the one-in-four women statistic, the
consultation paper adds that one in six men will be a victim of domestic vio-
lence in their lifetime, a discursive maneuver which flattens out the starkly
gendered asymmetry of interpersonal violence revealed in every national
survey, including the British Crime Survey which has been criticised for seri-
ously underestimating the extent of VAW (Walby and Myhill, 2001).
Feminist groups that had advocated for an integrated strategy linking
forms of violence against women for some time prior to the launch of the
government’s policy initiatives can take the credit for ensuring that the
UK has ‘greater recognition of the range of forms of VAW at policy and
practical levels’ than most other European countries (Kelly and Lovett,
2005: 5). At the Enough is Enough domestic violence forum held in 2000,
prominent feminist consultant Kelly spoke of the importance of linking dif-
ferent forms of VAW. Using the term ‘gender violence’ as utilised in UN and
international policy documents, she noted how globalisation and migration
were breaking down boundaries and bringing forced marriages, honour
crimes and trafficking in women into the heart of feminist analysis. She also
acknowledged the influential SBS campaigning that had placed these crimes
at centre stage in British feminist VAW statements. Presciently, Kelly noted
that Living Without Fear, the Blair Government’s 1999 policy document,
prioritised ‘an integrated approach to tackling VAW’, but the document
itself and everything that has happened since ‘betrays how poorly this is
understood by policy makers in this country’. The key problem as she saw
it was that policy makers were interchanging ‘VAW’ and ‘domestic violence’
instead of thinking in terms of connections and making other forms of VAW
a ‘core part of our understanding and responses’ (Kelly, 2000: 3−6).3

3 Kelly was still complaining about the government’s failure to integrate its VAW strategy

five years later (Kelly and Lovett, 2005).

42 Adrian Howe

The Safety and Justice consultation paper fell precisely into this trap.
Focusing narrowly on a generically framed ‘domestic violence’, its efforts to
incorporate diversely situated women were tokenistic at best. A brief refer-
ence to the problems faced by domestic violence victims who are subject to
immigration control is a case in point. The paper outlines the government’s
reform measures, notably the introduction of the domestic violence ‘conces-
sion’ in 1999 for immigrant women victims who left their spouse during the
probationary period of one year that was then in force for foreign nation-
als wanting to settle in the UK on the basis of marriage. This ‘concession’
to the so-called ‘One Year’ rule allowed women who left their spouse or
partner during the probation year, and who could prove by a court con-
viction or order that the relationship ended because of domestic violence,
to apply for residence and access to state support. In November 2002 the
types of evidence victims could rely on as proof of violence were extended
to include civil orders, medical reports or a letter from a refuge. According
to the Home Office, these reforms provided ‘a significant improvement’ for
victims of domestic violence who were still subject to immigration control.
While not accepting that victims making applications under these immigra-
tion domestic violence rules should have access to public funds, it promised
moves, un-detailed in Safety and Justice, to ensure that those victims get
access to refuge and other support services (Home Office, 2003: 45).
These suggestions fell far short of demands made in the SBS campaign
for the abolition of the ‘One Year’ rule and the prohibition on recourse to
public funds on the grounds that these policies were racist and discrimina-
tory. Indeed, in 2003, the same year that the Home Office extolled the
government’s ‘reform’ measures, the residence requirement was extended
from one year to two years, thereby ignoring continuous feedback from
the voluntary sector about the damaging effects of the ‘One Year’ rule on
battered immigrant women. Contrary to the Home Office’s promise to
improve their access to resources, women who enter the UK on the basis
of marriage will now have to remain in an abusive relationship for two
years before accessing state support, or risk deportation. As for the threat
of gender persecution that deported women might face, the Home Office
ignored the demands of feminist and refugee support groups for the recog-
nition of domestic violence as persecution as defined in refugee law and the
European Convention on Human Rights. Gender discrimination as grounds
for asylum was simply not on the agenda.
As for the impact of domestic violence on black and minority ethnic
communities, all that the Home Office has to say in Safety and Justice is
that ethnic minority women might be discouraged from speaking out about
the violence for fear of bringing dishonour on their family or community
(2003: 9−10). Yet forced marriages and honour crimes and killings—which
SBS insists must be incorporated into domestic violence policies and legisla-
tion (Siddiqui, 2003: 6)—were omitted altogether in the consultation paper.
 Violence Against Women 43

The gap Kelly identified in 2000 between an integrated feminist conceptu-

alisation of VAW and the Home Office’s narrow focus on domestic violence
thus appears to be widening.

RENEGOTIATING THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL

In the UK, feminist strategists have evinced a willingness to question what

Kelly has called ‘our orthodoxies’. It is time, she suggests, to make connec-
tions at local, national and international levels (2000: 7). Feminist stake-
holders in VAW policy appear to be taking this path. Simultaneously with
participating in the current consultation process, feminist groups are formu-
lating a VAW strategic framework that looks to international conventions,
especially those concerned with protecting rights to life, equality, health, per-
sonal freedom and security. Importantly, they are starting to frame VAW as a
‘human rights’ issue in order to hold the government accountable for failing
to protect women, thereby denying them full enjoyment of their human
rights. This tactic involves exploring the potential of the local Human Rights
Act 1998, especially articles related to the right to be protected by law, and
not to be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment
or punishment, as well as global instruments such as the UN Declaration on
the Elimination of VAW.4 Also significant are the UN Convention against
Torture, the UN Human Rights Committee and the European Courts of
Human Rights as they hold the state responsible for the prevention, pros-
ecution and punishment of acts of violence and torture whether carried out
by an agent of the state or a private individual. But the pivotal international
instrument is the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against
Women (CEDAW), one of the UN’s six core human rights treaties and the
major treaty governing women’s status. CEDAW is noteworthy for address-
ing discrimination in private spheres, including the family and cultural
practices. For example, Article 2 obliges state parties to ‘take all appro-
priate measures, including legislation, to modify or abolish existing laws,
regulations, customs and practices, which constitute discrimination against
women’. Importantly, the CEDAW committee has interpreted the convention
to include VAW as a form of discrimination that inhibits women’s ability
to enjoy their human rights on an equal basis with men. Accordingly, the
prohibition on custom being used to justify VAW is an important principle
that can be deployed in the campaigns against forced marriages and honour
killings that are now integral to the feminist VAW strategy in the UK.

4 This Declaration, signed by the UK in 1993, defines VAW as ‘any act of gender-based vio-

lence that results in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including
threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public
or private life’.
44 Adrian Howe

While the UK government is required to report on its implementation

of the CEDAW and the progress it has made on women’s human rights,
NGOs can also report on whether the government is fulfilling its inter-
national obligations. British feminist groups are currently exploiting this
window of opportunity. In 2004, Womankind Worldwide, a UK feminist
charity, utilised CEDAW to produce a Thematic Shadow Report on VAW
for submission to the UN committee monitoring whether the UK govern-
ment is honouring its commitments to human rights. Insisting that violence
impacts on all areas of women’s lives and should not be seen only as a
domestic or private issue, Womankind Worldwide set about assessing cur-
rent government actions, such as its civil and criminal law reforms, includ-
ing a pro-arrest policy across all police forces and the Crown Prosecution
Service’s revised guidelines on domestic violence encouraging prosecution
without relying solely on a witness statement. It found that despite efforts
to introduce new legislation and guidelines since 1995 and despite commit-
ments to tackling VAW, the government still lacked a national strategy with
clear goals for implementation across the UK, unlike Scotland, which has
a National Action Plan on Gender Based Violence. This had resulted in an
‘over focus on domestic violence in policy, research and provision’ and a
failure to make links between forms of gender-based violence and between
VAW and economic, social and cultural rights’ (Womankind Worldwide,
2004: 2−3). Consequently, despite encouraging local initiatives to develop
awareness, especially about domestic violence, there has been virtually no
government investment with respect to rape, sexual assault, forced marriages,
honour crimes, female genital mutilation, trafficking, the sex industry or
the situation of refugee and asylum-seeking women, all of which now con-
cern the feminist movement against VAW.
Importantly, Womankind Worldwide proclaims that VAW ‘undermines
the ability of women to participate as full and equal citizens in UK society’
(2004: 4), thus denying them full enjoyment of their human rights. A global
dimension to the analysis is clearly visible in the recognition of the work
of groups like SBS who have highlighted how immigration policy discrimi-
nates against women seeking asylum and those with uncertain immigration
status who experience gender-based violence (2004: 6). A global perspective
is also apparent in the criticism of restrictive immigration policies that create
‘gendered access’ to legal migration favouring men and male-dominated
industries, while forcing women to take illegal and dangerous routes to
the UK, notably the sex industry. Adopting an analytical framework that
negotiates between the local and global dimensions of VAW, Womankind
Worldwide urges the government to make a ‘strategic response’ that under-
stands and challenges the links between national and international traffick-
ing, the growth of the local sex industry and VAW (2004: 20–1).
This initiative demonstrates very clearly the feminist movement’s willing-
ness to open up the space for political action and search for new ways of
 Violence Against Women 45

handling social justice for women in the age of globalisation. Most crucially,
Womankind Worldwide recognises the potential in international human
rights law both to push for appropriate actions from our government in the
UK and to hold it to account through an international arena’ (2004: iii). This
signals a recognition that membership in a territorially exclusive nation-
state ceases to be the only ground for the realisation of women’s rights and
that ‘the old hierarchies of power and influence within the state are being
reconfigured by increasing economic globalisation and the ascendance of an
international human rights regime’ (Sassen, 1996: 105).
It is well to note however, that this openness to new ways of conceptu-
alising violence against women has a long and frequently conflicted his-
tory. Twenty-five years ago, white feminist movements in the West ‘rarely
engaged questions of immigration and nationality’ (Mohanty et al, 1991:
23), notwithstanding trenchant criticism of such short-sightedness. In 1984,
Valerie Amos and Pratibha Parmar, speaking for black and Asian feminists,
famously challenged the claims of white or ‘imperial feminism’ to speak for
all women. In their view, the British women’s movement, rooted as it was
in an imperial history, was ‘oppressive’ to black women and profoundly
ignorant of the ways in which white women’s gains ‘have been and still are’
made at the expense of black women. The time had come to move away
from celebrating universality in order to work through the implications of
differences among women’s experiences, particularly in the family (1984:
3−7). Crucially, feminist campaigns around sexual violence had failed to
problematise how violence against women is always already raced violence.
Historically, highlighting white women’s vulnerability to sexual violence
in order to bring in oppressive legislation justifying an extension of state
power had oppressive implications for men and women living in colonial
countries. There were double standards for white men who were rarely
penalised for sexually assaulting black women, while black and immigrant
men were still, in contemporary Britain, racially denigrated as the main
perpetrators of violence against women. It was then, not the family that was
‘the main source of oppression’ for black and especially Asian women—‘the
British state through its immigration legislation’ had destroyed Asian fami-
lies, separating husbands and wives, parents from children, and demanding
proof that arranged marriages were ‘genuine’. Black and Asian feminists
therefore demanded the right to ‘struggle around the issue of family oppres-
sion ourselves’ without political interference from judgmental white impe-
rial feminists (Amos and Parmar, 1984: 11−15).
By the turn of the twenty-first century, black feminist interventions, and
Amos and Parmar’s specifically, have come to be recognised as pivotal turning
points in the movement against violence against women in Britain (Feminist
Review, 2005: 201−07). Today, influential agenda-setting groups such as
SBS, Imkaan, Newham Asian Women’s Group, Womankind Worldwide and
Rights of Women are ensuring that the British feminist movement engages
46 Adrian Howe

closely with the impact of globalisation on the construction of immigration

and nationality laws that adversely affect immigrant women trying to
escape violent men. Indeed, it is precisely because the movement has begun
to think strategically about the impact of globalisation that makes it all the
more imperative to revisit the rich body of feminist theoretical work that
has been laying the foundations for a multicultural, globally-aware, anti-
violence feminist movement for over two decades.

THEORISING A MULTICULTURAL FEMINIST VAW MOVEMENT

Third world feminist scholar Chandra Mohanty was one of the first to offer
advice to Western feminists on how to develop a strategy that articulated
the local with the global. She also provided a checklist of how not to articu-
late VAW. In her now classic ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship
and Colonial Discourses’ first published in 1986, Mohanty rejected an
analytical framework in which white Western feminists constituted them-
selves as political subjects while representing migrant and Third World
women as racialised, powerless ‘others’—as an undifferentiated group of
down-trodden women, so much more oppressed by their ‘local’ men than
Western women. She also rejected ‘ethnocentric universalism’, a model
based on an ahistorical category of women which assumed that women are
globally oppressed by men, regardless of their location and which founded
strategies pitting all women against male domination by invoking a global
sisterhood of First and Third World women (1988: 64−65). Such strategies,
she warned, ignored the impact of imperialism on Third World women. To
properly understand gendered relations, they needed to be specified in local,
cultural and historical contexts. Homogenising the class, race, religious and
material practice of women in the Third World created a ‘false sense of the
commonality of oppressions, interests and struggles between and among
women globally’ (1998: 77−78). As for men’s violence against women, it
had to be theorised ‘within specific societies’ (1988: 67).
Revisiting ‘Under Western Eyes’ over a decade later, Mohanty still held
to an analytic framework that attends to ‘the micropolitics of everyday life
as well as to the macropolitics of global economic and political processes’,
but she now takes account of the fact that globalisation had become more
brutal, exacerbating economic, racial and gender inequalities. What was
now required, she suggested, was transnational feminist organisation
against capitalism informed by an analysis of the effects of corporate glo-
balisation restructuring on the ‘raced, classed, national and sexual bodies
of women’. Whereas ‘Under Western Eyes’ had challenged the false uni-
versality of Eurocentric feminist discourse, Mohanty now felt the need to
re-emphasise the necessity of cross-national feminist solidarity that makes
connections between local and universal. More specifically, she advocated
 Violence Against Women 47

an analysis that centralises ‘racialised gender’ and begins from the place of
the most marginalised and disenfranchised communities of women−poor
women of all colours in affluent and neocolonial nations and women of
the Third World. This, she believes, provides ‘the most inclusive paradigm
for thinking about social justice’ (2002: 509−10). As we have seen, this is
precisely the kind of thinking and strategising—from the space of the most
disenfranchised communities of racialised women—that is informing femi-
nist anti-violence work in Britain today.
Mohanty is not the only analyst to argue for a new form of transnational
feminist organisation against global capital. A self-defining ‘transnational’
and ‘critical multicultural feminism’ has emerged in North America where
salutary lessons have been learnt about the limitations of domestic violence
legislation and of inadequately theorised feminist policies in late modernity.
Challenging feminisms that are narrowly-focused and imbricated in liberal
nation-states, these new transnational feminisms seek to develop feminist
practices that can form alliances across discrepant material conditions
while addressing asymmetrical global power relations (Kaplan, Alarcon
and Moallem, 1999: 14−15). Taking account of the global context of
VAW work today is axiomatic. As Shohat puts it, multicultural feminism
is a ‘situated practice’ that takes as its starting point ‘the cultural conse-
quences of the worldwide movements and dislocations of people associated’
with the development of ‘global’ or ‘transnational’ capitalism (1998: 1).
Furthermore, she insists that:

the global nature of the colonising process, the global flow of transnational capital
and the global reach of contemporary communication technologies virtually
oblige the multicultural feminist critic to move beyond the restrictive framework
of the nation-state as a unit of analysis. An ideological construction of ‘here’ and
‘there’ obscures the innumerable ways that women’s lives are imbricated in the
forces of globalisation (1998: 47; my emphasis).

By carefully elucidating the gendered effects of new global conditions, with-

out erasing the history of globalising imperialism, these new theorisations
gesture towards the imagining of new feminist tactics and strategies in a
rapidly changing world.
As UK feminists develop strategies for differentially situated women—
women whose lives are increasingly ‘imbricated in the forces of
globalisation’—they may usefully draw on the analyses of multicultural
feminists who highlight how in the global era, the dispersal and scatter-
ing of the old imperial hegemonies require a profound reconceptualisation
of power relations between cultural communities within and beyond the
nation-state. These processes also necessitate a consideration of diverse and
sometimes opposing community interpretations of experience (Mufti and
Shohat, 1997: 5). Consider for example the question of what ‘home’ means
48 Adrian Howe

for immigrant women in Western countries. Anannya Bhattacharjee argues

that in the United States immigration laws have ‘privatised the nation’, turn-
ing it into ‘a bounded space into which only some of the people can walk
some of the time’ (1997: 317; her emphasis). Here a man’s control over his
migrant wife ‘extends to controlling her recognition as a member of what
constitutes the public—in this case being a legal resident of a national com-
munity (in itself a private concept)’. She takes as her case study south Asian
immigrant communities where the figure of the undocumented woman who
is an ‘illegal alien’ is ‘a reminder of the not-public—that is, private—basis of
the nation-state’. For this woman ‘home’ is not a clearly demarcated space
as what is presumed to be ‘public’ and what ‘private’ shifts and changes.
If she is battered and wants to leave her abuser, she leaves the privacy of
her immigrant ‘home’ and risks her standing as ‘an appropriate member’
of her ethnic community ‘in part because this community occupies a public
space policed by US federal laws’. Thus does Bhattacharjee point to the
limitations of a Western feminist analysis that assumes that public space is a
space of recourse from injuries endured in ‘private’—a zone ‘automatically
lying outside an easily and singularly recognised “home”’ (1997: 317−20;
her emphasis).
The first key point to be taken from this body of work is that any strategy
against domestic violence that takes the lives of immigrant women seriously
‘has to be seen as global’ inasmuch as the immigrant woman’s experiences
of violence ‘span the patriarchal home, the community, the host nation, the
nation of origin’. Attending to the global parameters of ‘domestic’ violence
not only challenges, once again, conventionally accepted spaces of private and
public; it demonstrates that ‘an unnuanced belief in social change through
intervention in public spaces is an illusion’. What the battered women’s
movement needs to absorb then, is the full implications of ‘globalising and
undomesticating domestic violence work’ (Bhattacharjee, 1997: 322−24).
What is also required in the twenty-first century global world order, besides a
de-emphasis on the state as a primary site of resistance, is an examination of
elitism within the movement, given that states that have implemented ‘gender-
aware’ policies have typically been ‘responding to the needs and desires of
elite women’ (Bergeron, 2001: 994). The challenges ahead are huge. On the
one hand, white feminists need to unlearn Eurocentric narrative strategies
and representational politics that run the risk of privileging Third World
or black and minority ethnic victimologies as the worst forms of VAW. On
the other, they have to avoid the danger of reinscription into a discourse of
‘global feminism’ that lumps women into one unified voice against a suppos-
edly unified capitalist world market, distracting feminists from recognising
continuing inequalities of power (Bergeron, 2001: 1000).5

5 For further elaboration of these points see Kaplan et al (1999).

 Violence Against Women 49

Secondly and related, the VAW sector in the UK has yet to fully explore
how VAW is connected to ‘state-sponsored violence’. In the United States,
feminist research has exposed how the ‘state-sponsored safety net’ is being
dismantled, resulting in severe curtailments in women’s access to welfare,
shelter and higher education—the routes from which women escaped vio-
lence in the past (Fine and Weis, 2000: 1139−40). To take another example
of the disturbing connection between VAW and the state: violence within
the domestic sphere in the Caribbean ‘did not originate there’ according
to M Jacqui Alexander, but was ‘legitimised by larger organised state and
economic violence’. Whether or not one agrees with her assessment that
state violence was itself responsible for the increase of sexual violence in the
home, Alexander exposes the state’s co-optation of the feminist campaign
in the Bahamas. What she calls a ‘larger feminist vision of the historicised
violences of heteropatriarchy’, was, she argues, co-opted and brought
within the juridical confines of the state in 1991 as sexual offence and
domestic violence legislation. The moral of the story, reminiscent of Carol
Smart’s (1989) warning to feminists about the power of law to disqualify
women’s experiences of violence, is that there is frequently a significant gap
between feminist demands and what the state concedes. In the case of the
Bahamas, the new law provided penalties for women who failed to report
violent male partners, encoding ‘a disciplinary narrative’ representing the
state’s interests, not women’s interests (Alexander, 1997: 72−73).6 Once
again then, we are reminded that ‘practical-oriented solutions, aimed at
the empowerment of all women, can have a reactionary potential’ (Kapur,
2001: 81).
Thirdly, while Mohanty believes that the feminist movement’s shift to the
human rights area has been a successful attempt to raise the issue of violence
against women onto the world stage’ (2002: 529), it has to be remembered
that entering into the fray of human rights advocacy for women subject to
immigration control can be fraught. Groups like Womankind Worldwide
have recognised that the climate of international women’s human rights is
important for women’s rights to asylum. For example, Canada and the US
have granted refugee status to women fleeing persecutions such as forced
marriage. But in an incisive analysis, Sherene Razack underlines the prob-
lematic ways in which gender-based harms become visible within the racial
context of the refugee hearing in Canada. In her view, the concept of gen-
der persecution might be ‘the most significant legal gain for women in this
century, opening the door to the recognition that women can be persecuted
as women, and that this is a violation of their human rights’. However,

6 The evidence of nation states’ complicity in VAW gives pause to those of us who have

advocated calling domestic violence simply ‘men’s violence’ (Howe, 1998; 2004).
50 Adrian Howe

gender persecution, as it is deployed in refugee discourse, can ‘function as

a deeply racialised concept’ requiring ‘third world women to speak of their
experience of sexual violence at the expense of their realities as colonised
peoples’ (Razack, 1995: 48). Globalisation, from this perspective, is not
a new development; it must be seen as part of the much longer history
of colonialism. As Shohat points out, ‘the migration of poverty-stricken
women attempting to survive in ‘the age of the IMF-generated debt crisis’
is ‘only the most recent episode of imperialism’. When women’s racialised
and sexualised bodies are commodified not only locally but globally, and
exchanged transnationally’, ‘a gendered, sexed, raced and classed critique
matters,’ but it also has to ‘matter across borders in relation to the pro-
cesses of globalisation’ (1998: 50−51).
For analysts like Shohat, critical multicultural feminism must navigate
between the local and the global ‘without romanticising either transnational
globalism as a form of universalism or localism as salvation’ (1998: 51).
Thus immigration which, as we have seen, is currently a focal concern of
the feminist VAW movement in the UK, cannot be discussed ‘only from the
receiving end’. It must be traced back to ‘the moment transnational econo-
mies generate such displacement’ if analysis is to shift from an implicitly
nationalist feminism to ‘a polycentric multicultural feminism that privileges
a multiply situated analysis’ that sees the necessity of strategising both
locally and globally (1998: 52). In this analytical framework, globalisation
‘constitutes the grounds’ for a transnational feminist movement today—a
movement that needs to take on a capitalist regime and also ‘conceive
of itself as crossing national and regional borders’, thereby complicating
notions of ‘home’, ‘nation’ and ‘community’ (Mohanty, 1998: 485).7
Finally, it should be noted that critical multicultural feminism is not
an exclusively North American development. Questioning, in the British
context, how ‘the local’ and ‘the global’ should figure in the formation of
transnational identities, Ugandan Asian academic Avtar Brah advocates a
feminist ‘politics of location’ that is ‘simultaneously local and global’ (1996:
89). In her view, one of the most important developments in the feminism
movement has been the emergence of a political practice that understands
‘locationality in contradiction’. This she defines as:

a positionality of dispersal; of simultaneous situatedness within gendered spaces

of class, racism, ethnicity, sexuality, age; of movement across shifting cultural,
religious and linguistic boundaries; of journeys across geographic and psychic
borders (1996: 204; her emphasis).

Brah describes this politics of location as ‘a position of multi-axial location-

ality’. It is a ‘diasporic space’—inhabited not only by migrants and their

7 For a critique of transnational feminism, see Mendoza (2002).

 Violence Against Women 51

descendants, but equally by those ‘represented as indigenous’; it includes

the entanglement of the genealogies of dispersion with those of ‘staying
put’. Taking the example of ‘the diasporic space called “England”’ where
African-Caribbean, Irish, Asian, Jewish and other diasporas ‘intersect
among themselves as well as with the entity constructed as “Englishness”,
thoroughly re-inscribing it in the process’, she suggests that these kinds
of decentring processes challenge ‘the minoritising and peripheralising
impulses of the cultures of dominance’ (1996: 209−10; her emphasis).
Multi-axiality also demonstrates that ‘power does not inhabit the realm of
macro structures alone, but is thoroughly implicated in the everyday of lived
experience’ (1996: 242). Importantly then, a feminist politics of location
must register that the effects of global processes are ‘always experienced
as mediated predicaments in specific localities’. She provides, by way of
example, a Latina woman speaking at a Washington DC anti-racism rally in
2001 on behalf of ‘undocumented’ workers—workers whose labour global
capital needs, but nation-states disavow. For Brah, this spokeswoman sig-
nifies ‘a novel transnational political subject marked by the multiplicity of
her constitution in terms of her gender, class, ethnicity’ (2002: 42). But we
could just as easily substitute the figure of a Southall Black Sister speaking
on behalf of the most marginalised women in Britain—racialised women
with an unresolved immigration status who are trying to escape violent men
‘at home’. Certainly, feminist advocacy work on their behalf has helped to
keep in check any peripheralising impulses within the contemporary femi-
nist anti-violence movement.

CONCLUSION

In highlighting the needs of refugee and migrant women, feminist anti-

violence work in the UK has begun the task of conceiving of itself in
multi-axial terms. It remains to develop a theoretically-informed critical
multicultural feminism that can devise a really effective VAW strategy for
diversely situated women in Britain. Importantly, this will involve situating
that violence in a global context and recognising that while the scope of
political activity has expanded, globalisation is ‘just another way of saying
(and doing) imperialism’ (Katz, 2001: 1214).8 Of course, saying is doing,
so a constant interrogation of feminist discursive practices—checking
them for orientalist, neoimperialist and racist narrations of VAW—is in
order. As Inderpal Grewal counsels, in cases of global activism or activism
in multicultural contexts, representational practices matter profoundly.

8 Sassen refers to ‘the ongoing weight of colonialism and post-colonial forms of empire on

major processes of globalisation today, especially those processes binding countries of emigra-
tion and immigration’ (1998: xxxi).
52 Adrian Howe

In particular, the ‘subject formation’ of those who deploy human rights

discourses needs to be questioned. Are feminists representing themselves
as saviours and rescuers of oppressed Third World and minority ethnic
victims? Who is speaking for whom when it comes to depicting ‘the objects
of violations’? What relations of power enable some to speak for others?
‘What forms of violence do these representations perform?’ (Grewal, 1998:
502−04). The practices and claims of NGOs and other ‘grass roots’ groups,
including BME groups, cannot be exempt from this scrutiny. Interrogating
discursive practices also involves exploring their potential effects. We
have seen how calls for the criminalisation of violent men may need to
be re-assessed in light of lessons about how ‘gender-sensitive’ laws can
be recuperated by the state. The ‘success’ of the battered women’s move-
ment in the United States as indicated by government attention has to be
measured against the fact that domestic violence legislation allocated more
resources to state law enforcement agencies than to women’s groups or to
women’s ‘economic empowerment’. Putting this in the all-important global
context, it becomes apparent that the state’s increased interest to intervene
on behalf of battered women ‘comes at a time of increased conservatism
and discrimination against minorities and sharpening global inequalities’
(Grewal, 1998: 521).
To take another example of the complexities of anti-violence work in
the global era, consider Rutvica Andrijasevic’s recent critique of counter-
trafficking programmes in Eastern Europe directed at vulnerable undocu-
mented migrant women. These campaigns, developed by the International
Organisation for Migration in consultation with national governments, the
European Commission and various branches of the United Nations, repre-
sent migration for women as forced prostitution. Andrijasevic argues that
the victimising images of wounded female bodies used in the campaigns to
warn women migrants about the dangers of migration and prostitution are
especially problematic. Techniques used in the production of these images
not only have the paradoxical effect of objectifying women, thereby demar-
cating ‘the limits within which women can be imagined as active agents’;
the images also act as ‘sites of contention over boundaries and member-
ship in the European community’ (2007: 26−27). Andrijasavic’s analysis
serves as a final reminder that feminist anti-violence work today cannot
be limited to challenging ‘local’ national representational practices that
appropriate negative, stereotyping and disabling images of women. Feminist
strategists must extend our critical gaze to transnational programmes such
as counter-trafficking initiatives aimed ostensibly at preventing the coercion
of women, but which operate to circumscribe and denigrate the lives of vul-
nerable women at the mercy of restrictive immigration policies (2007: 1).
In conclusion: advocating for the most vulnerable and marginalised
women today involves negotiating between ‘the national, the global, and the
historical, as well as the contemporary diasporic’ in order to grasp critical
 Violence Against Women 53

possibilities of feminist alliances across discrepant material conditions

(Spivak, 1993: 278). But it also entails recognising that if current feminist
theory or practice is inadequate to the task of ‘local-global analysis’ and
action, it should be ‘called to account, or indeed abandoned’, as the journal
Feminist Review recently editorialised (Hemmings, Gedalof and Bland,
2006: 3). Lest today’s challenges appear too daunting, let us take heart from
what has been achieved so far. Feminist stakeholders in Britain have par-
ticipated in a feminist-initiated consultation about domestic violence policy
directives, ensuring that they incorporate differentially situated women
such as refugee and migrant women and, simultaneously, they are explor-
ing mechanisms such as CEDAW for holding the government to account for
infringements of women’s human rights. They might only be in the early
stages of developing an analysis that reconceptualises features of the global
economy as ‘strategic instantiations of gendering’, as Sassen urges, but they
are well on the way to finding ‘openings that make women visible and lead
to greater presence and participation’ (1998: 82). Global cities like London,
in Sassen’s view, are ‘thick enabling environments’ in which groups concerned
with transboundary issues such as immigration, asylum, anti-globalisation
struggles and women’s agendas can gain presence and power by engaging
in a new type of globally-inflected politics (Sassen, 2003). The VAW sector
is doing just that as it continues to challenge new Labour to deal with one
of the most pressing social problems in Britain, and the globe.

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 Violence Against Women 55

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 3
Globalisation, Human Security,
Fundamentalism and Women’s
Rights: Emergent Contradictions
PEGGY ANTROBUS

INTRODUCTION

I
n this chapter I wish to explore from a feminist perspective the links
between the simultaneous harm to and empowerment of women result-
ing from globalisation. In this era both harms and powers take new and
contradictory forms. Before the September 11 attacks on those powerful
symbols of the military-industrial complex of the United States, few people
outside Asia had heard about Afghanistan, and even fewer had heard of the
Taliban. But among the few who were aware of these forces were women
throughout the world who for many years, through a persistent campaign
on the internet, had learned about the plight of Afghan women at the hands
of the Taliban. No one was listening then. I’m still not sure that they are
listening—now that the ‘war against terrorism’ has been globalised—to
those who are trying to draw attention to the link between the abuse of
women’s rights and the security and wellbeing of everyone else.
Since 9/11, I have been preoccupied with these linkages and it has been
clear to me that it is an exploration crying out for feminist perspectives, and
particularly those of feminists from the global south, as well as those from the
north who understand the relevance of this perspective for the north as well.
In recent years, international debates—official and non-governmental—on
globalisation, trade, finance and development, human security, terrorism and
war have shown the limitations of approaches that side step the link between
abuses of the full range of women’s human rights, as documented throughout
this book, on the one hand, and on the other the socio-economic depriva-
tion and religious extremism that contribute to the escalation in crime and
violence that jeopardises the security of everyone in today’s world.1 Only an

1 References to these issues can be found in the material provided on many websites. Some

of the major websites of women’s networks are listed in selected readings.

58 Peggy Antrobus

analysis that is holistic and rejects dichotomies between the public and the
private, the political economy and socio-cultural realities, as feminist analysis
does, can expose barriers to a more just, humane and secure world. In this
sense this book—which links and juxtaposes global economics and human
rights, the abuses of warfare and the endemic problems of everyday violence,
abuse of those seeking refuge in a world where women have made unprec-
edented advances in relation to their rights as human beings, global capital
and local immiseration—could make an important contribution to the ongo-
ing discussion of issues that are of major concern to the global community as
a whole as we enter the third millennium.
In considering the links between globalisation, human security, funda-
mentalism and abuses of women’s human rights, I will focus on the political
economy of globalisation and the socio-cultural realities that underlie today’s
conjuncture of relentless neo-liberalism, virulent and ideological religious
fundamentalisms, aggressive militarism and resurgent racism, thus address-
ing in a new way a number of themes that have emerged in these papers.

CAPITALISM AND PATRIARCHY, ECONOMIC AND RELIGIOUS

FUNDAMENTALISM

The events of 9/11 and the escalation of violence and human rights abuses
that it unleashed in the on-going, so-called ‘war against terrorism’ have
given us a new lens through which to view the links between capitalism and
patriarchy, between economic fundamentalism and religious fundamental-
ism. Many have noted the similarities between the orthodoxy of today’s
capitalist neo-liberalism and religion. In its dogmatism and reliance on
blind faith, against all evidence to the contrary, proponents of globalised
neo-liberal capitalism (GNC) have transformed economics from science to
religion. Globalised neo-liberal capitalism is a form of economic fundamen-
talism that upholds the supremacy of the market over the state, economic
growth over social development and profits over people. And it has some-
thing else in common with religious fundamentalism—patriarchal control
of women and the devaluation and exploitation of their time, labour and
sexuality is common to both.
To elaborate briefly. Profits are built on the exploitation of women’s
unwaged labour in the household and in subsistence agriculture, on the
low wages paid and the poor working conditions to which millions of
women are subjected and in the use of women’s bodies in the sex trade as
well as in advertising. Government policies that privilege economic growth
over social development can do so because women can be depended on to
perform their traditional role as primary care giver. Political ideologues and
extremists—in the heart of Western democracy no less than in the Middle
East, Asia and Africa—find religious fundamentalism to be a useful tool for
reinforcing political power, and especially for guaranteeing the vital support
 Globalisation, Human Security, Fundamentalism and Women’s Rights 59

of women for their projects. For women’s central role in biological and
social reproduction must be placed at the service of political domination.
I want to turn now to explore the links between these two fundamental-
isms in the context of today’s globalised economies in order to show how
religious fundamentalism has accompanied the economic fundamentalism
of neo-liberal globalisation and how the abuse of the wide range of women’s
human rights undermines the security of everyone.

GLOBALISATION AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS AS HUMAN RIGHTS

Globalisation is not new—many see it as the latest manifestation of colo-

nialism. The division of the world between one group of countries that use
their power and privilege to command the resources and productive capaci-
ties of another group of countries by exercising control over political, cul-
tural and social structures used to be called colonialism. Today it is called
globalisation. Political struggles for resources are inherent in colonialism,
neo-colonialism, imperialism and globalisation. For some countries they
represent a continuum: today’s horror stories from the Middle East and
Africa can only be understood as the latest manifestations of neo-colonial
and imperial greed and savagery. A focus on women’s rights gives us a new
way of looking at these events.
Since the International Conference on Human Rights of 1993, feminist
leadership has transformed the meaning of human rights enabling us to
understand the universality of rights that are indivisible—that women’s
economic and social rights cannot be separated from their civil and politi-
cal rights (Fried, 1994), and that so-called cultural rights that deny women
fundamental human rights are nothing but patriarchal abuse of male power
and privilege. The slogan ‘Women’s Rights are Human Rights’, devised for
the campaign spearheaded by the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership
(CWGL) at Rutgers University, captures the simplicity, and profundity, of
the challenge to the international community.
Focusing on the abuse of the full array of women’s human rights allows us
to see the ways in which people’s lives and livelihoods have been stunted by
a global economic system geared to place the wellbeing of the powerful and
privileged above those of the majority of the world’s peoples. For this vulner-
able majority, today’s integration of global markets ushers in not a golden
age of opportunity but an intensification of the pressures that place at risk
the livelihoods and security of millions of people and the planet itself.

WHAT’S NEW ABOUT GLOBALISED NEO-LIBERAL CAPITALISM?

While the globalisation of the economic, political, social and cultural

structures is not new, what is new is the pace and extent of this process of
integration of economies and governance and the forms of resistance to its
60 Peggy Antrobus

spread. Advances in information technology and biotechnology have facili-

tated this process, but the spread of economic liberalisation across the world
through the adoption of a common policy framework has done even more to
provide an environment conducive to the breaking down of economic barriers
and the integration of economies worldwide, at the expense of sovereignty
and accountability.
The spread of neo-liberalism started with the rise to power of conservative
governments in the US and Britain in the late 1970s. When these neo-liberal
policies—popularly known as the ‘Washington Consensus’—were introduced
in the US and Britain, they led to a redistribution of wealth from the poor to
the rich, to increases in unemployment and poverty, to a loss of benefits to
vulnerable groups and to a redefinition of the role of the state. When these
policies were exported to developing countries, in the context of the debt
crisis, they came to be known as structural adjustment policies, the infamous
‘SAPs’—so well known to the poor of the world—that were to have devas-
tating consequences for the countries that introduced them (Sparr, 1994).
Today, although the word ‘globalisation’ has replaced the phrase ‘struc-
tural adjustment’ as a code for economic policies that place the interests and
wellbeing of the powerful and privileged above those of the majority of the
world’s peoples, many of us understand that it was this policy framework of
the Washington Consensus that laid the basis for the integration of global
markets. We understand that globalisation ushers in not a golden age of
opportunity but an intensification of the pressures, first experienced in the
1980s under policies of structural adjustment, that place at risk the liveli-
hoods and security of millions of people and the planet itself.

The Impact of SAPs on Women

The spread of these policies in the decade of the 1980s saw the reversal
of many of the gains made in the 1960s and 1970s. The Latin Americans
named the 1980s ‘The Lost Decade’ and UNICEF published a book of case
studies, Adjustment with a Human Face that spelt out the impact on vul-
nerable groups—‘women, children, the elderly and the poor’ (Cornea et al,
1987). Women were to bear the brunt of these policies. After all, women
were the people responsible for the care of children and the elderly, so they
suffered not only their own deprivation, but the negative impact of the poli-
cies on those in their care as well and the additional burdens of feeding and
caring for their families with reduced resources.
The social consequences of the cuts in social services that were characteristic
of this policy framework provide a good example of the disproportionate
burden of these policies on women. Cuts in these services place women in triple
jeopardy: they lose jobs (since they predominate in the sectors that are cut),
they lose services on which they depend in their role as care givers and
 Globalisation, Human Security, Fundamentalism and Women’s Rights 61

they are expected to fill the gaps created by the cuts. The Latin American
feminists spoke of the ‘super-exploitation’ of women. It was little surprise
therefore that women were at the forefront of the critiques of these policies.

Feminist Analysis and SAPs

Feminist analysis showed that this policy framework was grounded in a

gender ideology that is deeply exploitative of women’s time, labour and sex-
uality. It also demonstrated that policies that privileged economic growth
over human development, or economic production over social reproduction,
were inimical not just to women, but to the whole society. The network of
Third World women, DAWN, took this analysis even further by showing
the systemic links between debt, deteriorating social services, food security,
environmental degradation, militarism, political conservatism and religious
fundamentalism (Sen and Grown, 1987).2 It was the first coherent feminist
analysis of the linkages of economic, social, political and cultural systems,
their relationship to colonialism and neo-colonialism and the link between
macroeconomic policies and the daily experiences of poor women. It was
an analysis that changed the terms of the debates on women and develop-
ment and prepared women’s movements to bring women’s perspectives to
the global debates of the decade of the 1990s—world conferences on envi-
ronment, human rights, population and social development (poverty). In
1985 DAWN described the crises as a ‘crisis in reproduction’. Globalisation
has intensified this crisis, and women’s lives continue to be sacrificed on the
altar of unrestrained capitalist exploitation and greed.

Political and Cultural Consequences of SAPs: the Case of Religious

Fundamentalism

The impact of policies of structural adjustment was not just economic and
social: it had political and cultural consequences as well, and I want to look
at these consequences to show the link between economic fundamentalism
and religious fundamentalism. A major consequence of the Washington
Consensus was the restructuring of the role of the state, and of the rela-
tionships between states, markets and civil society. In a sense a feature of
globalisation is the ‘globalisation’ of national policies and policy-making
mechanisms. Under the rules of trade liberalisation, enforced by the WTO,
states can no longer formulate policies that are in the best interest of their
citizens. States have had to retreat from their responsibility toward their
citizens and must now be more concerned about the demands of international

2 This was the basis of a platform document prepared for the 1985 Third World Conference

on Women held in Nairobi in 1985.

62 Peggy Antrobus

capital. To the extent that women look to the state to guarantee basic
services such as education, health, water, electricity and personal security,
they stand to lose the most from the switch from people-friendly to market-
friendly states.
The cultural consequences of this retreat of the state from its role in guar-
anteeing the public good were even more devastating for women because of
the ways in which economic restructuring in the cause of the spread of neo-
liberal capitalism has facilitated the spread of religious fundamentalism.
First, the withdrawal of the state from the provision of basic services pushes
the poor to turn to other institutions for health, education and welfare.
Many churches provide these services, and some have used the opportunity
to indoctrinate people in the most fundamentalist tendencies in their faith.
Secondly, the deterioration in social and economic conditions that followed
in the wake of SAPs led to feelings of disenchantment and insecurity that
caused people to turn to fundamentalist religion for reassurance. Thirdly,
the threatened erosion of cultural values through the spread of Western
materialism and consumerism by globalisation led many to embrace iden-
tity politics as a form of resistance to ‘Westernisation’.
Although the spread of fundamentalism has been evident in all religious
traditions, nowhere has this been more evident than in Islamic cultures. In
many countries with Islamic populations, the gaps in education, health,
sanitation and nutrition were filled by Islamic organisations. The ‘madras-
sas’ (Islamic schools) offered not only free classrooms, but food and shelter
for poor children. There, indoctrination in Islamic fundamentalism spread
Islamic patriarchy, extremism and militancy. The spread of Islamic extrem-
ism and militancy is thus related to the deterioration of public services, to
economic insecurity and to the spread of Western values of materialism and
consumerism.
Fundamentalism exists in most religions, and the one thing they all have
in common is the control of women, especially women’s sexuality and the
use of violence to impose this control. Violence is not only physical, but
psychological and even spiritual. Political power is reinforced when it can
be linked to religious beliefs and religious groups use political connections
to protect their interests. The symbiotic relationship between religion and
politics can be lethal to women, as we have seen in many countries,3 and
not only those in the Muslim world.
Accompanying the increased burden on women’s time and labour
imposed by macroeconomic policies of structural adjustment was therefore
an increase in the level of violence, including domestic violence, fuelled by

3 Starting with the processes leading up to the 1993 International Conference on Human

Rights and continuing through all the UN conferences of the 1990s, there has been an ‘unholy’
alliance between the Vatican, the Christian Right and Muslim fundamentalists to resist and
reverse any advances in women’s human rights.
 Globalisation, Human Security, Fundamentalism and Women’s Rights 63

a number of factors including a rise in religious fundamentalism that is

related to the increased sense of insecurity, the need for services, the spread
of globalisation and the struggle for economic resources.
The combination of social insecurity, poverty and the struggle for
resources came to a head in the 1980s. During this phase of the Cold War,
the US government encouraged the formation of Islamic groups in Asia
and the Middle East to fight communism, in the struggle over resources,4
specifically oil. These groups used religious fundamentalism to secure and
reinforce their political power in two ways—by adopting a code of conduct
that offered a way of controlling their followers and secondly by espousing
religious teachings that would guarantee control over women. As the car-
riers of the culture, the backbone of the family and the people on whom
future generations depend, women’s support is critical for any revolutionary
movement.
The point is that macroeconomic policies of structural adjustment that
were and still are so devastating to women had their parallel in the political
struggles waged over resources when religious fundamentalism was used to
mobilise and reinforce anti-communist political forces. When capitalism is
unchecked, the vulnerable suffer and women more so than any other group
since they have primary responsibility for the care of people. When patriar-
chy is unrestrained, men lose their humanity and a rule of terror is launched
on the world. The impact on women of unrestrained patriarchal capitalism
is devastating and this has horrendous consequences for the whole society,
as we have seen.
The final stage of the ‘triumph’ of a policy framework that favoured cor-
porate power (the market) over people’s power (the state) was reached with
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. With the collapse of this socialist
‘alternative’ the stage was set for the spread of unrestrained capitalism.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO), established in 1993 following the
completion of a new round of trade negotiations that had been launched
in 1986, embodied the rules that ensured the opening up of global markets
to corporate greed.
One of the clearest critiques of globalisation to come from official
sources is that from a High-level Advisory Group of Eminent Personalities
and Intellectuals, convened by the UN in Geneva from 12−14 September
2001, to prepare a report on globalisation and its impact on developing
countries. The group made four key points. First, the present processes of
globalisation have led to widening inequities between north and south as
well as within countries, and the developing countries and the poor people
within countries are becoming ever more marginalised. Secondly, the global

4 The Israeli−Palestinian struggle for territory is part of this on-going struggle for the con-

trol of the resources of this part of the world, and is the most blatant manifestation of the
confrontation between Europe and Asia.
64 Peggy Antrobus

economy has become more unstable due to the volatility of financial flows
and currency exchange rates and their effects on the real economy. Thirdly,
the current global economic crisis is a reflection of this instability and the
lack of global policy coordination. Fourthly, people across the world are
also feeling more insecure as they perceive an increasing inability to exer-
cise control over their lives. The group agreed that the central concept of
interdependence should be restored to the phenomenon of globalisation
since ‘globalisation without real interdependence is unmanageable and may
result in confrontation, suffering and social chaos’.
There is no doubt that we are witnessing the results of this today in
many countries from Argentina to Afghanistan, from Liberia to Iraq.
Unfortunately, these crises are analysed as if there was no connection
between neo-liberalism at the domestic level (as in Argentina) and trade
liberalisation (as in the Caribbean and in many African countries); between
the so-called ‘war on terrorism’ (in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine), politi-
cal struggles for control of resources (in those same places) and the ethnic
struggles for the control of territory (as in the Democratic Republic of
Congo and in Liberia). What is clear, however, is that everywhere those
whose security is most in jeopardy are women, children and the elderly—
which brings me to the issues of human security.

HUMAN SECURITY

Early in 2001 the UN set up a Commission on Human Security. The con-

cept was defined as ‘freedom from want and freedom from fear’. However,
despite the excellent choice of members, including Amartya Sen and DAWN’s
research coordinator on the theme of Political Restructuring and Social
Transformation, Vivian Taylor of South Africa, it was clear from the start
that they were not going to be able to do the kind of analysis that would
remove human security from its association with militaristic approaches to
national security. The UN is not ready to confront its most powerful mem-
ber states whose policy prescriptions are largely responsible for the want
and fear which are part of the daily reality of the majority of the world’s
population. Nor is the UN likely to apply feminist analysis or perspectives
to the enduring problems of poverty and violence, despite the many wonder-
ful and inspiring words contained in resolutions and programmes of action
that promise the reduction of poverty, the elimination of violence, and the
promotion of human rights, even women’s human rights.

BY WAY OF CONCLUSION

While I doubt that the ‘powers that be’ are likely to see the wisdom of femi-
nist perspectives, it is nevertheless important for these to be presented to civil
 Globalisation, Human Security, Fundamentalism and Women’s Rights 65

society and for the academy to give these ideas legitimacy. The mobilisation
of civil society organisations against the war in Iraq may not have stopped the
war, but it did indicate that there are increasing numbers of people who see
through the dishonesty and misrepresentations of the so-called upholders of
democracy and social justice. In this connection, it is worth recalling that the
rapid mobilisation against the war would not have been possible without the
communications technology that is also part of globalisation. This mobilisa-
tion was most effective because it tapped into the movement for global justice,
originally known as the ‘anti-globalisation movement’, a movement that
has been building ever since the second Ministerial Meeting of the WTO in
Seattle in November 1999. This movement, launched in the Brazilian city of
Porto Alegre in 2000, has become the voice of conscience for this generation
of young activists. Yet even in this arena, the women’s movement is still try-
ing to secure a space and a voice that can bring feminist perspectives to the
issues of environmental degradation and food security; debt, finance, trade
and development; human security and human rights. The struggle continues,
and every contribution counts—especially the contributions of academic dis-
ciplines like those of economics, sociology, political science and criminology.
In recognising the need to transgress the boundaries of scholarly disci-
plines and, crucially the significant role to be played by feminists—scholars,
activists and communications specialists—in such a transgression, I hope
to have contributed to the opening up of debates that need to take place
about the links between the economic, political, social and cultural factors
that keep us from realising the dream of ‘another world’. In that other
world, the guarantee of women’s human rights is a strategic path towards
the guarantee of human security.

SELECTED SOURCES

Antrobus, P (1989) ‘The Impact of the Debt Crisis on Jamaican Women’ in

G Beckford and N Girvan (eds), Development in Suspense (Kingston, FES).
—— (2004) The Global Women’s Movement: Origins, Issues and Strategies
(London, Zed Books).
Cornea, A et al (1987) (eds), Adjustment with a Human Face Volume 1 (Oxford,
Oxford University Press).
Development: Journal of the Society for International Development (SID) (London,
Sage Publications): SID website: www.sidint.org.
Fried, ST (1994) (ed), The Indivisibility of Women’s Human Rights: A Continuing
Dialogue. Report of the 1994 Women’s Global Leadership Institute (Centre for
Women’s Global Leadership, Douglas College, Rutgers University).
Petchesky, RP (2003) Global Prescriptions: Gendering Health and Human Rights
(London, Zed Books).
Sen, G and Grown, C (1987) Development, Crises and Alternative Visions: Third
World Women’s Perspectives (New York, Monthly Review Press).
66 Peggy Antrobus

Sparr, P (1994) (ed), Mortgaging Women’s Lives: Feminist Critiques of Structural

Adjustment (London, Zed Books).
UN Commission on Human Security (2003) Human Security Now: Protecting and
Empowering People (New York, Commission on Human Security).

Websites—Women’s Networks

Single Issue Networks

Women’s Human Rights

— Women’s Human Rights Network: http://www.whrnet.org
— Center for Women’s Global Leadership: http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu

Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights

— Center for Reproductive Rights: http://www.reproductiverights.org
— International Women’s Health Coalition: http://www.iwhc.org

Violence against Women

— Family Violence Prevention Fund: http://endabuse.org
— Global Alliance Against Trafficking in Women: http://www.thai.net/gaatw

Environment
— Women Environment and Development Organisation (WEDO): http://www.
wedo.org

Trade
— International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN): http://www.genderandtrade.net

Peace
— The Global Women’s Strike (GWS): http://womenstrike8m.server101.com.

Multiple Issue Networks with General/Specific Objectives

— DAWN: http://www.dawn.org.fj
— Association for Women’s Rights and Development: http://www.awid.org
— Women’s International Coalition for Economic Justice: http://www.wicej.org
 Part II

Women on the Move

 4
The Gender of Borderpanic:
Women in Circuits of Security,
State, Globalisation and New
(and Old) Empire
SUVENDRINI PERERA

CIRCUITS

W
hat is the gender of borderpanic? While the racialised nature of
the upsurge of borderpanic following September 2001 has been
at the centre of most discussions, less attention focuses on the
simultaneously gendered and sexed aspects of this borderpanic which sees
both the security of the state and the sanctity of the national way of life
as under siege. Yet state and nation are constitutively gendered as well as
raced constructs (Pettman, 1997; Goldberg, 2002; Peterson, 1992). As are
discourses of national identity, the security of borders and rallying calls to
war and the protection of the ‘homeland’—to invoke that highly emotive
construct now resurgent in the rhetoric and practice of borderpanic. The
repackaging of the older term ‘motherland’ as ‘homeland’ by the Western
coalition in the ‘war on terror’, far from rendering the latter neutral and
gender-free, only highlights the gendered processes by which, in Wenona
Giles’s words, ‘the home as an everyday, tangible, and “natural” unit, is fre-
quently mapped onto the abstractions of nation and state’ (Giles, 1999: 83).
The slippages and crossovers between home, nation and state and the often
violent processes of their mapping onto one another are processes located in
gendered and racialised spatial practices and representational economies.
I use the term ‘borderpanic’ to encompass the multiple forms of anxiety
produced by subjects who make unauthorised attempts to move across
state borders and are seen in the process to transgress the cultural and
social limits of the nation.1 The chapter is divided into two broad sections,

1 I borrow the term ‘borderpanic’ from the Borderpanic Symposium held at the Museum

of Contemporary Art in Sydney in September 2002. An early version of this chapter was pre-
sented at the symposium.
70 Suvendrini Perera

‘circuits’ and ‘stories’. The first locates women’s moving bodies within
multiple circuits—of state, nation and home, of security, illegality and
crime, of the (re)assertion of new and old forms of empire in the climate
of the global ‘war on terror’—by posing as a question the gender of bor-
derpanic. It examines these circuits in a specific context: the Australian
borderpanic of 2001−03, a period that encompasses the international
stand-off over asylum seekers who sought to arrive in Australia on the
MV Tampa in late August 2001 in the weeks leading up to the 9/11 terror
attacks (Perera, 2002a) and extends through to the invasion of Iraq by
a coalition, of which Australia was the third member, alongside the US
and UK, in 2003. During this period domestic and international politics
entwined to produce a frenzy of new legislative and military moves in
the name of securing the homeland. These ranged from the invasions of
Afghanistan and Iraq to the excision of parts of Australia for migration
purposes in a preemptive strike against asylum seekers, often, ironically,
people fleeing the very regimes that the coalition was attacking abroad
(Perera, 2002a; 2002b).
The chapter centres on stories of women and children and the complex
representational and spatial economies through which they were (and are)
produced and positioned at this historical juncture by the state, understood
in David Theo Goldberg’s formulation as consisting ‘not only of agencies
and bureaucracies, legislatures and courts, but also of norms and principles,
individuals and institutions’. In The Racial State, Goldberg theorises the
modern (racial and gendered) state as:

a more or less coherent and discrete entity in two related ways: as state projects
underpinned and rationalised by a self-represented history as state memory; and
as state power(s)… [T]he state’s capacity to define and carry out projects as well
as its capacity to authorise official narrations of historical memory rests on the
state’s prior claim to power: the power to define the terms of its representations
(obviously including legal terms), and to exercise itself and those over whom
authority is claimed in light of those terms. (2002: 8)

In the stories I consider in the second part of the chapter this capacity of
the state to ‘define the terms of its representations’ is crucial. In both senses
of the word, the ability to define the terms and limits of representation
assumes the power to include and exclude. In what follows I am particularly
interested in two related aspects of the state’s ability to define the terms of
its representations through powers of inclusion and exclusion: the power to
expel bodies to a space outside its limits—although in these spaces power
is nonetheless exercised over the expelled, as in Giorgio Agamben’s ‘spaces
of exception’, the camps and prisons of immigration detention (Agamben,
1998; 2000; Perera, 2002b); and the rationalisation of the state’s powers of
inclusion and exclusion through self-authorising representations—memories,
histories, narrativisations, figurations—of the nation and its others.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 71

Representational Economies and the Counter-Geographies

of Globalisation

The co-articulation of the modern state with race and gender (Goldberg,
2002: 7−8) is evident in the formation of the Australian state as it attempted
to define and consolidate itself as a natural, unitary and coherent entity. The
years leading up to Federation in 1901 were a period of extended border-
panic whose central policies, domestic and foreign, focused on preventing
the racial contamination of an imagined white national body. In these years
Australia defined itself by practices of social engineering designed to ‘breed
out the colour’ of Aboriginal peoples, by programmes to promote the fertil-
ity of white women while simultaneously discouraging that of Aboriginal,
Asian and Pacific women (Baird, 2004) and by prohibitions against the
circulation of raced goods and peoples, especially non-white women, across
national borders. After Federation the chief category of non-white women
legally able to enter Australia were sex workers from countries such as
Japan brought in to service the non-white men in the segregated pearling
and mining industries, since it was officially unthinkable for white women
to do so (Francis, 2003; Jones, 2002).
Some parallels and continuities can be traced between the borderpanic
of Australia’s formation and consolidation a hundred years ago and the
borderpanic engendered by globalisation, often represented as a moment
of dissolution of the sovereignty of the nation-state under siege by the
uncontainable mobility of raced populations. Catherine Dauvergne points
out that migration laws now assume a new level of visibility and have come
to be ‘narrated in stories of globalisation’ as a form of crucial defence of
‘what it is to be a nation, to stateness and to the core of membership and
national identity’ (2003: 4−5). In this climate the specific immigration sta-
tus of a new arrival, whether asylum seeker, aspiring migrant or subject of
smuggling or trafficking, is obscured—or, more precisely, is absorbed into a
racialised continuum of crime and illegality. At the same time, the ‘war on
terror’ feeds inflated fears of terrorist infiltration, compounding the xeno-
racist campaign (Fekete, 2001) against refugees and asylum seekers that
was already underway in the 1990s.
New patterns of women’s mobility contour this shifting landscape. Saskia
Sassen has detailed the ‘counter geographies of globalisation’ (2000: 503),
the factors that combine to produce distinct conditions for women’s move-
ment from south to north under globalisation. These counter-geographies
are activated by paired forces as ‘the dynamics that converge in the global
city produce a strong demand for low-wage workers, while the dynamics
that mobilise women into survival circuits produce an expanding supply of
migrants who can be pushed—or sold—into such jobs’ (Sassen, 2003: 256).
The need for new forms of low-paid, low-skilled women’s labour in child-
care, housework and sex work in the global cities of the north combines
with the ‘survival circuits’ of women’s labour on which economies in the
72 Suvendrini Perera

south increasingly rely in the face of growing rural poverty, overcrowded

capital cities, internal conflict, political instability or civil war—all in turn
to some degree themselves effects of globalisation. Women’s mobility is
thus enmeshed with the practices of a series of transnational actors, legal
and illegal—global corporations, people smugglers and people traffickers—
as well as states and governments both north and south. Borderpanic,
however, obscures the implication of states and corporations in the process,
instead focusing on smugglers and traffickers and casting a veil of crimi-
nality over women escaping from globalisation’s effects of poverty, political
instability and civil war.
At the same time, the push and pull factors determining the movement of
women from the south into the ‘care sector’ (Hochschild, 2003: 20) of the
global labour market are underpinned and enabled by other economies and
flows: by economies of representation and the reworking and continued
circulation of historically produced meanings and associations. The
demand for certain women to act as nannies, domestics and sex workers
in the north is determined not only by their availability as cheap and low-
skilled labour, but also by the commodification of what Jan Jindy Pettman
refers to as ‘racialised womanliness’ (1997: 265). Geraldine Heng makes a
similar point in her essay, ‘A Great Way to Fly’, discussing how the market-
ing of a specific construct of oriental femininity, The ‘Singapore Girl’, is tied
to the national airline’s ‘competitive edge’ in the global economy:

[A]n exemplary collusion is put in place between postcolonial state corporation

(SIA as a government-affiliated national carrier) and neocolonial Orientalist dis-
course on the serviceability and exoticism of the Asian woman: a collusion that
produces, through the techne of transnational global advertising and marketing,
a commercial enterprise generating substantial fiscal surpluses, and vindicated at
the outset as nationalist. (1997: 39)

Heng reveals the robust after-life of imperial and orientalist representations

in the post-colonial age, their renewed use-value and circulation through
contemporary media and technologies and their mobilsation into new
circuits that are at once national(ist) and transnational. The movement of
women’s bodies from south to north and their location in the global economy
are enmeshed in these webs of representation. As Barbara Ehrenreich and
Arlie Hochschild put it, ‘Immigrant women may seem desirable sexual
partners for the same reason that First World employers believe them to
be especially gifted as caregivers’ (2003: 9)—and, one might add, for the
same reason that transnational corporations seek them out as a nimble and
compliant workforce on the global assembly line (Perera, 1997: 348−49).
The ‘Singapore Girl’ belongs on a spectrum that encompasses the harem, the
tea-room and the massage parlour, in a genealogy that stretches from the
houri to the geisha.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 73

‘Global woman’ (as Ehrenreich and Hochschild describe her) is produced

at an intersection of imperial and colonial economies of representa-
tion with the gendered and raced counter-geographies of globalisation.
Transnational actors and states play a role in initiating, directing and
controlling her mobility. Her location in these multiple circuits in an
‘international political economy of gendered bodies’ (Pettman, 1997: 263)
accounts in part for the tensions and ambiguities of her reception in a
climate of borderpanic.

Foreign Bodies: Sovereignty, Security and Illegality

The last circuit to be mapped in this introductory section concerns the new
conditions that the ‘war on terror’ produces for undocumented migrants,
asylum seekers and refugees, especially those associated with a re-racialised
orient (Grewal, 2003: 546−47) and the co-articulation of these conditions
with state responses to globalisation. Once again, the landscape is shifting
and multifaceted, for the state is not a unitary entity but includes institu-
tions, processes and actors with discrepant and contradictory roles: in this
instance, the separate interests of the judicial, immigration and defence
functions of the state and their engagement with competing discourses of
sovereignty, security and human rights, as well as with popular culture and
media representations.
Immigration policy is a many-headed creature shaped by domestic
forces (labour and economic needs, principles of law and citizenship,
questions of national identity) as well as foreign policy imperatives
(security, diplomacy, human rights, trade, international treaties and obliga-
tions). As such it acts in multiple ways on the mobility of foreign—raced
and gendered—bodies. The paired aspects of immigration also correspond
with a conventional divide between public and private, the ‘hard’ politics
of border protection and security against the internal realm of domesticity
and home. It is precisely at this intersection that the bodies of refugees
and asylum seekers to Australia’s shores are positioned as new forms of
criminalisation and measures for security and border protection entwine
the ‘war on terror’ into the ‘war at home.’ Ensnared in borderpanic, the
bodies of asylum seekers and refugees become the very media through
which the war abroad is normalised into the war at home. Through the
new forms of control and power it seeks to exercise over the bodies of
asylum seekers, borderpanic remakes the war abroad into the war at
home.
In an essay published a few days after the 9/11 terror attacks on the US,
Agamben described how security increasingly supplants and overrides the
authority of law and discipline as it comes to be acknowledged as ‘the basic
principle of state activity’ (2001: 1). Drawing on an unpublished lecture
74 Suvendrini Perera

of Michel Foucault’s from 1978, Agamben suggests that ‘in the course
of a gradual neutralisation of politics and the progressive surrender of
traditional tasks of the state, security becomes the basic principle of state
activity’:

While disciplinary power isolates and closes off territories, measures of security
lead to an opening and to globalisation; while the law wants to prevent and
regulate, security intervenes in ongoing processes to direct them. In short disci-
pline wants to produce order, security wants to regulate disorder’. (2001: 1)

Globalisation and security feed (on) each other. As globalisation produces

and relies on new forms of mobility, security in turn attempts to redirect
and contain them. In 2003, the vision of the overriding power of secu-
rity is most strikingly realised in the new mutant ‘Office of Homeland
Security’ in the United States. Companion measures like the US Patriot
Act and the Pentagon’s sweeping Total Awareness Program (later
renamed the Terrorism Awareness Program in response to public fears of
an all-encompassing project of surveillance) are paralleled by new security
legislation in Australia and other states of the Western coalition in the
‘war on terror’. These measures curtail civil liberties for the entire popula-
tion, but are singularly punitive towards non-citizens, whether migrants
or refugees, with specific powers of denationalisation, deterritorialisation
and incarceration against them.
Elsewhere (Perera, 2002b) I discuss the connections between the new
punitive measures against asylum seekers and refugees in Australia and
other forms of what Angela Davis (1998: 97) defines as ‘racialised pun-
ishment’, linking them both to colonial forms of imprisonment and the
structure of the camp that Agamben has identified as ‘the fundamental
biopolitical paradigm of the West’ (Agamben, 1998: 181). Indeed, this
structure of the camp becomes visible in new ways in the ‘war on terror’
both through the creation of ‘spaces of exception’ designed to be outside
international or domestic law, notably Guantanamo Bay, as well as through
the manifestation of new technologies for the management of refugees, as
figures made available, in Lisa Malkki’s phrase, to the ‘whole gamut of
interventions’ of care and control (Malkki, 1995: 500).
The women’s stories I tell below are discontinuous, incomplete and
double-edged, reflecting the ambiguous role of the women refugees/asylum
seekers caught in these multiple circuits of race, gender, state, empire as
they are intersected by the overriding demands of security. Domestic and
international law play contradictory roles in their stories, at times acting
to complement, and at others to counter, the work of security. In this way
they provide potential sites to mobilise as well as to prohibit or recuper-
ate practices that defy the program of security and its various proxies and
offshoots.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 75

STORIES

The ship on which we travelled here held many conversations

with the ocean about the size of your hearts.
The ocean has now turned
to dust.
There are boundaries to the heart.
There is no decency in comfort.
No humanity in choosing one’s friends so carefully.
Do you hear the mothers singing among us?
They are trying to lighten the catastrophe
with the small glow that shines in a simple
hum.
Half-mesmerised, half-terrified, their children die
while the earth turns beautifully
in your universe.

MTC Cronin, ‘Four Temperatures’ (2003).

Locating the Domestic

Between 2001−03, Australia’s policy towards refugees arriving by boat

operated through a strategy that depended on the construction of differ-
entiated spaces within and outside the nation. These spaces draw on and
rework long established categories of outside and inside, public and private,
internal and external, alien and domestic. As such they resonate with deeply
held notions of home, family and nation and the processes through which,
to cite Pettman’s comment on Australian multiculturalism more generally,
the state and its domestic politics are established as ‘safe, knowable, and
orderly against a disorder of the international/outside’. These border-
reinforcing processes in turn are buttressed by the self-authorising myths
and representations of ‘island-occupation and the state’s territorialising
control’ (Pettman, 1997: 272).
In the differentiated spaces of Australia and its outside—‘not-Australia’
as Bernard Cohen (1993: 33) describes them—the gendered and raced
bodies of refugees and migrants are made at once extremely visible and
invisible. They operate as both shameful spectacle and shameful secret,
and at once as public bodies, to be monitored, intercepted, fired at and
incarcerated and as intensely private ones, unknowable, alien, objectified.
The processes by which asylum seeker bodies became a public spectacle
while at the same time being hidden from public view, and their emplace-
ment in not-Australia through these processes, need to be understood
in conjunction with the major prongs of Australian asylum seeker policy:
mandatory detention, Temporary Protection, deterritorialisation and
militarisation.
76 Suvendrini Perera

Since the early 1990s, all on-shore asylum seekers to Australia have
been subject to compulsory, indefinite and indiscriminate detention. This
policy is unique among signatories to the UN International Convention
on Refugees, although it parallels selected practices in other racialised
contexts, such as the US decision to imprison asylum seekers from Haiti at
Guantanamo Bay in the 1980s (Simon, 1998). These spaces of exception lay
bare the fragile divide that separates the concentration camp from the camp
as a refuge and place of protection. The underlying structural connection
between the humanitarian and the punitive functions of the camp identi-
fied by Agamben, Malkki and others are brought home in the Australian
detention centre (Perera, 2002b). Here treaty obligations to protect refugees
who have committed no crime under international law are offset against the
government’s declared objective of ‘deterrence’: its desire to put its deten-
tion camps on display as a sign of warning, fear and punishment.
In Australia, where the world’s first private prison for women was
established in Melbourne in 1996 (Davis and Shaylor, 2001: 4), detention
camps for asylum seekers have, since the 1990s, been operated by a private
company, a subsidiary of the US multinational corporation, Wackenhutt.
The detention of asylum seekers thus must be understood in the context of
the global prison-asylum industrial complex that Davis and Shaylor have
described as the ‘menacing embrace’ of punishment and profit (2001: 4). As
the immigration minister took grim pleasure in avowing, these are no holi-
day camps. Most detention camps are sited off-shore or in remote locations
cordoned off by layers of razor wire or electrified fencing.The operation of
the camps is characterised by violence, neglect, systematic dehumanisation,
and denial of any private space to inmates. The Department of Immigration
and the operator strictly control information about what happens inside
the camps, and there is limited public knowledge about the numbers of
breakouts or the instances of violence, self-harm and inmate deaths that
have occurred in the last three or four years (Pugliese, 2002).2 Processes for
determining an asylum seeker’s claims to refugee status are painfully long
drawn out, extending to a period of years in many cases. Those recognised
as ‘genuine refugees’ at the end of a long process of verification and a series
of tests are offered ‘Temporary Protection’ for a three-year period. During
this period their lives are in effect placed in suspension, without any ability
to make long-term plans, or be reunited with their families. This is a form
of ‘protection’ that makes a mockery of the name as it inducts the refugee
into a period of protracted anxiety and fear for the future that produces its

2 Because of government restrictions on reporting, information about life in the camps has

emerged mainly through alternative sources rather than through the mainstream media—for
example, refugee support networks, escapee accounts, special mailing lists and websites.
Some of the key websites I have drawn on (Project Safecom, Refugee Action Collective, SAVE
Australia) are listed in the bibliography.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 77

own form of post-traumatic stress disorder, focused not on the past but on
the future (Pugliese, 2003).
Accompanying the ‘deterrent’ of indefinite imprisonment for asylum
seekers on arrival is a series of legislative measures designed to prevent
them from arriving at all. In recent years the most frequent route for on-
shore asylum seekers, mostly from the Middle East and Afghanistan, is
a sea voyage from Indonesia to one of Australia’s ocean territories such
as Christmas Island, Cocos Islands or Ashmore Reef. ‘Border Protection’
legislation, passed the week after the 9/11 attacks in the US, has simply
deterritorialised these parts of Australia by excising them from the migra-
tion zone—retrospectively in some instances (Rajaram, 2007; Perera,
2002a). Asylum seekers who, after long and dangerous voyages, man-
age to land in outlying Australian territories are displaced in both space
and time and are no longer legally able to claim refuge. Their boats are
either turned back with a use of ‘necessary force’ or towed to off-shore
camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru where they are held in limbo
during processing in order to avoid any possibility of gaining access to
the Australian legal system. Dislocated in space and time, these refugee
bodies work to cohere the ground of the ‘homeland’ within its unstable,
ever-contracting limits.
The assertion of new spatio-temporal boundaries is accompanied by
the deployment of the military, in the form of a massive naval blockade
to monitor, hunt out and turn around any asylum seeker boats discovered
in Australia and its contiguous waters. During one such operation it was
claimed that asylum seekers had sabotaged their boat and then thrown
their children overboard in an attempt to force the navy to rescue them and
bring them into Australian territory. This claim was later disproved, but
not before it had served as the key feature of the government’s reelection
campaign, built around the assertion that people who could ‘throw their
children overboard’ are ‘not the sort of people we want in this country’
(MacCallum, 2002: 57).
While the ‘children overboard’ allegations were successfully, if belatedly,
exposed (Marr and Wilkinson, 2003), the facts remain unknown about an
even more terrible incident during the same period. In this case 353 asylum
seekers, of whom 142 were women and 146 children, drowned when their
boat sank in international waters between Australia and Indonesia, appar-
ently out of reach of any Australian patrol boats.3 This is the world’s largest
known instance of asylum seekers dying at sea. The boat involved came
to be known as SIEV X because, while the navy kept close watch on and
monitored the progress of a number of other Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels
en route to Australia, apparently nothing was known about the voyage

3 See the testimony of Amal Basry at the end of this chapter.

78 Suvendrini Perera

of SIEV X until after it was too late. The few survivors were picked up
by Indonesian fishermen. The sinking of SIEV X leaves many unanswered
questions: about what caused the boat to sink, its inexplicable absence
from the surveillance radar and the absence of any Australian rescue effort
(Kevin, 2004).
Most of the passengers, and the overwhelming majority of the casualties,
on SIEV X were women and children who had decided to risk the voyage
from Indonesia to join husbands, fathers and sons in Australia. Survivor
accounts speak of a day and night of carnage and chaos as children
drowned one after another in front of helpless parents. Three drowning
women gave birth in the water to babies who drowned as they were born.4
The high death toll of women and children on SIEV X is not a matter of
coincidence or bad luck, but a direct consequence of state policies that are
not gender-neutral, but operate on gendered premises and are gendered
in their application and consequences. Where male refugees and asylum
seekers tend to travel alone, women fleeing civil war and political instability
are responsible for the care of children and older relatives who accompany
them. Their male family members may have gone ahead or be missing or
dead. The Australian government’s policy of ‘Temporary Protection’ seeks
to exploit the practice by which male family members are often the first to
embark on the asylum seeking process, sending for their families after they
have gained refugee status.
‘Temporary Protection’ produces the vulnerability of women and chil-
dren by decreeing that those (usually male) asylum seekers who have been
assessed as ‘genuine refugees’ and granted temporary protection cannot
have the same protection extended to their spouses and children or be
legally reunited with their families. By making it impossible for women
and children to legally follow their male relatives even after the latter have
gained refugee status, state policies make women and children vulnerable
to unlawful methods of entry, and place them at risk of being preyed on by
people smugglers to make the hazardous voyage on crowded and untrust-
worthy boats. In addition to these risks, illegal boat entries are also subject
to a highly covert ‘disruption programme’ by agents of the state. Although
little can be known about this programme, sabotage of boats with passen-
gers aboard cannot be ruled out (Faulkner, 2003).
The dangers of arrival by boat are further compounded by a naval
blockade that has been in place since 2001, and the explicit orders given
for force to be used to turn back asylum seeker boats. This includes the
authority to open warning fire on, and forcibly board, asylum seeker
boats—an extremely dangerous manoeuvre considering the desperate

4 For detailed information on SIEV X, including survivor testimonies, see the excellent

website www.SIEVX.com. I discuss the story of SIEV X in more detail in a companion paper
to this chapter entitled ‘They Give Evidence: Bodies, Borders and the Disappeared’ (2006).
 The Gender of Borderpanic 79

and volatile situation and the presence of children and other vulnerable
people on board. Aboard the boat known as SIEV 10, two women, Fatima
Husseini, aged 20 and Nurjan Husseini, aged 55, drowned in the chaos
when fire erupted on their boat after it was intercepted by the navy (Marr
and Wilkinson, 2003: 269−71). This tragedy, however, did not lead to
a re-examination of the policy of boarding and opening warning fire on
boats carrying asylum seekers. Instead, following the fatalities on SIEV X
and SIEV 10, the militarisation of borders intensified, accompanied by the
promotion of further legislation to stop asylum seekers reaching the—ever-
shrinking—mainland, the increased use of the navy and a public relations
campaign heightening fears for national security.
The effect of these tactics is to habituate the population to the condition
of siege and borderpanic and a climate where ‘security’ is elevated to the
level of an all-pervasive and paramount principle. In this climate the gen-
dered practice and application of asylum seeker policy, and the fact that its
targets are often women, children and families, either remain invisible or
are obfuscated by a propaganda campaign that seeks to depersonalise and
dehumanise asylum seekers and maintain fears of an invasion by threaten-
ing and violent others. The most specific illustration of this strategy is an
order given by the immigration minister’s media advisor to the navy’s public
relations office at the height of the blockade instructing that no ‘personalis-
ing or humanising images’ of asylum seekers were to be taken (Marr and
Wilkinson, 2003: 135).
This ban on humanising representations goes hand in hand with official
efforts to disallow and discredit the humanity of asylum seekers, most sen-
sationally through the (later disproved) ‘throwing their children overboard’
allegations, but also through a more sustained attack on the integrity and
legitimacy of their human and familial relationships. The best known
instance of this strategy is the story of a six-year-old Iranian boy, Shayan
Bedraie, who was so deeply traumatised by the scenes of violence he had
witnessed in detention that he became unable to eat or speak and, despite
several visits to hospital, lapsed into a catatonic state whenever he was
returned to detention (Marr and Wilkinson, 2003: 46). The boy, his parents
and baby sister were videoed by a camera smuggled into the Villawood
Detention Centre, with the parents pleading for his release into foster care
to save his life. The story, one of a handful that allowed Australian audi-
ences to see and hear asylum seekers as families and individuals in distress
rather than as anonymous threatening figures, immediately touched a
chord. The immigration minister’s response the following day was calcu-
lated to discredit these humanising impressions, first by literally deperson-
alising Shayan and referring to him as ‘it’ and secondly by suggesting that
the boy’s troubles were caused by the fact that his father’s wife was not his
biological mother, although she was the only mother he had known since
infancy (MacCallum, 2002: 5−9).
80 Suvendrini Perera

The denigration and devaluation of asylum seekers’ family relationships,

together with the campaign of innuendo and allegation, can be understood
on one level as an attempt to displace and disown the state’s own practices of
violence towards children—by holding them in detention in spite of interna-
tional conventions preventing their incarceration, by failing to protect them
from the violent and unhealthy conditions of the camps and in some cases by
making it impossible for them to be in the care of both parents while in deten-
tion. At the same time, asylum seekers are framed by ethnocentric and orien-
talist discourses that cast their domestic, gender and family relationships in a
strange and lurid light, feeding perceptions of an essential difference between
Australian and alien, them and us: they don’t love their children as we do.
This demarcation between us and them is underlined by the contrast
between the violence that state policies visit on the families of asylum seekers
and the rhetoric of its domestic policies for families. The state’s pro-family
rhetoric and family-friendly initiatives end at the razor wire. The divide
between us and them marks off the realm of Australian families as a world
away from refugee and asylum seeker families. Although the family is a
deeply contested terrain in domestic politics (as witnessed by a number of
ongoing debates over matters such as birth rates, parental benefits, gender
roles in child rearing, custody and child welfare) at a national level border-
panic depoliticises the Australian family by positioning it as removed from
the external ‘hard’ politics of border protection, immigration and security.
Domestic issues of race and migration as they relate to the family become
invisible at this wider level, as the naturalised divide between the realm of
domesticity and its outside reinforces a racialised border between us and
them, sealing off asylum seeker and refugee families from the practices of
child welfare and protection. The family and the home are reinforced as catego-
ries determined and marked by the limits of race, gender and citizenship.
In mid-2003, lawyers representing five children aged fourteen to six
challenged this kind of depoliticised and naturalised understanding of the
family by making an application in the Family Court for their release from
detention. The children came to Australia on a boat with their mother after
their father was granted Temporary Protection. Under the new immigration
regime they were assessed separately from their father, determined not to
be ‘genuine refugees’ and held in detention for almost three years, pending
several appeals, at the isolated camp at Woomera in the South Australian
desert.5 During this time the children were exposed to scenes of extreme

5 See Crock for a discussion of some of the anomalies of this case: eg the mother, Roqia

Baktiyari’s statement that she was a fugitive from Afghanistan was ‘disbelieved because of her
inability to recognise Afghan currency shown to her, or to describe key aspects of the geog-
raphy and political structures of the region from which she claimed to have come’. As Crock
drily points out, here ‘few concessions appear to have been made for the educational and
cultural constraints on Afghani women living in the shadow of the Taliban’ (Crock, 2004).
 The Gender of Borderpanic 81

violence, in the form of riots, attempted suicides and episodes of self-

harm, lip-sewing and hunger strikes among the detainees. Two of the older
children repeatedly tried to escape, and attempted self-harm and suicide
(Debelle and Riley, 2003). All showed signs of disturbance and trauma.
The case was viewed as a landmark for determining whether the jurisdic-
tion of the Family Court could extend to the children of asylum seekers,
with the immigration minister arguing that they fell outside the court’s
purview. In June 2003 the Family Court disagreed with the minister, ruling
that ‘the welfare jurisdiction of the Family Court extends to all children of
marriages in Australia, including children in immigration detention, where
the particular orders sought arise out of, or are sufficiently connected to
the marriage relationship’ (Family Court of Australia, 2003: point 8). After
some delay, finally, in late August the Full Bench of the Family Court ruled
that the five children should be immediately released from detention. The
immigration minister, however, immediately appealed both the issue of the
Family Court’s authority to rule on the issue of detention and the release of
the five children, in the High Court. In April 2004, the High Court unani-
mously agreed with the minister, ruling that the Family Court did not have
jurisdiction over children held in immigration detention.
The High Court response underlines the government’s investment in
maintaining control over definitions of the domestic and the limits of the
‘family’, policing the boundaries of the Family Court and preventing any
linkage between families inside and outside the razor wire. In his com-
ments the minister for immigration represented the Family Court as hav-
ing exceeded the limits of its authority, as well as discriminating against
Australians because of the comparative speed with which it heard the case
(Kitney, 2003). By representing the case of the detained children as some-
how competing for the Family Court’s attention with the cases of ‘ordinary
Australians’, any common ground between the two was negated. Instead,
the detained children were cast as having, once again, acted as queue jump-
ers, usurping scarce resources that should have been devoted to lawful
residents and real families.
The Family Court’s ruling, on the other hand, can be seen as a repudia-
tion of the government’s argument that children held in Australian deten-
tion centres are somehow outside Australia’s borders, external to the space
the domestic, the proper jurisdiction of the Family Court and indeed the
realm of ‘the homeland’. The decision making of this court turned on mak-
ing a space for the children of asylum seekers at the point of intersection
between Australian domestic law and immigration policy and between
international human rights conventions and the principle of security. In this
sense the Family Court’s finding opened the way both for challenging the
detention of the other eighty or so children held in the camps at the time of
writing, and for making available the domestic as a counter space where the
divide between them and us can be reworked and tested.
82 Suvendrini Perera

For the five children at the centre of this case, however, the Family Court
ruling was only a provisional and qualified reprieve. After the High Court
decided that the Family Court in fact had no jurisdiction over asylum seeker
families, the children, who had been living in a community-supported
environment, were officially returned to detention. With the ‘serviceable
brutality’ that characterises refugee policy (Pugliese, 2003), the children’s
carers were renamed ‘detention officers’ and their suburban home declared
a ‘Detention Centre’. By this Orwellian reclassification of domestic space,
overnight carers became jailors, home became a camp, freedom became
incarceration: any contamination of the Australian domestic realm by asy-
lum seeker families was conveniently averted.

Trafficker and Trafficked

In 2001 a woman whose identity was later established as Puongtong

Simaplee, aged 28, from Thailand, died in custody at the Villawood
Detention Centre where she was taken after being arrested in an immigra-
tion raid for working without a visa in a Sydney brothel. There are several
accounts of Puongtong Simaplee’s arrival in Australia, including one ver-
sion according to which she was trafficked to Australia at the age of 12.
Regardless of the age at which she arrived, it is indisputable that Puongtong
Simaplee worked in the sex trade for a long time. Her body bore all the
marks of this traumatic history: at her initial assessment the admission
officer recorded self-harm scars, symptoms of Hepatitis C, marks of heroin
addiction (often a means used by traffickers to increase the dependency
of sex workers) and severe emaciation and malnutrition. She weighed a
pitiful 35 kilos and the admission officer had to resort to pulling down
her pants to verify that she was a woman.6 Despite the physical evidence
that confirmed her statement that she was a trafficked woman, Puongtong
Simaplee, suffering from severe symptoms of heroin withdrawal, was placed
in an observation cell in immigration detention, contrary to UN protocols
signed by Australia that recommend appropriate housing, counselling and
medical assistance for victims of trafficking (Carrington and Hearn, 2003).
Three days later Puongtong Simaplee was dead. A reading of the coroner’s
inquest raises serious and disturbing questions about the medical treatment
she received and adequacy of the processes followed both before and after
her death.7

6 Testimony by Georgina Costello on the Law Report, ABC Radio National, (28 October

2003). Costello represented Project Respect, an organisation advocating for sex workers, at
Puontong Simaplee’s inquest.
7 I am grateful to Charandev Singh of the Brimbank Community Legal Centre for discussing

the case of Puontong Simaplee with me, and for providing invaluable resources.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 83

The area of immigration law in which gender is most explicitly acknowl-

edged is in policies dealing with the trafficking of women and children in
the global sex trade. Puongtong Simaplee’s story poses a number of ques-
tions: How are the claims of the international anti-trafficking policies and
Australia’s own commitment to recognising gender as a factor in its immi-
gration decisions and policies impacted by borderpanic and the new pre-
eminence of security? How do anti-trafficking and anti-people-smuggling
legislation act on each other to position women in need of protection and
how do they work together to promote and sustain borderpanic?
The relationship between borderpanic and international anti-trafficking
conventions is not simple. At one level, publicity surrounding the global sex
trade, as well as the interventions of some anti-trafficking organisations can
be seen as contributing to, and promoting, the effects of borderpanic. Sex
worker activists have argued that the international focus on the trafficking of
women acts as a smokescreen for the control of non-white women’s migration
and represses their agency in the global sex industry (Crago, 2002). From a
different position Suneera Thobani points out that ‘by focusing on the crime
of smuggling and trafficking, the state has made smugglers and traffickers
extremely visible, while making the actual women who are smuggled and
trafficked invisible’ (2001: 31). Sensationalist stories of traffickers and people
smuggling obscure the stories and circumstances of individual women who
are the subjects of these activities. As discussed above, they also fail to address
colonial and neo-colonial relations of power, raced practices and policies of
immigration control and the complex spatial and representational economies
that generate the conditions for the trafficking of women, relations that impli-
cate governments both north and south in the business of trafficking.
Like other artefacts of humanitarian discourse, international anti-trafficking
legislation then needs to be understood as a double-edged creation that both
fosters and represses the agency of those constructed as its objects. Even as
this legislation has the potential to repress non-white women’s mobility and
agency, it also can afford them a (limited) protective space against the stringent
anti-immigration policies of individual states on the one hand and the exploit-
ative practices of the global sex trade on the other. This protection is particu-
larly important in the current environment where the needs of security render
irrelevant the specific histories and needs of those categorised as ‘illegal’ and
obscure distinctions between gendered subjects of smuggling and trafficking.
Women enmeshed in practices of trafficking and their aftermath are
subsumed in a borderpanic that denies them access to the protection inter-
national conventions can afford. Against the provisions of both domestic
guidelines on gender and the UN protocols to prevent trafficking, women
and girls caught working illegally in the sex industry become subject to
punitive detention and summary deportation. In effect this practice benefits
traffickers, since the women are not given the opportunity to act as wit-
nesses in any action against them, while in some cases women are returned
84 Suvendrini Perera

to situations where they are placed at risk of retaliation or of being silenced

by traffickers (Carrington and Hearn, 2003: 10−14).
The story of Puongtong Simaplee’s death locates her as one the hidden
casualties of Australian borderpanic. Her story cannot be isolated from
those of refugees and asylum seekers, but needs to be read in the context
of other deaths of asylum seekers in custody in the detention camps during
this period. The treatment she received is characteristic of the punitive and
criminalised approach adopted towards all perceived ‘illegals’ regardless of
their immigration status. At the same time, the comparative public silence
surrounding her death indicates how violence directed towards women
remains unacknowledged in the detention system as a whole. In 2001,
a second woman, Thi Hang Le from Vietnam, also a survivor of sexual
violence, and with a history of mental illness, jumped to her death three
hours after being returned to Villawood Detention Centre, where she had
been previously held (Stevenson, 2002). The deaths of these two vulnerable
women received little publicity from refugee activists when they occurred,
in comparison to the exposes of violence towards asylum seekers in the
camps, although groups advocating for sex workers and trafficked women
took up the inquest into Puongtong Simaplee’s death.8
I am arguing, then, for an approach that allows us to connect the stories
of trafficked women with those of asylum seekers and other ‘unlawfuls’
and ‘illegals’ caught in the toils of a raced and gendered borderpanic. The
stories of Thi Hang Le and Puongtong Simaplee are not isolated ‘tragic
accidents’, but a consequence of their positioning outside the limits of the
state and their exclusion from a right to its protection, despite their claims
under international law. Their exclusion, Goldberg points out, is one that
is formative of the power of the state:

The state has the power by definition to assert itself to or to control those (things)
within the state, in short, the power to exclude from state protection. In these
senses, the modern state has already lent itself conceptually to, as it has readily
been defined by, racial (and gendered) formation. For central to the sorts of racial
constitution that have centrally defined modernity is the power to exclude and by
extension include in racially ordered terms, to dominate through the power to cat-
egorise differentially and hierarchically, to set aside by setting apart. And, of course,
these are all processes aided integrally by the capacity—the power—of the law and
policy-making, by bureaucratic apparatuses and governmental technologies … by
invented histories and traditions, ceremonies and cultural imaginings. (2000: 9)

8 In response to the publicity following the inquest into Puontong Simaplee’s death, the gov-

ernment announced new measures to provide support and protection for trafficked women,
including the creation of a new visa category that would allow them to remain in Australia to
give evidence against traffickers. It is difficult not to see this as an exercise to rehabilitate the
government’s soiled reputation in this area, together with a change of minister. The effective-
ness of the new measures remains to be assessed.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 85

To the integral role that invented histories and cultural imaginings play in
the state’s power to include and exclude, to ‘set aside by setting apart’ I
now (re)turn.

The ‘Genuine Refugee’9

The deaths of Puongtong Simaplee and Thi Hang Le and the drowning of
the women and children from SIEV X and SIEV 10 occurred at the edges
of Australian society, in the disorderly and chaotic border territory that is
both just inside and just outside our field of vision. Their figures are actively
obscured, made invisible, through an ensemble of gendered and racialised
practices that produce them as expendable and incidental casualties of
more important processes—the collateral damage or road kill of border
protection and security. At the legal and official level minimal attention is
paid to these invisible women’s deaths, with even less discussion of where
responsibility lies. These are deaths that must be quickly repressed from
public memory in order to maintain Australia’s sense of self as a decent and
humanitarian nation.
Yet, even as ‘humanising and personalising’ representations of Iraqi and
Afghani asylum seekers in boats were banned from public exposure, the
wars in Afghanistan and Iraq returned the images and stories of distressed
women and children in need of protection to the centre of our TV screens
and newspapers. The invisibility of the faces and stories of the asylum seek-
ers coming ashore at our borders was countered by the extreme visibility
of other faces and stories of women like these, but with one significant dif-
ference: they were women in far away places. The stories of these distant
women were invoked, with formulaic outrage, in politicians’ speeches and
in bellicose media representations justifying ‘intervention’ both before and
after the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Through these means the erased
body of an essential ‘refugee woman’ is returned to the centre of national
consciousness. This body of difference becomes in turn a unifying figure
that, paradoxically, functions as a contradictory presence/absence, both
set apart and set aside, to maintain the self-image of the ‘homeland’ at the
centre of today’s borderpanic, through the gendered splitting of the refugee
body into the terrorist/invader (at home) and the hapless victim (abroad).
‘The Afghan Girl’, a widely screened US documentary exemplifies the
ways in which the gendered refugee body as victim is set apart as a public
spectacle for the West. ‘The Afghan Girl’ refers to a cover photograph first
published in the National Geographic in 1985. The subject is a young girl
photographed in a Pakistani refugee camp during the Soviet invasion of

9 Sections of the following discussion were published as ‘The Impossible Refugee of Western

Desire’ in Lines 2. 3 (November 2003) http://www.lines-magazine.org/.

86 Suvendrini Perera

Afghanistan (a period, it must be repeated, when US foreign policy actively

fostered the conditions for rise of the Taliban, thus setting the stage for the
present war in that region). In the wake of the 9/11 bombings and a new war in
Afghanistan, photographer Steve McCurry set out to rediscover the original
of his famous work, in the words of a promotional website, ‘the enigmatic
Afghan girl with the haunting green eyes that captivated the world’ (ABC
TV, 2002).
Sponsored by National Geographic, this photographic hunt for the
source returns inevitably to the form of the colonial expedition of discovery.
McCurry travels in a strange land, through dangerous terrain, accompanied
by a cast of native informants who are sometimes devoted and sometimes
duplicitous. Supporting him is the full arsenal of Western technology
designed to guarantee the authenticity of the object of his quest. The trail
leads, to quote the website again:

after one false start to a remote village in Afghanistan where Sharbat Gula now
lives with her three daughters, completely unaware of her international fame …
[T]he latest scientific techniques … were able to confirm her identity. Leading
scientists in the field of iris recognition—the most accurate, non-invasive iden-
tity verification technology in existence today—and the FBI’s facial recognition
experts both agreed beyond doubt that Sharbat Gula was the woman from the
1985 cover picture. (ABC TV, 2002)

Here the colonial discovery plot is intersected by the contemporary

demands of security. ‘The Afghan Girl’s’ identity is authenticated not by
reference to the evidence of her own memory or the testimony of local
knowledge, but by a series of technological investigations performed on
her body by a extraordinary range of experts called on to certify her iden-
tity. Reports are presented from a forensic expert for the FBI; by scientists
specialising in biometric technologies; by a medical doctor; and finally by a
sculptor commissioned to construct a likeness suggesting what the original
of the photograph ought to look like fifteen years later (Newman, 2002).
The extravagant array of processes employed to authenticate Sharbat Gula
read almost as a form of parodic excess, parallelling the state’s obsessive
processes for identifying ‘genuine refugees’ at its borders. Simultaneously,
these and related technologies—linguistic verification; facial reconstruction;
genetic matching; iris recognition and biometrics—are essential to processes
of racial profiling, targeting and criminalisation of specific suspect groups
already within state borders. The role of the FBI expert, represented on the
National Geographic website under a floodlit official seal, with various
photographs of Sharbat Gula assembled beneath him like so many mug-
shots, is particularly telling in this context. Bathed in the sanctifying light of
US authority, the quest for ‘The Afghan Girl’ is a project that mirrors and
parallels other missions conducted under the sign of ‘Homeland Security’
to unmask and expose the terrorist/invader within.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 87

The recourse to technologies of border protection and airport security

to verify the truth of ‘The Afghan Girl’ are neither explained nor justified
by the National Geographic. Rather they appear as given, completely
naturalised practices in the process of McCurry’s womanhunt. Revealed
here is an underlying correlation between the projects of humanitarianism
and security. The rationale for the elaborate search for Sharbat Gula,
employing biometrical technologies of surveillance and identification
developed to track down criminals, is that the spectacle of the original
‘Afghan Girl’ seventeen years on is bound to inspire an outpouring of
sympathy from Western donors for Afghan refugees, girls and women in
particular. And indeed, this belief was justified—according to the figures
cited on its website, the National Geographic’s readers donated some US$
22 million in 2002, in response to the magazine’s ‘Afghan Girl’ appeal. But
these humanitarian ends are not easily extricable from the technologies and
practices that enable both the war at home and the war abroad. Multiple
links accompanying the appeal on the National Geographic website lead
the viewer to firms specialising in airport security and identity confirmation
technologies. These forms of (official or unofficial) sponsorship underwrite
the quest for ‘The Afghan Girl’.
As the emblematic refugee girl/woman located in some distant camp,
‘The Afghan Girl with the captivating green eyes’ is an appropriate object
for compassion and protection in the west. The specificities of her original
displacement and subsequent history hardly merit a mention. ‘The Afghan
Girl’ inhabits what Malkki (1995, 518) describes as a ‘floating world either
beyond or above politics, and beyond or above history—a world in which
[refugees] … are simply “victims”’. Floated free of her history, ‘The Afghan
Girl’ is coopted into the ‘war on terror’ from an older and still unfinished
war about which it is no longer convenient to remember too much. Instead,
‘The Afghan Girl’s’ successful ‘discovery’, aided by all the resources of
Western technology, implicitly endorses a parallel narrative of ‘rescue’ by
the forces of Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan (and later Iraq).
Although seemingly dislocated from time and isolated in her singularity,
‘The Afghan Girl’ functions indirectly to reinscribe orientalist discourses
in which the protection of women serves as an enabling rationale for the
expansion of the colonial state. Inderpal Grewal points out that in the
colonial period ‘the practice of unveiling the veiled woman or the woman
in “purdah” became a technology of power exercised both to “save” and
to destroy at the same time’ (2003: 537). The return of ‘The Afghan Girl’
in the ‘war on terror’ is no coincidence. Her green-eyed gaze legitimises a
set of new interventions—humanitarian, military, legal, socio-cultural, eco-
nomic, political—in the war on Afghanistan.
The authenticated body of ‘The Afghan Girl’ is a site where the principles
of security and humanitarianism meet. Indeed, ‘The Afghan Girl’ must be
seen as the emblematic figure of a war where food parcels and bombs were
88 Suvendrini Perera

alternately unleashed over the heads of the population of Afghanistan. As

Slavoj Zizek writes of this bizarre bombardment, ‘military action against
the Taliban is almost presented as a means to guarantee the safe delivery
of humanitarian aid. We thus no longer have the opposition between war
and humanitarian aid: the two are closely connected’ (2002: 94). In this
intimate connection, Grewal suggests, lies the defining feature of the US
coalition’s power in the ‘war on terror’, a power residing in ‘the correlation
between the sovereign right to kill and the humanitarian right to rescue’
(2003: 537, my emphasis).
In the economies of new and old empire, ‘The Afghan Girl’ circulates
as a complex object of the power to both save and to destroy, a figure of
fantasy, fear and longing. Framed by her aestheticising representation, this
green-eyed girl/woman in a faraway camp figures as the longed-for refugee
of Australian foreign policy, in contrast to the invisible and expendable
girls and women seeking entry at our borders. Authenticated by forensic
investigation and the most advanced security technologies invented to
uncover illegal entries at the border, ‘The Afghan Girl’ reproduces the
impossible refugee of Western desire: a green-eyed other that is almost the
same; far away yet instantly available through the mediations of technology;
infantilised; enigmatic; certified genuine.

Locating the Border

This chapter began in some ways as a response to a question posed by

Angela Davis and Gina Dent about what might happen if we were to take
‘gender and globalisation as starting points, rather than last instances’
(2001: 1235) for thinking about processes of racialised punishment and
the prison-asylum industrial complex. My discussion develops differently
from that of Davis and Dent because it focuses on borderpanic and immi-
gration detention rather than domestic imprisonment. Yet, the two can
never be dissociated for, as Davis and Dent point out, ‘the prison is itself
a border’ (2001: 1236). To begin to understand the structure of the prison
as a border lays bare a political economy that ‘brings the intersections of
gender and race, colonialism and capitalism into view’ (Davis and Dent,
2001: 1236−37).
This chapter has attempted to unpick the ways in which race, place,
gender, globalisation and new and old empire are entwined in practices of
immigration detention and borderpanic, as they produce and enforce new
forms of (racialised and gendered) illegality and criminality. Simultaneously,
locations of home and its outside are reworked through racialised and gen-
dered processes of demarcation and boundary making. The border operates
as a mobile and unstable site, marking differentiated spaces outside and
inside the nation and the state, spaces contoured and authorised by the
 The Gender of Borderpanic 89

interconnection between particular gendered and racialised spatial practices

and representational economies. Understanding and unpicking these dense
interconnections is a step towards bringing home the figure of the refugee
at the border.

APPENDIX: AMAL BASRY’S TESTIMONY

Amal means hope in Arabic. That was why my father gave me that name
and maybe it was why I survived SIEV X. 146 children, 142 women and
45 men died in the tragedy of SIEV X. I was one of the 45 survivors I saw
it all. I saw so many people die and I have to tell the story.
It has been three years since the sinking of SIEV X but I am still in the
water. I can still feel the dead woman whose body I clung to so I could keep
afloat. I never saw her face, it was in the water but I talked to her all night.
I prayed for her soul and she saved my life.
I still see what I saw when I first opened my eyes under the water. I
saw children dying. I can taste the oil and the salt of the sea, I feel my
fear and I smell death. Little children, dead babies, desperate parents,
families dying one by one, and I was alone believing all the while my own
son was dead.
I was in the water for 22 hours waiting for my death. I was like a camera
I saw everything. When the sharks circled I prayed for my death and sud-
denly a whale rose up beside me it was as big as an apartment block it blew
water from its blow-hole all over me and I thought it would suck me and
the woman I clung to into the deep. But the whale also saved me. It saved
me from the sharks.
Sometimes when the pain wakes me in the night, in that moment between
frightening dreams and the shock of reality, I think the sharks are feeding
on my body, tearing parts of me away, and ripping at my soul.
On the second anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X I knew I was ill. On
October 27, 2003 I lost my left breast to cancer and now the cancer is in
my bones and is eating away at me.
The cancer eats like a shark. My doctors are kind and try to manage the
pain but there is a deeper pain, the pain of loss, the pain of rejection. In
those hours when I cannot sleep I see the lights that were shone on us as
we fought to live in the water.
The lights came from ships, I could hear the voices of the men on board
so safe and so dry but I could not make out the language they were speak-
ing. I screamed to them to help, we all cried from the sea but they went
away. The pain of SIEV X will not go away.
I cry so often. I cried and cried when I saw the Australian families in
Bali mourning their friends and relatives, I knew how each of them felt.
That is how I feel. I cry when I see the families of the American soldiers
90 Suvendrini Perera

who have died in Iraq. That is how I feel. And like them I need to talk
about the things that have happened to my life and my family because of
tragedy.
I cry when I think of my beloved Iraq the land of my birth reduced to
rubble and my people dying and I cry when I think of my father who is still
in Baghdad so ill and so poor. When I was a child we spoke English in our
house and my father took me round the world and I learnt so much and
met such wonderful people.
Our family was torn apart by Saddam Hussein. My mother died hungry.
My husband and I were forced to flee to Iran with our children. But we
knew we could not stay there and we believed in Australia so my husband
went ahead. He was waiting for us for when SIEV X sunk.
When we were rescued I spoke English again. I said ‘I want to go to
Australia and learn very good English and then I want to go on Larry King
and tell the world what happened to us’.
In all the months we waited in Indonesia and were questioned over and
over I still believed in Australia. And I still believe in Australians because
they do care about us and they are kind and loving friends. But none of us
from SIEV X feel safe; we cannot be safe until we know we belong, until
we can be citizens.
I may not have long now but I speak English well enough to give evi-
dence for Australia in a court of law without a translator. And I can speak
in public without notes and I want to tell my story. The Australians who
have spoken up for us are my angels and I thank God for them. And now
I want to spend what time I have left telling people what it was like to be
there, awaiting my death, there in the water being kept afloat by the body
of a dead woman and seeing it all happen.
We still need help. All of us from SIEV X still need your help. On the
eve of the third anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X I pray to God for the
people who died and for all the people who loved them and I pray too for
the survivors. We are all in different places and our lives will never be the
same but now I know Australians will never forget. I don’t have time to
write a book but I want to talk and I want to talk now.
My name is Amal. It means hope. And I will not give up hope until the
day I die.
Copyright Amal Basry, 18 November 2004.10

Amal Basry lost her battle against breast cancer on 18 March 2006. She
was 52 years old.

10 Reproduced with permission from ‘I am Still in the Water with the Dying of SIEV X’

http://www.AxisofLogic.com.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 91

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to Amal Basry for permission to cite her testimony in this
essay, and to Mary Dagmar Davis for facilitating this.

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Marr, D and Wilkerson, M (2003) Dark Victory (Crows Nest, Allen and Unwin).
Nagata, Y (2004) ‘The Japanese in the Torres Strait’ in A Shnukal, G Ramsay
and Y Nagata (eds), Navigating Boundaries The Asian Diaspora in the Torres
Strait (Canberra, Pandanus Books, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies,
Australian National University).
Newman, C (2002) ‘A Life Revealed’ National Geographic Magazine. http://
magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/afghangirl.
Perera, S (1997) ‘Representation Wars: Embassy, Malaysia and Australia’s Corps
Diplomatique’ in C Brunsdon, J D’Acci and L Spigel (eds), Feminist Television
Criticism (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
—— (2002a) ‘A Line in the Sea: Australia, Boat Stories and the Border’ 8 (1)
Cultural Studies Review 1−27.
—— (2002b) ‘What is a Camp?’ 1(1) Borderlands. http://www.borderlandsejournal.
adelaide.edu.au/issues/volno1.html.
—— (2006) ‘They Give Evidence: Bodies, Borders and the Disappeared’ 12(6) Social
Identities 637−56.
—— (2007) ‘A Pacific Zone? Sovereignty, (In)Security and Stories of the
Pacific Borderscape’ in PK Rajaram and C Grundy Warr (eds), Borderscapes
(Minneapolis, Minnesota University Press) 201−27.
 The Gender of Borderpanic 93

Peterson, VS (1992) (ed), Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International

Relations Theory (Boulder and London, Lynne Rienner Publishers).
Pettman, JJ (1997) ‘Border Crossings/Shifting Identities: Minorities, Gender, and the
State in International Perspective’ in MJ Shapiro and HR Alter (eds), Challenging
Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities (Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press).
Pugliese, J (2002) ‘Penal Asylum’ 1(1) Borderlands.http://www.borderlandsejournal.
adelaide.edu.au/issues/volno1.html.
—— (2003) ‘Each Death is the First Death’ 6 HEAT 7−12.
Rajaram, PK (2007) ‘Locating Political Space through Time: Asylum and Excision in
Australia’ in PK Rajaram and C Grundy Warr (eds), Borderscapes (Minneapolis,
Minnesota University Press).
Sassen, S (2000) ‘Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalisation and the
Feminisation of Survival’ 53 Journal of International Affairs 503−24.
—— (2003) ‘Global Cities and Survival Circuits’ in B Ehrenreich and AR
Hochschild (eds), Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New
Economy (London, Granta Books).
Simon, J (1998) ‘Refugees in a Carceral Age: The Rebirth of Immigration Prisons in
the United States’ 10 Public Culture 577−607.
Stevenson, A (2002) ‘Fall Ended Detainee’s Desperate Life’ Sydney Morning Herald
(15 November) 2.
Thobani, S (2001) ‘Benevolent State, Law-Breaking Smugglers, Deportable and
Expendable Women: An Analysis of the Canadian State’s Strategy to Address
Trafficking in Women’ 19 Refuge 24−33.
Zizek, S (2002) Welcome to the Desert of the Real (London and New York, Verso).

Key Websites on Australian Refugees

www.SIEVX.com
www.safecom.org.au
www.peoplesinquiry.com.au
 5
Xeno-racism and the Demonisation
of Refugees: A Gendered Perspective
LIZ FEKETE

INTRODUCTION

I
t is widely recognised that globalisation, with its ruthless pursuit of
markets and sanctification of wealth, destroys local economies, unleashes
ethnic wars and creates refugees. But the central role that global insti-
tutions and multinational corporations play in creating refugees—the
majority of whom are women and children—is seldom acknowledged.
Instead, the UK press with the support of successive governments, in order
to exclude asylum seekers, has demonised them as bogus, as illegal immi-
grants and economic scroungers. It was in the October–December 2001
issue of Race & Class, that the journal’s editor, A Sivanandan, and I first
argued that a new racism, bearing all the hallmarks of older forms of rac-
ism, was emerging out of the demonisation of asylum seekers (Sivanandan,
2001a; Fekete, 2001). ‘Xeno-racism’, we argued, was similar to the racism
that emerged out of slavery, and later the colonial period, in the way that
it denigrated and reified people before segregating and/or expelling them.
Xeno-racism, however, was not directed solely at those with darker skins
from the former colonial territories. It also targeted newer categories of
the displaced and uprooted, including some white eastern Europeans and
people from the former Soviet Union. Today, the racist practice of demoni-
sation and exclusion has become a tool in the hands of the state to keep
out the refugees and asylum seekers displaced by global capitalism. While
the rhetoric of demonisation is racist, as Sivanandan argues, the politics of
exclusion is economic—demonisation is ‘a prelude to exclusion, social and
therefore economic exclusion, to creating a peripatetic underclass, interna-
tional Untermenschen’ (2001a).
The fact that xeno-racism is not colour-coded has allowed governments
to argue that hostility towards asylum seekers is not derived from any
structural racism, but is rather due to individual prejudice and a broad-
gauged xenophobia. European governments also absolve themselves by
blaming the poor. However, the hysteria about ‘aliens’ has in fact been
96 Liz Fekete

induced by politicians and the press who represent asylum seekers as a

threat to ‘our’ people, our way of life, our standard of living, our housing
market, our race. It becomes a matter of prudence, of good governance
even, to restrict access to those seeking work and along with them those
seeking a refuge from persecution. Less than twenty years ago, the West
saw its ‘superior’ civilisation and economic system as under threat from
the communist world. That was the ideological enemy as seen from the US;
that was the hostile intransigent neighbour as seen from Western Europe.
Today, the threat posed by 125 million displaced people, living either tem-
porarily or permanently outside their country of origin, has replaced the
Communist threat. For, in this brave new post-cold war world, the enemy
is not so much ideology as poverty.1 The greedy question now is will these
often desperate people reduce our standard of living if we allow them to
live and work and raise their families here?

THE CRIMINALISATION OF ASYLUM AND THE UNDERMINING

OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

In this climate, the poor, the displaced, the persecuted come to be regarded
as a potent and potentially criminal threat. Seeking asylum—a basic human
right—is being transformed into an illegal activity. As 80 per cent of the
world’s 34 million refugees and Internally Displaced People are women and
children, this criminalisation process bears down most harshly on women
and their dependants.2
There does not seem to be a single region of the world where refugees and
migrants are not subjected to hostility and xeno-racist campaigns. Arbitrary
detention and expulsion of those seeking asylum is today an international
phenomenon. Since the late 1990s, European Union governments have
been openly stating that the motivating force for asylum policy is deter-
rence (Council of Europe, 2004). Specific measures have been aimed at
preventing refugees leaving their region of origin and moving into the EU.
Moreover, when asylum seekers do manage to penetrate the complex system
of migration controls aimed at preventing refugee flight, the European
Union has resorted to internal controls based on segregation and expulsion.
The mandatory detention of asylum seekers from so-called ‘safe countries’
has led to the creation of a vast complex of asylum prisons, euphemistically
dubbed ‘detention centres’. Denying asylum seekers any access to the welfare
state is another punitive measure, as is the creation, via anti-terrorist laws,
of a separate and more punitive criminal justice system for asylum seekers
and ‘aliens’. This is underpinned by new integration policies and citizenship
laws adopted after September 11 which stress the responsibility of new

1 See Fekete (2001).

2 Since this paper was presented Baines (2004) has reinforced this point.
 Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees 97

immigrants to assimilate into the ‘host’ culture. The laws and climate in
which they are created make great play of the superiority of European values
of gender equality.3

CONFLATING TRAFFICKING WITH SMUGGLING: THE

DISAPPEARING OF ARTICLE 31

It is notable that laws that criminalise the act of seeking asylum have been
brought in incrementally and in ways that undermine international law,
specifically Article 31 of the Geneva Convention, which states that break-
ing immigration laws to seek asylum in another country is not a crime.
This attempt to nullify Article 31 has largely taken place via the various
anti-trafficking initiatives adopted by global institutions and nation states,
with trafficking described by the G8 as the ‘dark side of globalisation’
(Morrison, 2000a). I have outlined elsewhere the scale of international co-
operation on migration issues and detailed specific, internationally-agreed
anti-trafficking measures through which the seeking of asylum came to be
regarded as a criminal act (Fekete, 2001). As John Morrison has argued,
this criminalisation process began in the 1980s (2000a). Until then, refugee
policy was still regarded as a human rights issue. As the number of asylum
claims rose in the 1990s, immigration control and not human rights began
to be prioritised by Western governments. Policies that denied visas to those
coming from refugee-producing countries were introduced. So too were
carriers’ liability fines which penalised airlines and sea carriers that brought
in those without papers. Airline liaison officers were also installed in
refugee-producing countries and readmission treaties negotiated. With the
introduction of such barriers, the vast majority of asylum seekers attempt-
ing to reach the EU turned to human smugglers and trafficking networks.
Independent research shows that now most asylum seekers need to engage
the assistance of smugglers or traffickers at some point in their journey
(Zetter et al, 2003).
The detrimental impact of European policies on asylum rights was never
acknowledged during the 1990s. Instead, asylum policies were formulated
within a criminological perspective, giving priority to the need to combat
transnational organised crime over the rights of refugees (Morrison, 2000b).
In this, the framers of European asylum law were informed by the new
strategy of ‘global migration management’ which the richer nations of North
America, Europe and Australia were fleshing out in supranational bodies and
intergovernmental agencies such as the International Centre for Migration
Policy and Development and the Budapest Process. In identifying trafficking
and smuggling networks as the main obstacle to managed migration, their

3 See Fekete (2002).

98 Liz Fekete

framework blurred the legal distinctions between trafficking and smuggling.

For, as Morrison has pointed out, ‘trafficking, which involves exploitation
that goes on after the arrival in the country of destination, such as bonded
labour or prostitution, is clearly a facet of international organised crime. But
smuggling, which involves an assisted illegal border crossing with no ongoing
exploitation, is not—as acknowledged by the drafters of the 1951 Geneva
Convention’ (Morrison, 2000b).4
The drafters of the 1951 Geneva Convention, in recognition of the
human smuggling networks that had aided Jews fleeing Nazi persecu-
tion, had stipulated in Article 31 that those who used illegal methods to
enter a country should not be penalised if their purpose in doing so was
to seek asylum. Today Article 31 has been totally undermined by laws
which criminalise smuggling. The year 2000 was designated by the EU, the
Group of Eight Industrialised Nations and the Organisation for Security
and Co-operation in Europe (which includes Canada and the US) as the
year of the Anti-Trafficking Plan. Subsequently, the 2000 UN Convention
on Transnational Crime initiated separate trafficking and smuggling pro-
tocols. The smuggling protocol makes it an international offence to assist
any person in an illegal border crossing, regardless of whether she or he is
a refugee in need of protection. It also states that a migrant who engages
the help of smugglers is not a blameless victim but complicit in the criminal
act of illegal migration.

Exonerating Deaths at Borders

By conflating trafficking networks with smuggling and treating all those

who seek the aid of traffickers or smugglers as complicit in an international
crime, the UN Convention has absolved policy makers in the richer devel-
oped nations of any blame or responsibility in relation to the mounting toll
of deaths at its borders. Today the Pacific, Adriatic and the Mediterranean
regions have become graveyards for the thousands of people who do not
make it to ‘the other side’. Blame for the deaths, if they are acknowledged
at all, is placed at the door of ruthless trafficking networks, although those
who seek the services of smugglers or traffickers are regarded by the UN
as complicit in their own victimisation. What is not acknowledged is the
way that immigration and asylum policies of North Africa, Australia and
Europe have, since the early 1990s, created a market in which traffickers
and smugglers flourish (Marfleet, 1998). Harsh asylum policies and closed

4 To acknowledge that international law has, in the past, distinguished between trafficking

and smuggling, is not to deny that people smugglers can also commit serious crimes against
asylum seekers who engage their services. It is well known the traffickers and smugglers have
subjected refugee women to all sorts of violation during their journey, including sexual vio-
lence, torture and rape.
 Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees 99

borders only serve to increase the demand among desperate refugees for the
services of traffickers and smugglers who further exploit their vulnerability.
In Europe this situation is now further compounded by the EU Council’s
Border Control Programme.5 All those asylum seekers, who with the aid
of traffickers or smugglers somehow manage to cross the Mediterranean
or the EU’s heavily militarised borders, are treated under the programme
as suspected illegal entrants. For the whole idea of the EU Border Control
Programme is to create as many barriers as possible to refugee movement in
as many different countries and regions as possible and in the process extend
the EU’s zone of influence over border controls. Resources are also being
ploughed into developing surveillance and detection programmes capable
of predicting refugee movement, profiling potential ‘illegal immigrants’ and
‘averting refugee flows’. In fact all these measures do is quite literally funnel
people to their deaths. For each time smugglers or traffickers seek to exploit
a new route, the EU attempts to seal it off. Subsequently the traffickers and
smugglers just choose more circuitous and hazardous routes.

Militarised Borders—Gendered Effects

Throughout North America, Australia and Europe, a growing number of

NGOs, including the UK Institute of Race Relations, are monitoring the impact
of militarised borders and anti-trafficking initiatives on refugee rights. Over
an eighteen-month period in 2002–03, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR)
documented 742 deaths of people who died attempting to reach the EU by hid-
ing in the wheel bays of aeroplanes and shipping containers, on ferries, trekking
overland by hazardous routes or travelling on rickety and overcrowded flimsy
dinghies or other sub-standard vessels.6 The statistics are most certainly a gross
under-estimation, as the IRR included in the analysis only officially verified
deaths reported in newspapers and press releases of NGOs. In the vast majority
of cases, we do not even know the name of the deceased, never mind the age or
gender. That so many gravestones in a Spanish cemetery were without a name
drew comment in 2003 from El País journalist, Tereixa Constenla. Reporting
on a memorial service organised by Algeciras Welcomes for yet another young
man whose body was washed up on Spain’s east coast, she said:

There were those, ‘the D’s [the deceased, difunto] who died in the sea and who
died forgotten because here no-one knew who they were, and, as if that were not
enough, no-one knew where to go to try to find someone who might have known
who they were. They suffocated in the water and drowned in anonymity. We do
not know whom to weep over when we have gathered them here. Their relatives,
on the other side, do not know that we are weeping for them. They died in the
sea, but politics, outlined in dispatches sent from the West, murdered them. They

5 See Fekete (2003a).

6 See Fekete (2003b).
100 Liz Fekete

built walls in the water, they demanded that visas should appear out of thin air;
politics ensured that persons would be moving on from one place to another …
Behind each padlock are the dead in never-ending numbers.7

As Constenla says, we do not know much about those who die seeking
asylum, but what can be said with certainty is that women form a large pro-
portion of those who ‘choose’ to be trafficked or smuggled into Europe.8
Evidence from Australia also points to the fact that the proportion of
women and children among the trafficked increases as deterrence becomes
the principal force driving asylum policy, as exemplified by Australia’s
worst maritime disaster ever, now known as the SIEV X affair.9
In October 2001, in the infamous SIEV—(suspected illegal entry vessel)—
X affair, 353 people, mostly Iraqis, drowned when the tiny wooden vessel
they were travelling in sank in international waters north of Australia’s
Christmas Island and in the Operation Relex border protection zone set
up following the Tampa incident. Of those who died, 142 were women
and 146 children. Peter Mares (2002) has linked the presence of so many
women and children on board the vessel to the introduction, in October
1999, of temporary protection visas. These were justified as a means of
making Australia a less attractive destination for refugees and asylum seek-
ers and a preventive measure against people smuggling. In fact, temporary
protection visas have increased the market for ‘people smugglers’. Due to
their reduced refugee status, and their subsequent lack of civil rights, male
recipients of temporary protection visas have no legal right to bring in their
families for at least three years. This means that the only way for families
to be reunited is for women and children to attempt to reach Australia ille-
gally. This explains why asylum seeking children made up 13 per cent of all
those arriving by boat in 1999 but by 2001 the proportion of children on
boats had risen to more than 30 per cent. The suffering of families caught
up in these policies is graphically brought to life by Mares:

When the disaster was reported in Australian newspapers, Ahmed Alzalimi recog-
nised the distraught face of his wife, Sondros Ismail, who he had not seen in two
years. The couple’s three daughters, nine year old Imman, seven year old Zahraa
and five year old Fatima, had all drowned. Sondros Ismail’s sister, Sundus Alfaris,
had also perished. Ahmed Alzalimi stopped eating and drinking when he heard
the news. Five days later he collapsed and was taken to hospital by friends. As a
refugee with a temporary protection visa, there was no way that Ahmed Alzalimi
could travel to Indonesia to comfort his wife without giving up any right to return
to Australia. (2002)

7 El País, 20 August 2003. Translated by Virginia MacFadyen.

8 According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the majority of trafficked
people are women, especially those bound for the world’s sex industries. For a perspective on
refugee women’s experiences of trafficking and smuggling networks, see Backers (2001).
9 See also Perera, ch 4, this volume.
 Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees 101

Refugees in a Changing World

The ‘war against trafficking’ allows global institutions and national gov-
ernments to close borders in the name of national security and of the fight
against the shadowy international crime syndicates which control traf-
ficking routes. In effect, the ‘war against trafficking’ serves as the means
of, and justification for, states to recast asylum seekers in the public mind
as ‘illegal immigrants’. To break domestic immigration law (through, for
instance, entering a country as a stowaway) is now redefined as a crimi-
nal act, even though the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees
upholds the right of refugees to break domestic immigration laws in order
to seek asylum. In such ways the EU has succeeded in shifting the terms of
the asylum debate so as to treat asylum seekers not as people from many
different countries with many different experiences and each with an indi-
vidual story to tell, but as a homogenous and undifferentiated mass. From
this follows the fascination among EU politicians and the press with flat
statistical projections of asylum flows; the offensive language in which
migratory movements of displaced people are described in terms of envi-
ronmental catastrophe and asylum seekers are dehumanised and agglomer-
ated as a ‘mass’, ‘horde’, ‘influx’, or ‘swarm’ also follows from this. In all
of this, xeno-racism against asylum seekers resonates with the past. Jews
under Nazism, blacks under slavery, ‘natives’ under colonialism, were simi-
larly dehumanised, held to possess mass characteristics which then justified
exploitation, victimisation, and, at the last, genocide.
The discourse shifts attention away from glocality (the increasing polari-
sation of the world’s population which locks some into a place of poverty
while allowing others unprecedented mobility) and towards the traffick-
ing networks which seek to exploit the vulnerable victims of glocality by
enslaving them, whether as sex slaves or bonded migrant workers. Yet it
is the increasing polarisation of the world’s population which is the direct
result of globalisation. Forced prostitution and bonded labour are some
of its many terrible effects. Moreover, the vulnerability of women to these
particular forms of slavery is compounded by the wars, ethnic conflicts and
social and economic chaos engendered by globalisation.10
According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the
proportion of war victims who are civilians leaped in recent decades from
five per cent to over 90 per cent of casualties. Eighty per cent of casualties
by small arms are women and children, who far outnumber military casual-
ties. Moreover, the breakdown of the economic and social structures and
education systems in war zones impacts most on women and girls there by
rendering them vulnerable to sexual violence and trapping them in such
situations (Brittain, 2003). Women are particularly at risk of human rights

10 See Kisaakye (ch 7) this volume.

102 Liz Fekete

violations—including rape, sexual slavery, prostitution, domestic violence

and trafficking. Such human rights abuses lead women to flee persecution
at home to seek refuge elsewhere. Women who flee their homes in search
of sanctuary from violence too often find themselves confronting yet more
sexual and physical violence as refugees. Demonised by governments which
resent their presence, women can find themselves subject to sexual attack
by police, military, and civilians. And even in post-conflict periods, women’s
human rights are not protected. Kosovar women, for instance, confronted
a steep rise in domestic violence, rape, trafficking and abductions following
the war. Any one of these factors is often a key reason for women to seek
refuge in the West. Yet they find it particularly difficult to claim refugee status
successfully. Women who suffer severe discrimination on grounds of gender
have difficulty proving that the discrimination amounts to persecution as the
UN Refugee Convention does not include persecution arising from gender
as one of the specific grounds of persecution on which to base a claim for
refugee status.
The 1951 Geneva Convention relating to the Status of Refugees is the
key legal instrument for defining who is a refugee, his or her rights and
the legal obligations of states. It was adopted in response to the atrocities
committed in the Holocaust and as a protection for the millions of people
uprooted by the war, many of whom were still living in makeshift camps
years later. Initially the Convention was limited in scope to refugees in
Europe and to events occurring before 1951. However, as the refugee crisis
spread from Europe in the 1950s to Africa in the 1960s and then to Asia,
the 1951 deadline and the geographical restrictions were abolished by the
1967 protocol to the Convention. Under the Convention, in order to gain
refugee status asylum seekers must prove that they are victims of persecu-
tion. While this is usually taken to mean state persecution, most European
states and the US, Australia and Canada, now accept non-state persecution
as a cause of refugee flight, provided that the refugee’s home state cannot or
will not provide protection. Despite such gains, however, the requirement to
prove persecution still excludes from the Geneva Convention refugees from
the random violence of war, civil war or from starvation and economic
immiseration, as well as gender-specific persecution.11
These limitations to the Geneva Convention are proving to be profoundly
problematic in a changing world, for the move over the last 30 years from
industrial capitalism to global capitalism has led to the creation of new

11 For years when women seeking asylum reported being raped by police or soldiers adju-

dicators rejected their claims, treating these acts of persecution as a ‘private’ moment. In the
early 1990s Canada became the first country to recognise that women suffer from gender-
specific forms of persecution that should be recognised under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
Since then, women have successfully sought protection from many gender-specific forms of
persecution including ‘honour’ crimes, female genital mutilation and sexual violence, particu-
larly in conflict situations.
 Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees 103

categories of refugees. Today refugees and internally displaced people

are being uprooted by a variety of factors, both political and economic
(Sivanandan, 2001b). Flight from political repression (such as under
communism or fascism that gave rise to the Geneva Convention in the first
place) is no longer the predominant form of flight. Since the end of the Cold
War, new categories of refugees have emerged. Direct state persecution is
responsible for the flight of many ethnic and religious minorities (as well as
political dissidents) who fall victim to authoritarian states. But in other cases
displacement is due to economic immiseration linked to globalisation. And
today economics and politics feed off each other. In a world in which some
transnational companies operate budgets that are larger than those in Third
World states, such states have little choice but to act as the agents of global
capital. And the global imposition of neo-liberal economic policies, forcing
indebted countries (the majority) into stringent cuts in public spending, open-
ing up Third World countries as new ‘markets’—for example, for heavily
subsidised American or European grain at prices that local farmers cannot
match—robs those countries of the possibility of developing sustainable eco-
nomic programmes based on their populations’ needs. Moreover, all of this is
compounded by savage wars fought not so much for political control as for
control over resources—diamonds, minerals, oil and land itself.12 That such
resource wars often assume an ethnic cast simply adds to their terror. And
then there are the semi-natural disasters (drought, for example, leading to
crop failure and famine) that the impoverished state, prevented from holding
on to its resources by the dictates of free trade, is unable to withstand.
Leaders of the Western world who argue that globalisation is a force for
good, never acknowledge that globalism, with its demand for ‘free’ markets
and unfettered conditions of trade, creates refugees. Instead of acknowledg-
ing the contemporary reasons for refugee flight, they demonise the victims.
Open contempt for the victims is made apparent by the use of a racialised
‘pseudo-ideology which sees the world in Manichean terms of good and
evil, civilised and uncivilised, developed and undeveloped’ (CARF, 2003).

Trafficking, Gender and the IOM

The demonisation of asylum-seekers includes many male stereotypes such

as those of the ‘violent terrorist’ or the ‘economic migrant’ who deserts his
wife and family in pursuit of individual opportunity. By just foregrounding
the experiences of the 80 per cent of the world’s refugees who are women
we could undermine the racist stereotypes and begin the process of telling
the true story about global crimes and global harms. Whereas the stories of

12 See, eg Amnesty International Country Report on the Democratic Republic of Congo

(2005). [Eds]
104 Liz Fekete

refugee women are largely marginalized, the experiences of women as sex

slaves are, occasionally, brought to the fore by politicians and the press.
Yet, even here, concrete measures to protect the victims of forced prostitu-
tion and resettle them in Europe on humanitarian grounds are seldom put
forward. On the contrary, the experiences of women trafficked for sexual
enslavement are used by global institutions and national governments to
further justify the clamp down on refugees. And at the core of this pro-
cess operates the transnational body, the International Organization for
Migration (IOM).
The IOM is a little known, but hugely important, organisation, com-
prising 93 member states (a further 36 have observer status). It was
founded in 1951 with an economic mandate to manage migration. Since
1989, the IOM has been transformed into a transnational agency for the
global management of migration within the economic framework of the
New World Order. Through its many outposts it detects migration routes
and patterns, gives advice to governments and trains border troops on
new technologies. It advises the EU on border management and holds
pilot projects to help neighbouring countries adjust to EU police require-
ments. The IOM has no specific humanitarian mandate; it has no brief on
refugee protection.13
Among other things, the IOM has a programme to counter trafficking
and a ‘voluntary repatriation programme’ for asylum seekers. It has recently
been involved in the programme to return refugees to Afghanistan. Its infor-
mation campaigns and seminars in places such as Macedonia, Azerbaijan
and the French Red Cross camp at Sangatte, have been described as mea-
sures to prevent the trafficking of women. But on its website, the IOM’s
Counter-Trafficking Programme does not mention any initiatives to assist
the victims of sexual exploitation to resettle in Europe; rather it talks of
organising a safe passage home (ie repatriation).
It is because of its policies on border control and voluntary returns
that the IOM has received the opprobrium of a majority of refugee and
human rights organisations. Amnesty International and Human Rights
Watch have criticised the adverse impact of its policies on the human
rights of refugees. The IOM’s voluntary repatriation programmes (in the
year 2000, the organisation claims to have carried out 430,000 repatria-
tions worldwide) has been criticised in Germany (where 75,000 repatria-
tions were carried out by the IOM in 2000) and in Austria. In 2002, the
Austrian government launched, with the assistance of IOM, a Voluntary
Humanitarian Returns Programme, which was underpinned by measures
to withdraw all state support from asylum seekers from a list of ‘safe
countries’. Thousands of asylum seekers, including women, children and

13 This critique of the IOM was first put forward in Europe by the Noborder Network

(2002).
 Xeno-racism and the Demonisation of Refugees 105

the elderly, were summarily ejected from the state housing and left des-
titute under a policy, which amounted to ‘starving asylum seekers out of
the country’.14

Global Crimes, Global Harms

Those in power are cynically attempting to justify anti-trafficking initiatives

that criminalise refugee women in the name of saving women from forced
prostitution. In such a climate, it is essential that those scholar-activists and
campaigners working in the field of asylum rights link up with counterparts
in the anti-trafficking field to ensure that women refugees do not remain
the forgotten majority and that refugee protection issues are placed at the
centre of anti-trafficking initiatives. To fail to so engage is to allow the
criminalisation of refugees to pass unchallenged and encourage a divisive
discourse wherein gender issues are pitted against refugee issues. In effect,
refugees are being criminalised twice over: first, as illegal immigrants and
secondly, as an army of preying destitutes, scrounging off the welfare state.
It is refugee women and those in their care who feel the full impact of
Europe’s deterrent asylum policies. It is only as ‘illicit’ users of health, wel-
fare and education services that refugee women emerge from obscurity into
the full public gaze. However, they are not regarded as victims, deserving of
compassion, but as objects of derision and hostility, prompting xeno-racist
reactions. Newspapers abound with xeno-racist stories that, in stressing the
threat posed by refugees to the welfare state, focus particularly on refugee
women’s health needs and fertility, with repeated accusations that refugee
women seek pregnancy as a means of securing citizenship via their new-
born children. Policies aimed at starving asylum seekers out of Europe, by
denying them access to housing and healthcare, bear down most harshly
on women and leave them at the mercy of zero-tolerance policing policies
towards petty crime (including, in the UK, the new crime of ‘aggressive
begging’) and antisocial behaviour. By sharing information and allowing for
a cross-fertilisation of perspectives, we will begin to challenge the current
discourse on global harms, global crimes and criminalisation, and bring
back into focus the realities that are presently concealed.

REFERENCES

Backers, S (2001) ‘Risking it all: The Implications of Refugee Smuggling’ 43(1) Race
& Class 75–81.
Brittain, V (2003) ‘The Impact of War on Women’ 44(4) Race & Class 41–51.

14 See (43) Institute of Race Relations European Race Bulletin (December 2002).
106 Liz Fekete

Campaign Against Racism and Fascism (CARF) (2003) ‘Racism and the Market-
State: An Interview with A Sivanandan’ 44(4) Race & Class 71–76.
Fekete, L (2001) ‘The Emergence of Xeno-racism’ 43(2) Race & Class 23–40.
—— (2002) ‘Racism: The Hidden Cost of September 11’ (40) (April) European
Race Bulletin (London Institute of Race Relations). http://www.irr.org.uk/
europebulletin/index.html
—— (2003a) ‘From Refugee Protection to Managed Migration: The EU’s Border
Control Programme’ (43) (April) European Race Bulletin (London Institute of
Race Relations). http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/index.html
—— (2003b) ‘Death at the Border—Who is to Blame?’ (44) (July) European Race
Bulletin (London Institute of Race Relations). http://www.irr.org.uk/europebulletin/
index.html
Mares, P (2002) Borderline: Australia’s Response to Refugees and Asylum Seekers
in the Wake of the Tampa (Sydney, UNSW Press).
Marfleet, P (1998) ‘Migration and the Refugee Experience’ in R Kiely and
P Marfleet (eds), Globalsiation and the Third World (London, Routledge).
Morrison, J (2000a) ‘The Dark Side of Globalisation: The Criminalisation of
Refugees’ 43(1) Race & Class 71–74.
—— (2000b) ‘The Trafficking and Smuggling of Refugees: The Endgame in
European Asylum Policy’ (United Nations High Commission for Refugees, July).
Noborder Network ‘The IOM: A Critique’ (68) (Autumn) CARF.
Sivanandan, A (2001a) ‘Poverty is the New Black’ 43(2) Race & Class 1–5.
—— (2001b) ‘UK: Refugees from Globalism’ 42(3) Race & Class 87–91.
Zetter, R et al (2003) An Assessment of the Impact of Asylum Policies in Europe
1990–2000 Home Office Research Study 259 (London, Home Office Research,
Development and Statistics Directorate).
 6
Dangerous Liaisons: Sex Work,
Globalisation, Morality and the
State in Contemporary India
BRINDA BOSE

T
he global alliance Against Traffic in Women (GAATW) uses the
following working definition for trafficking:

All acts and attempted acts involved in the recruitment, transportation within or
across borders, purchase, sale, transfer, harboring or receipt of a person involving
the use of deception, coercion (including the use or threat of force or the abuse of
authority) or debt bondage for the purpose of placing or maintaining such a per-
son in a situation of abuse or exploitation, whether for pay or not, such as forced
labor in the garment, agricultural, fisheries, begging, sex or other labor sectors,
forced domestic, sexual or reproductive services (including forced or servile mar-
riages), forced extraction of body parts, or any other form of public or private
forced labor, forced servitude or slavery-like practices.1

To counteract trafficking, GAATW demands the following rights: the rights

of women to paid work; to migration; to safe, just and equitable working
and living conditions; to just compensation; to the organisation and forma-
tion of unions and to collective bargaining and, finally, to human dignity.
In the context of paid sexual services, therefore, the significant shift in
terminology from ‘prostitution’ to ‘sex work’ also further distinguishes
between the voluntary and the forced. Voluntary sex work is a right
while a prostitute forced into sex work is a victim of (sexual) violence
and both need to be protected. In the early 1990s, the Declaration on
Violence against Women first made an implicit distinction between forced
and non-forced (voluntary) prostitution, signalling that the international

1 ‘Brief on Trafficking in Women, Forced Labor and Slavery-like Practices’, issued by

GAATW-Canada in 1997. Full document on http:/inet.co.th/org/gaatw/SMR99.htm or from

GAATW-Canada.
108 Brinda Bose

community’s view of prostitution had changed; since the adoption of the

Declaration, the majority of international agreements denote forced pros-
titution and trafficking, rather than prostitution itself, as violence against
women. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the 1993
World Conference on Human Rights recognised women’s rights as human
rights. The final document produced by the Platform for Action at the
Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1995, condemned only
forced prostitution and not the profession as such. However, no interna-
tional agreement directly condemns the abuse of human rights of women
who were not ‘forced’ into sex work.
According to Jo Doezema, co-editor of an anthology on global sex work-
ers, the international community may agree on condemning only forced
prostitution as a human rights violation, but,

that does not imply agreement on how to deal with voluntary prostitution; how
it is to be defined, if it should be regulated by the state or left to the workers to
organise, or even if it exists at all. In fact, it is because there is no agreement about
‘voluntary’ prostitution in the first place that the consensus on ‘forced’ prostitu-
tion has come into being. (1998: 41–42)

Doezema alleges that there have been further dichotomies instituted that
are, in the main, reductive and detrimental to a larger understanding of the
critical issues around sex work. The voluntary sex worker is most often
represented as the Western sex worker, capable of making independent
decisions, while the sex worker from a developing country is seen as a pas-
sive and exploited victim, a ready prey for traffickers. The other distinction
constantly deployed is inspired by the traditional good sex/bad sex division,
in which the voluntary sex worker is seen as ‘guilty’ in essentialist moral
terms while the ‘forced’ prostitute is perceived as an ‘innocent’ victim,
which reinforces the belief that women who transgress sexually-normative
roles in any way deserve to be punished.
It is, however, clearly seen today that as in the case of almost every major
multinational enterprise under global capitalism, the principal players
and beneficiaries of the sex industry—and they are most often not the sex
workers themselves—are cohesive and organised. In vastly different societal
structures around the world, there is a traceable common pattern of the
exploitation of the sex worker by other players in the industry who are
able to secure, through illegal and unfair means, the support and services
of politicians, police personnel and bureaucrats responsible for governance
and the enforcement of the law. With globalisation, various activities and
agents connected with the sex industry are no longer restrained by national
or territorial boundaries; capital, labour and organisation move relatively
unhindered within and across regions. This movement is facilitated by both
legal and illegal structures, an intricate negotiation that sustains a huge
 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 109

transnationalised sex industry and brings it astronomical margins of profit.

The industry operates and expands continuously with the help of other
multinational enterprises such as the tourism industry, the entertainment
sector and drug and criminal networks, with very little of the profit coming
to sex workers who then get caught in this web of illegal transactions. Their
plight is particularly sombre, of course, in countries where sex work is still
penalised as a criminal activity.

THE PROSTITUTION DEBATES IN INDIA

In an essay on female agency, sexuality and work, published in 1996,

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan writes:

The ‘prostitution question’, as we may term for short the contemporary debates
around women in prostitution, is a fraught one to confront today because of the
acute divide it has created among, as well as between, feminists and legal reform
activists both in India and the West. It challenges us, as well, to ask whether pros-
titute interests are being truly represented in these debates. (1996: 122)

I propose to reopen the ongoing debates on sex work in India in the con-
text of developments in the red-light area of Delhi (GB Road) where on
18 January 2002 a group of women sex workers resolved to form the
Milan Mahila Sanghatan (MMS), an organisation to ‘combat trafficking
in GB Road’ and ‘to protect and uphold the human rights of all women
engaged in the sex trade’ in this locality, and to set these debates up against
globalised issues concerning sex work and trafficking. This mobilisation
was a response to what has been alleged by these women to be a sustained
police attempt to humiliate and harass them following directives from the
High Court of Delhi to the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare to take
appropriate steps to monitor trafficking and ‘rescue’ minor girls who have
been forced/sold into the trade. The formation of the MMS, which is not
yet registered, is inspired and guided by the (registered) organisation of sex
workers in Kolkata, the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC),
founded in 1995 primarily to formalise a STD/HIV-AIDS prevention and
intervention programme that had been running since 1992 in the large and
well known red light district of Kolkata, Sonagachhi. The DMSC today is
a forum comprising 6000 sex workers and their children, whose objectives
include the decriminalisation of adult prostitution, securing the social rec-
ognition of sex work as a valid profession and establishing the sex worker’s
right to self-determination.
As Rajan succinctly points out, the prostitution question has always been
a fraught one within gender studies and not without reason. However, in
the midst of multitudinous debates on morality, rights, exploitation, traf-
ficking, rescue and rehabilitation, the focus often tends to shift away from
110 Brinda Bose

the prostitute’s interest and usually completely fails to recognise that she
may have viable rights, particularly in taking decisions regarding her life
and choice of work. In this context, the move to mobilise into an organised
body is an assertion of a cohesive identity, precarious as it is in the face of
consistent efforts by agents of the state to undermine sex workers’ existence
in every possible way.
The prostitution question is universally caught at the troubled inter-
section of societal morality, human/women’s rights, economics and state
intervention. Even in the Indian scenario, where poverty is an overriding
concern, the earning capacity—inspired by need—of the sex worker is
ignored in favor of the moralising impulse; the ‘cleansing and sanitising’
drives undertaken by agents of the state then systematically proceed to both
exploit and humiliate the sex worker in ways other than what her work
allegedly implies. The sex workers’ protest expressed in the ‘Sex Worker’s
Manifesto’ raises numerous pertinent queries:

If and when we figure in political and developmental agenda we are enmeshed

in discursive practices and practical projects which aim to rescue, rehabilitate,
improve, discipline, control or police us. Charity organisations are prone to
rescue us and put us in ‘safe’ homes; developmental organisations are likely to
‘rehabilitate’ us through meagre income generation activities which in any case
never help to erase … the stigma as ‘former’ prostitutes and police are bent upon
regularly raiding our quarters in the name of controlling ‘immoral’ trafficking …
In a country where unemployment is of such gigantic proportions, where does the
compulsion of displacing millions of women and men who are already engaged
in an income earning occupation which supports them … and their extended
families, come from. (1997: 2)

The ‘compulsion’ comes, of course, not only from an utopic desire to see
Indian society cleansed of the ‘malaise’ of prostitution, but from a deep-
rooted perception that sex work cannot possibly be chosen as a profes-
sion and therefore all prostitutes must necessarily have been ‘trafficked’
or forced/coerced into the service. Given the stigma associated with sex
work—as well as its apparently obvious non-pleasurable aspects—it may
well be true that it is a profession chosen out of expediency rather than out
of a range of free options, but this does not necessarily mean that every sex
worker at any specific moment seeks to be ‘rescued’ or ‘rehabilitated’ where
the operation results in harassment of other kinds and most crucially, a loss
of absolutely necessary income.
The Suppression in Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act of 1956 (ITPA)2
provides the state with the necessary legal power to intervene in the sex
workers’ trade at all times and under any circumstance, constructing the
prostitute as ‘victim’ and denying her any agency. Trafficking is ‘immoral’

2 At http://www.commonlii.org/in/legis/num_act/soitiaga1956492/
 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 111

if it is for sex work but not for any other purpose such as marriage or
domestic work; laws are deployed primarily against the sex worker and
not against those who coerce/force/perpetrate fraud at the point of entry
into the industry. Needless to say, there is no monitoring of the rampant
abuse of state power in the (man)handling of sex workers under the guise
of maintaining law and order and reigning in criminal activity.
It is possible to interrogate the established parameters of the sex work
debate through the recorded agenda/experiences of the sex workers’ organi-
sation of Kolkata (DMSC) and Delhi’s fledgling MMS. In the context of
today’s global awareness and promotion of anti-trafficking laws, it is par-
ticularly pertinent to re-examine the questionable circumstances in which
the agents of the state in India pursue the implementation of such laws. If
prostitution is a criminal offence, is exploitation (that includes a range of
activities from physical violence/intimidation to extortion of money to rape)
of the prostitute by agents of the state to be allowed by law? Is it possible for
a sex workers’ organisation to police themselves (against the trafficking of
minor girls, for example) and achieve appreciable results instead? If rescue
and rehabilitation is on the state’s agenda, can more viable alternatives for
comparable income generation be pursued? What position/identity in society
can sex workers aspire to/demand as a right in the context of a global
concern with trafficking and the spread of HIV/AIDS in the sex trade?
As Kamala Kempadoo asserts:

Identity, rights, working conditions, decriminalisation, and legitimacy have been

central issues collectively addressed by prostitutes for many years. Through these
struggles the notion of the sex worker has emerged as a counterpoint to tradition-
ally derogatory names … inextricably related to struggles for the recognition of
women’s work. (1998: 3)

The conceptualisation of prostitution as work—sexual labour considered

similar to other forms of labour that an individual performs to sustain
her or himself—emerged first in the 1970s through the prostitutes’ rights
movements in America and western Europe. Though it has since perme-
ated even traditionally conservative societies such as India, sex work is
clearly not a universal or ahistorical category. In most of the world, as
Kempadoo indicates, ‘Sexual labor today forms a primary source for profit
and wealth, and it is a constituent part of national economies and transna-
tional industries within the global capitalist economy’ (1998: 8). As with
any other form of labour—or perhaps more so because of related socio-
cultural pressures—sex work is subject to exploitation in as much as it can
be considered as a basis for mobilisation in workers’ struggles for working
conditions, rights and benefits. In India, as in many other countries still, the
struggle is yet primarily for recognition, for an acceptable worker identity
that is de-criminalised.
112 Brinda Bose

In 1999 the Centre for Feminist Legal Research in New Delhi prepared
a memorandum on the reform of laws relating to prostitution in India.
Several policy approaches to the legal regulation of sex work have emerged
in India over the years, some explicit in the ITPA, while others are implied
in more general attitudes adopted in various measures supposedly promoted
for the protection of women in Indian society. In the popular imagination,
women are inducted into the sex trade through deception, force, fraud or
coercion. It is always assumed that entry into sex work is a coercive practice
and therefore that the women who are forced into it are victims—of pimps,
brothel owners and traffickers—in need of rescue and rehabilitation. In
India, the existing legislation perpetuates this view. Procuring, inducing or
taking a person, or attempting to do so for the purpose of prostitution is
an offence under the ITPA and the Act provides for mandatory minimum
sentences for different situations, the least being rigorous imprisonment of
not less than three years. The question of consent is irrelevant.
The provisions of the ITPA, therefore, are aimed specifically at crimi-
nalising all activities related to prostitution, which is narrowly defined as
‘commercialised vice’. The Indian Penal Code of 1860, on which the ITPA
is based, ignores the question of consent altogether, while the recent Act
considers the issue relevant only for the purpose of sentencing and not at
the stage of definition of the offence. This reinforces, in law, the construc-
tion of the female sex worker as a victim without any agency. In fact, if
any evidence of choice or consent is offered, she is penalised. There can be
no recourse to law for the woman who consents to enter sex work but is
subjected to the use of force, fraud, coercion or even sexual violence in the
pursuit of her profession. The ITPA provisions are focused on the ‘immo-
rality’ of trafficking for sex work, just as sexual intercourse is ‘illicit’ if it
is for monetary considerations. Concerned as they are with the morality of
sex work, the ITPA fails to deal with various kinds of exploitation that the
Indian sex worker faces from her point of entry into the industry. The case
for trafficking is not simple either, because in order for a prosecution to be
successful, the testimony of the sex worker is required. Usually, she is rarely
willing to provide such testimony for fear of jeopardising her own liveli-
hood or rendering herself vulnerable to state prosecution for engaging in
or soliciting prostitution. Ultimately, therefore, a law that is rarely invoked
ends up more often as a tool for harassment of the sex worker, instead of
providing her with protection.
At the first level, in India, a distinction needs to be made between volun-
tary sex work and that which is coerced, so that the systematic exploitation
of the sex worker can be effectively addressed and countered. The primary
concern should be to ensure that the sex worker is not exploited or abused
and that she has access to her rights as a citizen and as a worker. She must
be protected from harassment by the state and law enforcement agencies, as
well as from the local mafia who regularly extort ‘protection’ money from her.
 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 113

At the First Sex Workers Conference held in Calcutta in November 1997,

more than 3000 sex workers from across India collectively demanded
the decriminalisation of sex work and the recognition of their status as
citizens and workers. This demand was reiterated at the follow up confer-
ence held in Calcutta in March 1998. These conferences, together with the
two consecutive Millennium Melas (fairs) organised in Calcutta in 2001
and 2002 which boasted huge international participation, are indicative of
the growing support of these demands from the hitherto largely invisible
sex workers’ population as well as the emergence of a mass movement
committed to securing human rights for this labour industry.
It is clear, of course, that the issues raised today around the legalisation
and/or the decriminalisation of prostitution in India cannot be considered
in isolation. As Jyoti Sanghera points out, forces of globalisation now affect
and direct all structures and institutions of contemporary Indian social real-
ity; this is particularly true of sex trafficking since global economics and
national/international policies crucially shape its dynamics. In a majority
of analyses on trafficking and the sex industry, the women concerned are
presented as victims either of patriarchy or a crude, undifferentiated capi-
talism.3 Sanghera summarises the labour equations between the north and
the south, or the First and Third Worlds as gendered:

Formerly under colonialism and presently under globalisation, countries of the

third world have been defined principally as providers of natural resources and
cheap labour … The systemic inequality between the North and the third world
creates the impetus for the migrations of peoples … this migration pattern is
marked by a one-way movement; this is not freedom or the expression of free
market forces … Against this background, then, today we witness the growing
feminisation of migration in the third world. Third world women are moving in
to constitute the backbone of the service sector at an international plane, engag-
ing primarily in domestic and sex work. This feminised category of labour is
constructed through a sophisticated combination of economic need, racist stereo-
typing and patriarchal oppression. Consequently, this labour is the most acces-
sible, vulnerable and exploitable for the forces of global capitalism. (1997: 5–6)

The fate of Third World sex workers, therefore, is integrally linked not just
to the fate of their families but their countries. To understand and respond to
the specificities of the sex industry in India, it may be first necessary to de-link
it from an internationalised (and perhaps even universalised) concern about
illegal sex trafficking and to make vital distinctions between the following:
sex trade and trafficking; trafficking for prostitution and for other purposes;
trafficking and migration; sexual violence/exploitation and sex work; sexual

3 Sanghera stresses the importance of transcending the ‘victim mould’ and comprehending

the distinctions between regions and social groups in analysing the effect of global economics
on the sex industry.
114 Brinda Bose

slavery and sex work; forced labour and slave practices in the sex trade and
voluntary sex work; small time pimps and organised crime gangs and ethics
and economics. I would like to focus for the moment on the question of the
different kinds of sexual violence and exploitation that are perpetrated on
sex workers that very often get submerged and lost in larger ethical/economic
considerations of the sex industry. Because the sex worker in India, for a
number of appreciable reasons, cannot or does not seek legal redress against
those who exploit her, it is usual for various agents of the state to invoke the
law to harass her for their own gains, be it monetary or otherwise.

THE STATE OF/AND PROSTITUTION IN INDIA

Apart from highly criminal lifestyles, all these children share something else: they
are all products of the red light area…
…According to a senior police officer who handles trafficking and cases related to
prostitutes, the trade is bound to spawn criminals. There is very little the police
can do. It is not as if the police do not do anything. ‘Whenever we are tipped off,
we conduct a raid…’
…Police officials admit that they are unlikely to receive complaints from red light
areas. Too many people have too much at stake to go to the police…
…‘Besides, policemen themselves are a part of all the crime taking place here.
They are in collusion with pimps and moneylenders. They are even part of the
trafficking. So how can they be expected to take any action?’…
… ‘This is a charge that everybody makes—that policemen are involved and
so don’t take any action,’ says the police officer. (Venkatesh and Bhadauria,
2000: 16–17)

Central to all debates on prostitution in India is the fact that the prostitute/
sex worker is perceived to be the offender, while the client—or any other
institution/agency that is involved—is not. Penalties imposed on prosti-
tutes are far more severe than for pimps or brothel keepers. In a working
paper on the ‘anti-prostitute bias in Indian laws’, Jean D’Cunha alleges
that the

proliferation of brothels, the negligible number of raids and the failure of raids
are the result of the economic and political linkages between the prostitution
racketeers, the police and the local political bigwigs. Police officials from the vigi-
lance cell, crime branch, collect Rs 30 to Rs 50 per month as a bribe per brothel,
depending on the earnings of the brothel. It is said that brothels provide election
funds and vote banks to political persons in exchange for patronage. The attitude
that prostitution is a necessary social evil is used by the police, courts and society
at large to turn a blind eye to trafficking for prostitution. (1995)

In all court and police records in general, it is seen that the number of
arrests of prostitutes far outweigh those of the ‘racketeers’, because the
 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 115

police gain specifically when they arrest sex workers. Mass arrests of pros-
titutes help maintain police ‘arrest quotas’, while it appears to uphold a
hypocritical link between morality and public order, thereby boosting their
image in society. In reality, these arrests are used to extort money and/or
sexual favours from the prostitute, who is vulnerable to this authority fig-
ure and is therefore forced to appease his demands for money and/or sex.
Sometimes, the police are in league with pimps and brothel owners who
all make money at the expense of the sex worker. These pimps and brothel
owners in any case avoid arrest themselves through bribes and localised
political power.
There is no doubt that the police force, the strongest agent of the state and
the law in its avowed intention to curb prostitution and rehabilitate sex work-
ers, is solely responsible for much of the profession’s current ills. In a working
paper on the ‘anti-prostitute bias in Indian laws’, Jean D’Cunha alleges that
the proliferation of brothels, the negligible number of raids and the failure of
raids are the result of the economic and political linkages between the pros-
titution racketeers, the police and the local political bigwigs. Officials from
the vigilance cell of the crime branch of the local police, collect (relatively
small amounts of money as) Rs 30 to Rs 50 per month as a bribe per brothel,
depending on its earnings. It is said that brothels provide election funds and
vote banks to political persons in exchange for patronage. The attitude that
prostitution is a necessary social evil is used by the police, courts and society
at large to turn a blind eye to trafficking for prostitution (1995).
Crucially however, representatives of women’s organisations—the last
named constituent of the proposed committees—identify the concerns
about prostitution as a women’s (and therefore, a feminist) issue. But femi-
nist thinking, all over the world, has been particularly divided on the pros-
titution question and it has been difficult, in India as elsewhere, to emerge
with some sort of consensus about it.
Kari Kesler has succinctly outlined the problematic of prostitution for
feminists:

Prostitution is seen by many as the absolute embodiment of patriarchal male priv-

ilege, clearly disallowing feminist support or participation. However, prostitution
as an enterprise is composed of individual prostitute women. As a feminist, it is
also problematic to shun a group of women, particularly marginalised women.
Add to this the claim by some that feminist opposition to prostitution is simply
a politically correct version of controlling and policing a woman’s sexuality, and
prostitution emerges as a complex issue, to say the least. (2002: 219)

A popular stance condemns prostitution without condemning individual pros-

titute women, making ‘a crucial moral distinction between prostitutes as sex
workers and prostitution as a practice and institution’ (Overall, 1992: 708).
In the Indian context, if not in any other, this poses a peculiar problematic as
116 Brinda Bose

the impossibility of accepting sex work as work (both legally and socially) is
based on such high moral posturing. Most prostitution rights activists also
confine their demand to the decriminalisation of prostitution rather than its
legalisation, alleging that since the police and the law enforcement machinery
are the main problems for sex workers, releasing laws from the criminal
code would ensure that prostitutes escaped persistent police harassment. As
Meena Seshu, a member of the Sangli-based NGO Sangram puts it:

I cannot support the legalisation of anything that is rooted in oppression and

violence. Sex work cannot be termed as work. In other countries where there is
less stigma attached to prostitution, women can be in and out of the trade but in
India once you are in the profession it is a lasting taint. I can’t understand how
licensing can help women in prostitution.4

While there are multiple views on demands for legalisation and/or de-
criminalisation of prostitution in India, there is general support for the
establishment of self-regulatory boards controlled by sex workers. The
need for sex workers to ‘collectivise’, articulate and fight for their rights
is widely recognised. What they are looking for—better working condi-
tions, humane treatment by law enforcement officials, equal opportunities
for their children—is read as a demand for basic human rights, appar-
ently guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. However, their desire to be
accepted as citizens without stigma is clearly far more difficult to achieve.
Menon identifies the problems for sex work activists in India:

Common perceptions about women in prostitution need to be altered first if the

women are to live a dignified existence. The question is not whether to legalise or
decriminalise prostitution but whether the women will be allowed to live a secure
life without harassment of any sort and not be treated as criminals. That is the
bottom line. If the trade is legalised, the women could be subjected to all sorts of
external or state control.5

The Centre for Feminist Legal Research, New Delhi, in a review of the state
of prostitution in India undertaken in 1999, recommended giving statutory
recognition to some specific rights which included a provision for women
working in brothels to be entitled to all the benefits available under the
existing industrial laws and to the facilities and protections available to
workers under the existing labour laws, the right to safe working condi-
tions, the right to form collectives, trade unions, associations and have them
recognised under the law, apart from basic rights to education, privacy and
movement as well as redress mechanisms for their grievances.

4 Quoted in Meena Menon, ‘Legitimising Prostitution’ The Hindu, Chennai, India (14 June

1998).
5 Ibid.
 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 117

Calcutta’s Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (DMSC) has been a

signal project in India for the collectivisation of sex workers to articulate
and press for their demands. In her documentary film, Tales of the Night
Fairies (2002),6 Shohini Ghosh presents a moving evocation of sex workers’
struggles to form a collective and to chalk out for themselves a life that has
some colour and meaning. Their lives are grim, yet lit with humour and
empathy. In their own words, their needs are simple and touching:

We stay in the midst of society, yet we are outcastes … Our locality is earmarked
as a forbidden area so that no questions are asked. There are hundred and one
ways of extortion, even in broad daylight. Local toughs as well as petty officials
from police stations claim a share of the earnings of sex workers. They need not
filch, a threatening eye is enough—as we are the fallen ones. Midnight looting is
legitimate as these are brothels. When we are not even accepted as humans, can
we expect to be honoured as citizens of this country? The common rights and
privileges accorded to every other citizen are not applicable to us … Our endea-
vour is to institute our rights. (Minu Pal, 1998: 200–02)

This ongoing project to demand and institute sex worker rights as human
rights is focused on ‘voluntary’ prostitution and the assumption that in
such a case sex work is a personal choice and a private transaction—that
involves service and payment—between consenting adults. It aims at com-
plete decriminalisation of the activity: that voluntary relationships between
sex workers, pimps, brothel owners and landlords as well as the practice
of sex work must be removed from the scope of criminal law and be sub-
jected to general laws regarding work instead. Forced sex work is then
addressed as a separate issue, with the recommendation that all existing
legislation related to sex-trafficking be strengthened. The Calcutta Sex
Workers’ Manifesto of 1997 issued by the DMSC made a particular plea
for recognising the sexual and social morality implicit in the stigmatising of
sex work and the patriarchal instincts that make it imperative for a woman
to be denied any sexual agency outside of heteronormative, reproductive
roles pre-approved for her. The ongoing sex workers’ movement in India,
networking across the metropolitan centres of the country, now demands
rights that are specific to the reality of women in voluntary prostitution,
through decriminalisation and the assertion of basic human rights standards
in conditions of work. This includes the repeal of all legislation that victi-
mises the sex worker and does not recognise or acknowledge the possibility
of consensual relationships between sex workers and their clients, brothel

6 Tales of the Night Fairies. (Bengali/English subtitles/74 min/2002). Script and Direction:

Shohini Ghosh. Camera: Sabeena Gadihoke/Editing: Shohini Ghosh and Shikha Sen. Produced with
support from the Centre for Feminist Legal Research (New Delhi) and Mamacash (Amsterdam).
118 Brinda Bose

keepers and others related to the trade; the recognition of sex workers’
families as legitimate units that are entitled to state benefits such as educa-
tion and health care; the intervention of criminal law when sex workers
experience sexual abuse (like rape or coercion) in the same way that other
women are entitled to the recourse of the law; a complete de-linking of
trafficking and voluntary sex-work; the criminalisation and penalisation of
the prostitution of children; and the recognition and support of self regula-
tory boards instituted by sex workers to check violence within the industry
as well as from multiple agents of state machinery, that would eventually
help evolve genuine alternative economic and social support structures for
women who choose to remain in the profession as well as for those who
may choose to leave it.

CONCLUSION

As work along the guidelines formatted by the DMSC of Kolkata for sex
workers’ rights is taken up by other projects in various metropolitan centres
of India, especially in Mumbai and Delhi, concern about the rapid spread
of the HIV/AIDS virus is clearly now an immediate impetus for the pub-
lic, the government and the sex work industry to clean up its diverse acts.
According to a World Bank report of 2005:

In India, sexual transmission is responsible for 84 per cent of reported AIDS

cases. HIV-prevalence rates are highest among sex workers and their clients,
injecting drug users, and men who have sex with men (many of whom are married).
When surveyed, 70 per cent of commercial sex workers in India reported that
their main reason for not using of [sic] condoms was because their customers
objected.7

Since there are over 5.1 million people infected by HIV in India today (as
submitted by the same report) and no real inroads have been made yet in
checking the proliferation of this dreaded condition, the sex work industry
now needs, even in order to survive, to demand—among other rights—the
right to protect its own health. The state, instead of barking moral strictures
while exploiting their insecurities on various fronts, needs to assist the sex
workers to safeguard the health of the country that is at stake. If, in this
process, it accords them some amount of dignity in their profession while
they are in it, and allows them to eke their livelihoods from it without the
threat of daily violence, more good will emanate from the exercise than one
may possibly hope for.

7 ‘Preventing HIV/AIDS in India’. Report available on www.worldbank.org.in/wbsite/

external/countries/southasiaext/indiaextn, updated June 2005.

 Sex Work, Globalisation, Morality and the State in Contemporary India 119

REFERENCES

D’Cunha, J (1995) ‘The Anti-Prostitution Bias in Indian Laws’. Unpublished Paper

from the archives of the Centre for Feminist Legal Research (CFLR), New Delhi.
Doezema, J (1998) ‘Forced to Choose: Beyond the Voluntary v. Forced Prostitution
Dichotomy’ in K Kempadoo and J Doezema (eds), Global Sex Workers: Rights,
Resistance, and Redefinition (New York and London, Routledge) 34–51.
Kempadoo, K (1998) ‘Introduction: Globalising Sex Workers’ Rights’ in K Kempadoo
and J Doezema (eds), Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance and Redefinition
(New York and London, Routledge) 1–29.
Kesler, K (2002) ‘Is a Feminist Stance in Support of Prostitution Possible? An
Exploration of Current Trends’ 5(2) Sexualities 219–35.
Minu Pal, Sadhana Mukherji, Madhabi Jaiswal, Bachhu Dutta (The Mahila
Samanwaya Committee, Calcutta, India) (1998) ‘The Wind of Change is Whispering
at Your Door’ in K Kempadoo and J Doezema (eds), Global Sex Workers: Rights
Resistance and Redefinition (New York and London, Routledge) 200–04.
Overall, C (1992) ‘What’s Wrong with Prostitution? Evaluating Sex Work’ 17(4)
Signs 705–24.
Rajan, RS (1996) ‘The Prostitution Question(s): (Female) Agency, Sexuality and
Work’ in R Kapur (ed), Feminist Terrains in Legal Domains: Interdisciplinary
Essays on Women and Law in India (New Delhi, Kali for Women).
Sanghera, J (1997) ‘In the Belly of the Beast: Sex Trade, Prostitution and
Globalisation’ Discussion paper for the Asia and Pacific Regional Consultation
on Prostitution, Bangkok, Thailand, February (reproduced in Moving the Whore
Stigma compiled by GAATW and the Foundation for Women, Bangkok).
‘Sex Workers’ Manifesto’ (1997) Theme Paper of the First National Conference
of Sex Workers organised by Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, at Yuba
Bharati Krirangan (Salt Lake Stadium), Calcutta, 14–16 November.
Suppression of Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 can be found at: http://www.
commonlii.org/in/legis/num_act/soitiaga1956492/.
Venkatesh, S and Bhadauria, S (2000) (eds), Diary of the Dispossessed (Bangalore,
Books for Change).
World Bank (2005) ‘Preventing HIV/AIDS in India’. Report available on www.
worldbank.org.in/wbsite/external/countries/southasiaext/indiaextn, updated June
2005.
 Part III

Human Rights − Limits and Possibilities

 7
Global Rights, Local Harms:
The Case of the Human Rights
of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa
ESTHER KISAAKYE

INTRODUCTION

T
he theme of the workshop at which this chapter was first pre-
sented was ‘Women, Crime and Globalisation’. As such, it was
very relevant to the situation of women in developing countries.
For decades, women have been victims of crime committed by strangers
and/or state officials as well as by members of their families. As a result,
national governments have made some efforts to legislate against various
crimes against women and to bring the culprits to justice. These efforts
have been complemented by the international community, which has also
sought to hold individuals accountable for gross human rights violations
committed during war or situations of armed conflict. These efforts to
bring perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity to jus-
tice have been further intensified through the establishment of various
international war crimes tribunals and more recently the International
Criminal Court. However, this response to crimes committed against
women is based on the notion of individual responsibility. Indeed, this
notion constitutes crime as defined and understood in legal jurisprudence
and is central to the criminal justice system. By contrast, I shall argue
that the dynamics of the women-and-crime relation are quite complex,
requiring an analysis that looks beyond the traditional definition of crime
to embrace conduct which results in gross violation of human rights of
groups of persons, be they civil and political rights or economic, social
and cultural rights.
The concept of social harm, as developed within criminology and in
the Introduction to this volume, becomes very relevant here. It brings a
broad range of harms which apparently have little in common except
that they impact on women within the scope of critical criminological
124 Esther Kisaakye

understanding and theorising, thereby making possible new insights into

the origins of the problem and also indicating in a different way where
solutions to these problems might be found. I shall attempt to explore
these dynamics from the perspective of crimes committed against women
and the link between these crimes, globalisation and the failure to protect
their human rights.
My focus is on women living in developing countries, with specific
reference to sub-Saharan Africa. The gross violation of women’s human
rights in sub-Saharan Africa is commonplace. Yet to date, this has not
been matched with any corresponding effort to enhance the protection
or enforcement of these rights on the part of state governments and the
international community. This is so, in spite of the existing international
human rights framework, which imposes obligations on state parties to
ensure the elimination of gender inequality and to take all measures neces-
sary to address gender discrimination from all spheres of life. To explore
the plight of African women in the context of globalisation and account-
ability for the harms inflicted by human rights violations, I look at three
issues that separately and jointly impact on their human rights, namely,
armed conflicts and violence against women, HIV/AIDS and poverty. It is
intrinsic to my argument that, in the developing world at least, crimes and
harms in general or those against women in particular cannot be consid-
ered without taking into account the widespread violation of social as well
as political rights.

ARMED CONFLICTS AND VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Internal and cross-border armed conflicts abound across the continent of

Africa, with women and their children comprising a large number of vic-
tims. According to statistics from the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees (UNHCR) the number of civilian casualties has increased in
the decade 1995−2004 from five per cent to over 90 per cent. Women and
children constitute 80 per cent of the civilian casualties by small arms, far
outnumbering military casualties.1 This trend of violence continues to the
present day. For instance, in 2003 alone, there were widespread human
rights abuses in at least seven African countries, ranging from civilian
deaths by government forces and armed groups to mutilation, internal dis-
placement, rape and other forms of sexual violence (Amnesty International,
2003). Amnesty International reports such conflict in at least 19 nations of
sub-Saharan Africa. As has been noted in an Amnesty International Report
in 2003, these ‘forgotten’ conflicts in many countries in Africa continue to

1 See: UNHCR, REFUGEES magazine, available at http://www.ivillage.co.uk, last visited

on 24 May 2004.
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 125

take a heavy toll on human rights and human lives, particularly for women
and children.2
Armed conflicts result in massive displacement of women and children.
As noted above, it is estimated that women and children constitute between
75–80 per cent of the world’s 50 million refugees and persons displaced
from their own countries.3 In refugee and internally displaced peoples’
camps, women continue to be raped by either their fellow refugees or by
those put in charge of protecting them. Where they survive the bullets,
the rocket propelled grenades or helicopter guns, young girls and married
women may be abducted by armed rebels who either sell them into sexual
slavery or coerce them into becoming wives by raping them and forcing
them to bear and raise unwanted children—‘the children of hate’. The plight
of women in armed conflict is graphically demonstrated in the following
account:

We were completely unprepared for the searing magnitude of what we saw and
heard in the conflict and post-conflict areas we visited ... We knew that 17 percent
of displaced households surveyed in Sierra Leone had experienced sexual assaults,
including rape, torture and sexual slavery … at least 250,000—perhaps as many
as 500,000—women were raped during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. We
read reports of sexual violence in the on-going hostilities in Algeria, Myanmar,
Southern Sudan and Uganda. We learned of the dramatic violence in war zones,
and of the growing numbers of women trafficked out of war zones to become
forced labourers and forced sex workers … But knowing all this did not prepare
us for the horrors women described. Wombs punctured with guns. Women raped
and tortured in front of their husbands and children. Rifles forced into vaginas.
Pregnant women beaten to induce miscarriages. Fetuses ripped from wombs.
Women kidnapped, blindfolded and beaten on their way to work or school. We
saw the scars, the pain and the humiliation. We heard accounts of gang rapes,
rape camps and mutilation. (Rehn and Sirleaf, 2002)

Despite the toll that armed conflict exerts on the population in general
and the women and children and victims, the response of the international
community has been far from satisfactory. The internal conflict in northern
Uganda between the government and an armed group, the Lord’s Resistance
Army led by one Kony, has raged on for almost twenty years, leading to
massive loss of lives, rape, abduction and displacement. Ten years after the
Rwandan genocide, the internal conflict in the Darfur has been characterised
as the ‘unnoticed genocide’ where once again the international community

2 See also: BBC News, Amnesty Deplores African Rights Record, available at: http://news.

bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3749633.stm last visited on 26 May 2004 (giving highlights of the wide

range of human rights violations reported in the Amnesty Report in Burundi, Central African
Republic, Ivory Cost, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, Cameroon, Chad,
Eriteria, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Togo, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Zambia, South Africa and Swaziland).
3 Amnesty International (2003).
126 Esther Kisaakye

was slow to react and still lacks the required urgency and commitment.4
According to the UN estimates, at the time of writing this conflict had led
to the killings of thousands of civilians, the forced internal displacement of
700,000 people as well as some 130,000 refugees fleeing to neighbouring
Chad.5
Human rights violations committed against women in situations of
armed conflict raise an important question: is there not a need to look at
other perpetrators beyond the warring parties, at those who directly or
indirectly facilitate these armed conflicts so that they too can be brought
under the ambit of accountability for human rights violations? When we
have war crimes without known perpetrators, the criminological perspec-
tive on social harm encourages us to identify a responsibility that may be
remote from the crime scene; responsibility, that is, for creating a situa-
tion in which the occurrence of such crimes is known to become more
likely.

The Link between Armed Conflict, Poverty and Women’s

Vulnerability to HIV/AIDS

Poverty poses the biggest challenge to the realisation of women’s human

rights in Africa. Women constitute an estimated 70 per cent of the 1.2
billion people worldwide living in absolute poverty and surviving on less
than one dollar a day (UNAIDS, 2002: 19). At the national level, corruption
of political leaders and public officials often leads to the diversion of scarce
economic public resources into private hands. Often, these looted resources
are safely stacked away in banks or invested in properties in developed
countries. At the international level, unfair rules of global trade continue
to favour developed nations at the expense of the wellbeing of the millions
of people living in the developing countries and the women who in the less
developed countries are the producers of wealth from agricultural exports.
Economic deprivation of women forces them to turn to prostitution in their
home countries or to become vulnerable to human trafficking and promises
of a better life in the developed economies. Women in sub-Saharan Africa
will not enjoy their human rights unless there is a change in the political
order within their countries’ governance as well as a commitment on the
part of the international community to address the inequalities in the rules
of global trade (Monshipouri, 2001).

4 See Eric Reeves, ‘Unnoticed Genocide’ The Washington Post (25 February 2004) A25.
5 For background on the Darfur crisis, see International Crisis Group, Darfur Rising:
Sudan’s New Crisis, ICG Africa Report No 76 (Nairobi/Brussels, 25 March 2004,). http://
www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?l=1&id=2550\.
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 127

The HIV/AIDS pandemic has been acknowledged as a threat to develop-

ment and security.6 According to the 2001 global estimates of HIV/AIDS
cases around the world, 40 million adults and children were living with
HIV/AIDS out of whom 18.5 million were women. Of these, 28,500,000
were living in sub-Saharan Africa. The link between armed conflict, the
resultant displacement of communities and HIV/AIDS has also been well
documented (UNAIDS, 2002: 8). As Rehn and Sirleaf point out, not only
do conflict conditions exacerbate the epidemic, but women, already vulner-
able to HIV infection due to their low status and poverty, ‘become even
more vulnerable during conflict’ (2002: 35). Furthermore, sexual violence
and exploitation which women suffer during and after conflict directly and
indirectly contribute to the transmission of the HIV virus, through rape and
other psychosocial consequences such as depression and stigma, which can
lead women into further cycles of exploitation. Armed conflicts fuel the
spread of HIV/AIDS because not only do they disrupt health systems that
would ensure minimum health care for women, but also food production
and markets, which results in an inability to meet the basic food require-
ments and hence poor nutrition. Even when conflicts subside, ‘extremely
difficult economic and social conditions often leave many people unem-
ployed and unable to resume their normal community or family lives’ (Rehn
and Sirleaf, 2002: 51−53).
HIV/AIDS contributes to poverty while poverty increases vulnerability to
HIV infection. It is not uncommon for women and young girls in Africa to
engage in prostitution for the sake of economic survival. Even in situations
where they may be aware of the risks of infection with HIV and possible
ways to prevent transmission, women prostitutes may opt for unprotected
sex to earn some extra money. As a UNAIDS report noted in 2002, the
failure to control AIDS is ‘an index of inequitable development and poor
governance. Income inequality, gender inequality, labour migration, conflict
and refugee movement all promote the spread of HIV’ (2002: 19). Again it
is argued here that enhancing the poverty that in its turn generates or exac-
erbates an HIV epidemic may not be a ‘crime’ but is certainly a social harm.
Once again identification of perpetrators is located at the level of global
economic arrangements, as well as the level of nation states (Cain, 2006).

Globalisation–Uneven Impact

What is the relevance of globalisation to the violation of women’s human

rights in sub-Saharan Africa? Is there a direct or indirect connection
between globalisation and armed conflict, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and

6 See, eg UN Security Council Res 1308 (2000) (the resolution recognised the spread of

HIV/AIDS and STIs as potenti al threats to international peace and security).

128 Esther Kisaakye

poverty in Africa? Today, whatever definition one adopts, it is clear that

globalisation is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon that has had
far-reaching effects on all sectors of society. The term ‘globalisation’ has
acquired many emotive connotations and become a hotly contested issue
in current political discourse. In its broadest sense, globalisation represents
the ‘sum total of political, social economic, legal and symbolic processes
rendering the division of the globe into national boundaries increasingly
less important for the purpose of individual meaning and social decision’
(Garcia, 1999: 53). At one extreme, it is seen as an irresistible and benign
force for delivering economic prosperity to people throughout the world. At
the other, it is blamed as a source of all contemporary ills, including deepen-
ing inequality both within and among nation states (World Commission on
the Social Dimension of Globalisation, 2004; Monshipouri, 2001).
With trade, traffic and economic barriers lifted, globalisation has made
the world a ‘global village’, with multinational and transnational companies
accessing foreign markets and making breakthroughs to new markets with
every other passing day. For example, in the area of communication and
cable television networks, no area is too remote to tap. Thus for example,
it is not unusual to find the CNN Cable TV Network or the cellular phone
networks firmly entrenched in the remotest villages in Uganda where I live,
when within less than a kilometre, the population lacks the basic amenities
of life ranging from clean water, to toilet facilities or health services. Yet
while multinational and transnational companies are reaping the benefits of
globalisation, the fruits of these efforts are still as elusive as ever for many
people, especially women, living in the developing world. Globalisation
opens up the remotest corners of the least developed countries to multi-
national companies seeking to market their goods, but in the face of crisis,
many of these areas are too remote for the international community to
reach in order to avert human catastrophes.
Moreover, globalisation has also impacted on the trade in ‘violence
commodities’, enabling criminal activities to become increasingly trans-
national. In addition to the erosion of state sovereignty such that states
lack the power to intervene in these trades, developments in technology,
transportation, communication and information processes have all facili-
tated this process (Cao, 2004: 59−61). Examples of transnational crimes
include trafficking in women, estimated to affect millions of women
annually.
Globalisation has also facilitated the illegal dealing in the arms which
help fuel armed conflict. Many of the internal armed conflicts are centred
in areas endowed with natural resources or precious stones such as gold
and diamonds, which are exported to the developed countries. For example
in June 2000, the Security Council established a panel of experts on the
Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth
in the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate the extent to which
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 129

investment in the extractive industries fueled the war. In its October 2002
Report, the expert panel alleged that 85 companies were involved in busi-
ness activities that breached the operational guidelines for multinational
enterprises agreed by the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD, 12 Febuary 2004). Worth noting is the fact that
American, European and South African corporations featured highly on the
list. Some of the proceeds are then used to finance arms and ammunition
to continue with the war.
Most fundamentally, globalisation has contributed to widespread poverty
in sub-Saharan Africa. As the world continues to develop with techno-
logical breakthroughs, we have witnessed in the last several decades, a
widening gap between the ‘haves and the ‘have-nots’. Some two billion
people—particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and parts of
the former Soviet Union—are living in countries that are unable to increase
their integration with the world economy, or whose ratio of trade to GDP
has either remained flat or declined. As a result, these economies have con-
tracted, poverty has risen and education levels have risen less rapidly than
in the more ‘globalised’ countries (Chossudovsky, 1997; Collier and Dollar,
2002). So while globalisation has helped to further the economic interests
of the transnational companies and their governments, it has done little to
address the protection of the rights of women in the developing countries.
Indeed, as I shall now indicate, there is a case for saying that globalisation
has even exacerbated the situation of African women by directly contribut-
ing to the violation of their human rights.

GLOBALISATION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Since the mid twentieth century, the international community has striven
to set human rights standards providing equality for all. These efforts
started with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, followed by
the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, International
Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights through to CEDAW
and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. These instruments were fol-
lowed by regional efforts in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa. Many
of the renowned and celebrated international human rights conventions
guarantee rights to all persons without discrimination and usually create
two channels of enforcement and monitoring of human rights enshrined
therein. The first is the periodic reporting system that requires state parties
to report on actions they have taken to comply with the provisions of the
human rights conventions. For example, under the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights, state parties are required to submit a report to
the UN Secretary General within one year from the date of entry into force
of the Convention for the state party concerned and thereafter whenever
130 Esther Kisaakye

requested to do so by the Human Rights Committee.7 The second channel

for enforcement is through the ratification of an Optional Protocol to the
treaty. Under the protocols, an aggrieved national can file a petition against
his/her country where the country has violated any of the rights guaranteed
under the main human rights convention, and where domestic remedies
have either been exhausted or are non-existent. Both the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and CEDAW have optional proto-
cols to them, as has the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights.
In the last decade, we have witnessed a move by the international com-
munity to collectively recommit themselves to the realisation of human
rights for all, through a series of world conferences and the resultant
declarations of commitment focusing on, among others, the environment,
children, population and development, human rights, social development
and women’s rights. Yet the relationship between human rights and globali-
sation is a complex one. On the one hand, human rights can be seen as a
manifestation of globalisation inasmuch as they use language that creates
communities and affiliations that transcend borders. On the other, globali-
sation focuses on economic growth and progress, while the primary focus
of human rights is to protect human dignity (Anghie, 2000: 250). More
specifically, while the international human rights framework is intended to
encompass the protection of both the civil and political rights as well as the
economic, social and cultural rights, it is inadequate to deal with the human
rights challenges facing women in developing countries, arising from or
with globalisation.
Within the fantasy of a globalised world order where human rights are
proclaimed to be universal, inherent and inalienable, the lived experiences
of the people in the developed world, and especially the women who con-
tinue to bear the brunt of human rights violations, show that the globalised
human rights for all, proclaimed in numerous international human rights
instruments and declarations to date, remain a distant goal. The priorities
of governments of both the developed and the developing countries lie
more in strengthening national security than human rights, hence rendering
their expressed commitment to human rights to be more of political rheto-
ric than social reality. As an Amnesty International report noted in 2003,
‘Governments have spent billions to strengthen national security and the
“war on terror”. Yet, for millions of people, the real sources of insecurity
are corruption, repression, discrimination, extreme poverty and preventable
diseases’.

7 See Art 40, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the United

Nations General Assembly Res 2200 A (XXI) on 16 December 1966, entered into force on
23 March 1976. See also Art(s) 16 and 17, International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly Res 2200 A (XXI) on 16
December 1966, entered into force on 3 January 1976.
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 131

First, in Africa, as is the case in many developing countries, more

emphasis has been on civil and political rights. This emphasis was, among
other reasons, greatly influenced by the vested political and economic inter-
ests of the dominant states, which partly led to civil and political rights
being given dominance and priority over economic, social and cultural
rights (Oloka-Onyango, 1995). Yet, for the majority of women in Africa,
not only are their civil and political rights violated, but so also are their
economic, social and cultural rights. While many African governments
have ratified international human rights instruments and incorporated bills
of rights into their constitutions, they have not been keen to translate these
commitments into national legislation that would give effective remedies
not only to women, but to their citizens as a whole. This is perhaps not
surprising given the fact that quite often, the very governments that are
supposed to protect their citizens’ rights are the very ones engaged in the
violation of these rights through acts ranging from failure to apprehend
and punish those who violate women’s rights, to corruption and looting
the countries’ economic resources and depositing the moneys with financial
institutions or properties in developed countries, or through buying arms
to suppress any actual or perceived political dissidents who may challenge
their authority.
The international community too continues to place more emphasis on
civil and political rights in the narrow sense while ignoring the enjoyment
of social and economic rights in the developing countries. Hence, the
international community has played an accomplice role in the violation of
women’s human rights in Africa. As some scholars have argued, ratifica-
tion of human rights treaties seems to be less influenced by the ratifying
countries’ commitment to the values and norms embraced in the treaty
and more by an assessment of the cost of the commitment to the treaty in
terms of making their laws compliant and the likelihood of the costs being
realised (Hathaway, 2003). Hence, countries which do not necessarily
intend to change their laws or practices in order to give effect to human
rights may nevertheless ratify a convention in anticipation of the benefit
of boosting their reputation in the international community.
Perhaps the biggest threat that economic globalisation poses to human
rights enforcement is the weakening of the state at the expense of other non-
state actors (Monshipouri, 2001: 60). By calling for the free market and the
privatisation of most services in countries seeking foreign direct investment
(see Cain, chapter one, this volume) globalisation has the effect of making
the state in developing countries weak, with very limited control over the
emerging non-state actors, particularly the multinational corporations. This
is especially so since most of the privatisation and deregulation advocated
by the international financial institutions as part of the opening up of the
economy and the creation of a friendly foreign investment environment in
developing countries, is not usually accompanied by any built-in safeguards
132 Esther Kisaakye

to combat exploitation and violation of the rights of the citizens of those

countries. As has been argued by several scholars, globalisation has not only
resulted in the erosion of state sovereignty, but in a corresponding inability or
unwillingness to regulate the activities of non-state actors (Cao, 2004: 61).
Other shortcomings of the existing human rights framework derive from
the fact that the conventions were developed to hold states accountable to
their citizens for their actions or to punish those who commit human rights
violations and provide remedies to the victims. Although this standard
would on the face of it appear to encompass all actors, states are not held
accountable where their actions directly or indirectly violate or promote the
violations of the rights of the citizens of other countries. Furthermore, while
globalisation enables states and non-state actors such as multinational cor-
porations to have their ‘globalised’ trade or business interests protected, the
legal responsibility of international financial institutions and transnational
corporations is a matter that remains unresolved.
While human rights law targets the state and relies on it to promote and
protect the human rights of its citizens against its servants or private actors
within their jurisdiction, globalisation has greatly enhanced the power and
role of non-state actors in the form of international financial institutions and
transnational corporations in particular. Unfortunately, these actors have
not been held to any democratic accountability. Monshipouri (2001) notes,
for example, that the votes of IMF members are weighted in proportion to
their contributions. Quite often, it is the citizens of developing countries
who suffer from resultant violations. Yet, these countries’ ability to address
these violations has greatly been weakened in the era of globalisation.
The issue of accountability becomes quite visible when reviewed in the
context of the three issues of armed conflict, poverty and HIV/AIDS and
women’s human rights. With regard to armed conflicts in Africa for exam-
ple, the focus has always remained on the warring parties, who are usually
the government of the day and the insurgents. The Geneva Conventions
are frequently cited and invoked to implore the warring parties to ensure
the human rights of non-combatants and prisoners of war. While the focus
on the warring parties is justified, should accountability not extend to the
companies that manufacture and sell arms to rebel groups waging internal
armed conflicts such as the 18-year-old Ugandan civil war, or the recently
ended war in Angola, leading to death, to mutilations, rape and displacement
of communities and women as well? What about the governments where
these companies are incorporated that benefit from the taxes that these
arms companies pay? Can these multinational companies and the devel-
oped states continue to feign ignorance as to final destination of the arms
that they continue to manufacture from year to year when there has not
been any war fought in the Western world since Bosnia and the current Iraq
war? Accountability should not be difficult to establish since the destination
of the arms should be clearly foreseeable to the manufacturers and traders
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 133

in arms and their governments, which give them the licence to operate. In
addition, with all the advancement in technology, tracing the final destina-
tion of these arms to developing countries and areas of armed conflict is
certainly not out of reach for developed countries.
Similarly with regard to widespread poverty and disease in sub-Saharan
Africa, the main focus has often been on poor leadership and corruption
in the African countries. Why does the accountability ‘net’ not extend to
the World Bank and the IMF when they prescribe structural adjustment
programmes (SAPs) or put conditionalities on loans to poor countries
which lead to the removal of government subsidies in critical sectors such
as education and health and which result in increased maternal mortality
of women who cannot access hospitals during pregnancy and childbirth?
Or when they approve unjustified loans to undemocratic regimes that in
turn result in a huge debt burden and servicing, which in turn absorbs the
nation’s scarce economic resources?
It is therefore clear that in its present state, human rights law is too limited
in its scope and enforcement to be able to confront the human rights chal-
lenges posed by globalisation (Shelton, 2002). As Monshipouri (2001) says,
the global north tends to assert the universality of human rights standards
without practising what it preaches. These weaknesses open the way for the
criminal victimisation of women throughout the developing world.

The Way Forward for Human Rights in the Era of Globalisation?

Despite these noted shortcomings of the existing human rights framework

and the failure to address the negative effects of globalisation, human rights
do offer some positive notions in terms of which we can confront globali-
sation and build a better world for all human beings, particularly women.
Human rights values and concepts have attracted some degree of consensus
to make them a widely acceptable model embracing the powerful notions of
universality, respect for human dignity and above all equality of all persons.
However, there is a need to re-conceptualise and broaden the concept
and definition of human rights by supplementing it with the concept of
social harm where there is apparent culpability for failure to enforce. These
responsibilities encompass actors that currently fall out of the net as a
result of globalisation. Only then will human rights effectively play the role
of enhancing the quality of life for all people. This will go a long way to
strengthening the existing human rights enforcement machinery at interna-
tional level that has been critiqued for being weak and slow. There is also
need to act to ensure that the human rights framework brings on board the
reciprocal values of transparency and accountability. These values need to
be incorporated in standards that apply to the developed countries in the
same way as is frequently demanded of developing countries. Developed
134 Esther Kisaakye

countries too need to be held accountable where they continue to bless

undemocratic or corrupt regimes, engage in the selling of arms to warring
parties or simply fence-sit where they do not perceive their interests to be
at stake. As observed earlier, it is these conditions that fuel armed conflict
and provide fertile ground for poverty and devastating diseases such as
HIV/AIDS to thrive, all leading to gross violation of women’s human rights
in sub-Saharan Africa.
With globalisation, it should no longer be enough to rate a country’s
human rights record by simply looking at its ‘internal house’—the state
vis à vis its citizens. Countries should also be rated on their foreign policies
and practices vis à vis the impact of these policies on the other countries
they do business with. In addition, it is high time developed countries took
responsibility for the human rights violations of non-state actors such as
transnational companies based in their jurisdiction, even, or perhaps par-
ticularly, if those violations affect citizens of other countries.

CONCLUSION

The realisation of women’s human rights and the elimination of the crimes
and harms that result from their breach require a holistic approach that
takes into account not only their civil and political rights, but their economic,
social and cultural rights. Beyond the holistic approach, the realisation
of human rights also requires that the wider economic processes not
only at international level, but at national and community level are taken
into account and reformed. These wider economic processes pose new
challenges as a result of globalisation, challenges that render the existing
human rights framework inadequate to respond to the issues confronting
African women and the protection of their rights. Hence what is required
is a re-examination and re-conceptualisation of the current human rights
framework and enforcement machinery set up there to ensure that in this
‘globalised’ world, the accountability of states is enhanced to cover not
only their citizens, but citizens of developing countries. Furthermore, the
new powerful non-state actors need to be brought into the full ambit of
the human rights enforcement machinery by imposing additional duties of
enforcement on the states where they are incorporated in order to ensure
accountability to the whole world citizenry. Only in these ways will contem-
porary forms of crimes of the powerful be brought under control.
As one writer has rightly observed, ‘the future of human rights law and
its compelling claims to protect the inalienable dignity of all human beings
will be significantly shaped and challenged by this encounter between
human rights and globalisation’ (Anghie, 2000: 248). It is only when the
women in the developing world enjoy their lives and are freed from war,
internal conflict, public and private violence, preventable poverty and disease
 Human Rights of Women in Sub-Saharan Africa 135

that the whole world will be able truly to celebrate the globalisation of
our world and all the benefits that should come along with it. Until then,
human rights will remain more of a concept than a reality and globalisation
will only benefit the privileged few, and the women of sub-Saharan Africa
and their children will remain victims of the crimes of both war and peace
on an unprecedented scale.

REFERENCES

Amnesty International (2003) 2002 in Focus, Conflict and Impunity in Africa,

available at http://web.amnesty.org/web/web.nsf/print/2003-focus2002_2-eng,
last visited on May 25 2004.
Anghie, A (2000) ‘Time Present and Time Past: Globalisation, International
Financial Institutions, and the Third World’ 32(2) New York University Journal
of International Law and Politics 243−90.
Cain, M (2006) ‘Is the Spoon Long Enough: On Global Rights, Local Harms and
Crime’. Plenary paper presented to the World Congress of Sociology (Research
Committee on Deviance and Social Control) Durban, South Africa, July 2006.
Cao, L (2004) ‘The Transnational and Sub-national in Global Crimes’ 22(1)
Berkeley Journal of International Law 59–97.
Chossudovsky, M (1997) The Globalisation of Poverty (London, Zed Books).
Collier, P and Dollar, O (2002) Globalisation, Growth, and Poverty: A World Bank
Policy Report (Oxford, Oxford University Press).
Garcia, F (1999) ‘The Global Market and Human Rights: Trading Away the Human
Rights Principle’ 25(1) Brook Journal of International Law 51−97.
Hathaway, O (2003) ‘The Cost of Commitment’. Centre for Law, Economics and
Public Policy Research Paper 273, http://www.papers.ssrn.com/abstract=394282.
Monshipouri, M (2001) ‘Promoting Universal Human Rights: Dilemmas of
Integrating Developing Countries’ 4(25) Yale Human Rights and Development
Law Journal 25−60.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ‘Illegal
Exploitation of Natural Resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo:
Public Statement of CIME’ 12 Febuary 2004. http://www.oecd.org/document/6/
0,2340,en_2649_34889_27217798_1_1_1_1,00.html
Oloka-Onyango, J (1995) ‘Beyond the Rhetoric: Reinvigorating the Struggle for
Economic and Social Rights in Africa’ 26(1) California Western International
Law Journal 1−73.
Rehn, E and Sirleaf, E (2002) Progress of the World’s Women 2002: Women, War,
and Peace—an Independent Expert’s Assessment (New York, UNIFEM).
Shelton, D (2002) ‘Protecting Human Rights in A Globalised World’, 25 BC
International and Comparative Law Review 273.
UNAIDS Report on the Global AIDS epidemic 2002, http://www.unaids.org/en/.
World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation (2004) A Fair
Globalisation: Creating Opportunities for All (Geneva, ILO) http://www.ilo.org/
public/english/wcsdg/docs/report.pdf.
 8
The Globalisation of International
Human Rights Law, Aboriginal
Women and the Practice of
Aboriginal Customary Law
MEGAN DAVIS

I
ndigenous human rights advocacy in Australia has as its foreground
a lengthy history of dispossession of traditional lands, assimilation,
control policies and racial discrimination since the commencement
of the British colonisation process. The United Nations’ discourse on
universal human rights has been integral to indigenous Australia’s advo-
cacy of the recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’
rights within the Australian state. As such, it is a global discourse with
a local and particular reach. Yet there is a constant tension between the
individual nature of human rights as fashioned in international law and
the collective nature of aboriginal rights. Moreover, Aboriginal women
are rarely guaranteed human rights protection and, as I shall argue,
they suffer from the lack of resolution between the continued practice
of aboriginal customary law and the Australian legal system. Because of
this, Aboriginal women have had increasingly to deal with what we call
‘bullshit law’—the distortion by Aboriginal men of traditional customary
law to construct arguments which justify or mitigate their crimes against
Aboriginal women.
This chapter examines how the globalisation of human rights has influ-
enced the Australian legal and political system specifically in relation to
indigenous Australia. It also surveys common law jurisprudence regarding
the intersection of aboriginal customary law and the Australian legal sys-
tem, focusing on sentencing decisions that highlight an obdurate judicial
trend explicitly disqualifying Aboriginal women from human rights pro-
tections that other Australians enjoy. Finally, I will consider the crisis of
violence against women in aboriginal communities.
138 Megan Davis

THE GLOBALISATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS LAW: INDIGENOUS

PEOPLES AND THE UNITED NATIONS

Human rights discourse and its legal framework of universal rights emerged
with renewed vigour and relative global solidarity out of the tragedies of the
Second World War. In Australia it contributed to the development of human
rights legislation and consequently judicial awareness and increased commu-
nity cognisance of human rights. This is particularly significant for Australia
because its legal system has no Bill of Rights enumerating the fundamental
rights of all Australian citizens and it has been argued that the Australian
Constitution could potentially facilitate legislation that discriminates to the
detriment of groups on the basis of race (Williams, 2004: 22).
The influence of international human rights law led to the Racial
Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) and was integral to the recognition of
aboriginal land rights in the landmark decision in Mabo. In Mabo the High
Court of Australia found native title to exist in the Australian legal system
and that the British and settler notion of Australia being terra nullius or
land belonging to no-one at the time of colonisation was a legal fiction.
Furthermore, with the globalisation of the United Nations system imbu-
ing municipal legal systems with greater emphasis on rights, indigenous
peoples have successfully engaged in the process of articulating, lobbying
for and promoting unique indigenous rights within the state including col-
lective rights such as language, rights to land and resources and recogni-
tion of the importance of maintaining traditions and customs. According
to United Nations’ estimates, there are more than 300 million indigenous
people worldwide in 70 different countries and since the 1970s indigenous
peoples had been working collectively at an international level to lobby the
United Nations to establish an indigenous peoples’ working group in which
specific indigenous issues could be raised. This led the United Nations
Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of
Minorities to commission a comprehensive study of discrimination against
indigenous peoples in 1971. Ten years later, the United Nations created the
Working Group on Indigenous Populations (hereafter ‘WGIP’) and there
are now four mechanisms within the system: the WGIP, a Commission
on Human Rights Working Group elaborating a Draft Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Special Rapporteur on the situation
of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people and the
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues based in New York.
Through these mechanisms indigenous peoples have been able to high-
light the injustices that have been suffered by them within their states as
well as the inequity that has been entrenched as a result of successive waves
of imperialism, colonisation and now, trade liberalisation. These issues
include the dispossession of lands, territories and resources; the prohibition
on the use of language; the removal of children from their families and the
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 139

continuing importance of the practice of culture and customary practices.

Recently, advocacy has moved outside the more traditional forums of the
human rights system to the trade system where indigenous peoples have been
utilising the dispute resolution processes of the World Trade Organisation
(WTO) that are available to non-governmental organisations. For example,
Canadian Aboriginal peoples have made the argument, based on the WTO
General Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures, that the
failure to adequately recognise and protect aboriginal land title equates
to an unfair advantage for Canadian lumber producers over international
competitors because they do not have to pay fees to the traditional owners
of the land as their international competitors do (Davis, 2003: 14).
The incorporation of human rights into domestic legal systems has also
been integral to the improvement of indigenous peoples’ rights in Australia
where the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (hereafter, RDA), the
Northern Territory Land Rights Act and the High Court’s recognition of
native title were all ‘firmly grounded in, if not derived from, international
law’ (Dodson, 1998: 21). In addition, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission (ATSIC) was one of the most prominent indigenous
NGOs participating at United Nations meetings. The Foundation for
Aboriginal Islander Research Action (FAIRA) also forged a strong reputa-
tion in lobbying at the United Nations. FAIRA has been instrumental in
the campaign for repatriation of human remains from overseas institutions
such as the British Museum and, together with ATSIC, was responsible for
a damaging communication to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) concerning the discriminatory impact of the Native
Title Act Amendment Act 1998 (Cth) on Aboriginal people. As a result,
CERD placed Australia under its early warning/urgent action procedure—a
procedure used to monitor developing serious human rights violations.
CERD’s condemnation of Australia for its breach of its obligations—a
first such condemnation for a Western liberal democracy—prompted the
federal government to threaten to withdraw from the human rights system
(Marks, 2002: 19). Yet this experience confirmed for Indigenous peoples
the importance of international law in making the Australian government
accountable.
From ATSIC’s point of view, its international advocacy was essential for
keeping all Australians informed of global human rights issues and provid-
ing an indigenous Australian voice. But in 2003, ATSIC was abolished by
the federal conservative government which had always objected to a sepa-
rate electoral structure for indigenous peoples. It was replaced with a com-
mittee of government appointees, drastically reducing aboriginal advocacy
internationally. As ATSIC had funded numerous indigenous NGOs across
Australia to participate at the international level, the sudden elimination of
representation and participation of indigenous NGOs at the United Nations
significantly impacted on the way in which indigenous Australians could
140 Megan Davis

raise indigenous issues in the United Nations system. Significantly though,

other NGOs, notably Oxfam, the National Association of Community
Legal Centres (NACLC) and Australian churches have funded individuals
to attend UN meetings and, in an important development, NACLC has
funded Aboriginal women from Aboriginal women’s legal services to raise
Aboriginal women’s issues at the United Nations Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues in New York.

THE AUSTRALIAN LEGAL SYSTEM, HUMAN RIGHTS

AND ABORIGINAL CUSTOMARY LAW

In the one hundred years since federation, Australia— the only Commonwealth
nation without a Bill of Rights—has been described as living a century of
reluctance about rights (Charlesworth, 2002: 35).1 Significantly, the histori-
cal debates on the Australian Constitution clearly show that human rights
were omitted from the text of the Constitution so that the states could
continue to discriminate on the basis of race. As the Premier of Western
Australia stated at the 1898 Constitutional Convention, it was ‘of no use for
us to shut our eyes to the fact that there is a great feeling all over Australia
against the introduction of coloured persons’ and he, for one, did not want
any clauses passed that ‘would undo what is about to be done in most of the
colonies and what has already been done in Western Australia in regard to
that class of persons’ (quoted in Williams, 2004: 21).
Federalism then, provided the most significant—and the most manifestly
racist—challenge to the incorporation of international law with respect to
human rights. It was not until the decision in Koowarta in 1982 that the
High Court confirmed the Commonwealth’s capacity to pass laws with
respect to external affairs thus binding Australia to international human
rights obligations. In this decision the history of the United Nations and
the importance of human rights and the obligations of states like Australia
were discussed extensively.
Other notable developments include Australia’s incorporation of the
International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
1965 (ICERD) into the Australian legal system and the RDA. Of all groups
in Australia society, indigenous peoples have probably benefited the most
from international human rights law. Even so there has always been ten-
sion between individual human rights and collective rights which is most
apparent in the context of the practice of aboriginal customary law. But
while there have been numerous inquiries and reports into the relationship

1 All attempts to pass a Bill of Rights for the Commonwealth of Australia have failed. The

Australian Capital Territory was the first jurisdiction to enact a Bill of Rights (Human Rights
Act 2004 (ACT)). The state of Victoria followed in 2006.
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 141

between aboriginal customary law and the municipal legal system, few have
focused specifically on the impact of custom on Aboriginal women.
Law reformers have long been preoccupied with the question of how
aboriginal law intersects with the Australian legal system, yet procedural
recognition of aboriginal law has been piecemeal and haphazard. None of
the recommendations made in the Australian Law Reform Commission’s
1986 report on the recognition of aboriginal customary laws have been
implemented, Australian legislatures having proved to be reluctant to for-
mally recognise aboriginal law.
One major stumbling block is the popular misconception of aboriginal
law as allowing aboriginal communities to relive imagined halcyon days of
aboriginal culture, practising brutal, traditional punishment such as wound-
ing or tribal payback or child marriage (Davis and McGlade, 2004: 9).
Such misconceptions not only obfuscate the dynamic nature of custom-
ary law which encompasses in a changing and organic way a broad and
complex set of rules governing social relationships, economic rights, land
ownership, wildlife conservation, land management and intellectual prop-
erty rights; they are also deleterious to law reform initiatives. Aboriginal
law, however understood, has been taken into account in varying contexts
in the white Australian legal system, including dispute resolution, intestacy,
child adoption and marriage. For example, the Aboriginal Land Rights
(Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth) gives Aboriginal people the right to
use land based on:

the body of traditions, observances, customs and beliefs of Aboriginals or of a

community or group of Aboriginals, and includes those traditions, observances,
customs and beliefs as applied to particular persons, sites, areas of land, things
or relationships.

In Western Australia, the Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority Act 1972

(WA) takes aboriginal custom into account in the context of intestacy.
Indeed, legislation exists in different states across a diverse number of areas
such as adoption, marriage and intestacy laws.
Importantly, such developments have been supported by the United
Nations. In 2005, a UN-sponsored meeting of ‘experts’ on indigenous peoples
and the administration of justice held that states should help to restore
indigenous legal practices in cooperation with indigenous legal experts inas-
much as this collaboration is more likely to result in the development of an
impartial system of justice that is in full compliance with international human
rights law and, crucially, particularly in relation to women’s rights.2

2 Report on the Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples and the Administration of Justice

(Madrid, 12−14 November 2005) E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/2004/6 (10 June 2004) United Nations
Seminar, 13.
142 Megan Davis

THE STATE OF PLAY: ABORIGINAL WOMEN AND

THE AUSTRALIAN LEGAL SYSTEM

An oft-quoted statistic from the Australian Bureau of Statistics about

aboriginal incarceration in Australia is that we constitute three per cent
of the population yet make up 20 per cent of the prison population. What
is less noticed is that Aboriginal women have a higher incarceration rate
and higher rate of recidivism than any other social group in the Australian
community. Their treatment in prison is also appalling. A report published
by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 2002 noted
that the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) had
focused almost exclusively on the circumstances of Aboriginal men. Of the
99 deaths investigated, only 11 were the deaths of women and none of the
recommendations made by the Royal Commission in 1991 had specifically
addressed the circumstances of indigenous women (Jonas, 2002: 136). It
noted too, ‘a consistent pattern indicating that incarcerated indigenous
women have been victims of assault and sexual assault at some time in
their lives’ (Jonas, 2002: 149). The appalling incarceration rate in Australia
has not escaped the attention of international human rights watchdogs. For
example, in 2000, the increase in rates of incarceration of racialised women
in industrialised and developing societies was noted with concern by the
Expert Committee of the United Nations Division for the Advancement of
Women:

Incarceration policies have been addressed by racial justice advocates but this
advocacy has focused predominantly on men. In many countries, racialised
women including indigenous women, represent the fastest growing segment of the
prison population (United Nations, 2000).

Unsurprisingly, incarceration rates for indigenous women have increased more rapidly
than those for men since the Royal Commission, resulting in family disruption, inabil-
ity to fulfil customary and community responsibilities and dislocation from services
such as education, health and housing.3 A lack of indigenous-specific services such
as post-release programmes also contributes to this situation of gross disadvantage.
Several factors contribute to this bleak situation, ranging from over-policing, racism
and poverty to an entrenched societal indifference to the impact of colonisation
upon indigenous women. The situation is also entrenched by the culture of dis-
respect that is embedded in Australian public institutions (Davis, 2006: 137). This
culture manifests itself in institutional indifference toward Indigenous peoples issues
and this particularly evident when it comes to Aboriginal women.

3 Eg in New South Wales in October 2002, indigenous women constituted 2% of the

Australian population yet accounted for 30% of the total female population in custody. In the
Northern Territory women are 26% of the female population yet account for 57% of the total
female prison population. Aboriginal women are also over represented as victims of violent
crime in most state jurisdictions (Jonas, 2002).
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 143

Indifference to the continuing impact of colonisation on the lives of Aboriginal

women today is still very apparent, as Jennifer Neilsen observes:

That an Aboriginal woman may experience discrimination precisely because she

is an Aboriginal woman is beyond the grasp of discrimination laws which do not
recognise that race and gender may have a combined effect on the experience of
an Aboriginal woman (2004: 28).

Moreover, not only are the issues of indigenous women veiled behind
the broad and amorphous definition of ‘indigenous peoples’, but serious
issues such as domestic violence are relegated to the private sphere. In the
context of highly masculinist indigenous politics, indigenous women often
do not want to discuss these issues because of the shame it brings on the
family. As a result, issues such as land, sovereignty, self-determination
and the right to development become the neutral policy objectives that
the male dominated indigenous political leadership pursues, based on an
assumption that the experiences and needs of Aboriginal women and men
are identical.
Solicitors at Australia’s only indigenous women’s specific legal service—
the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Women’s Legal Information
Service—have attributed the marginalisation of indigenous women in the
Australian legal system to barriers in accessing legal aid, lack of appro-
priate support mechanisms for indigenous women in key agencies, lack of
cultural sensitivity and awareness by professionals working in family law
and poor outcomes for indigenous women in the Family Court (Ruska
and Turner, 2001). The flaws of the legal system are exacerbated by the
fact that the aboriginal legal services themselves discriminate against
Aboriginal women in giving preference to male Indigenous offenders
over Indigenous female victims. In its report, Equality Before the Law:
Justice for Women, the Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry
found that:

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services do not currently benefit
women and men equally. First, most services implement a policy of not acting
for either party in a matter between two indigenous clients. Second, most legal
services give priority to defending criminal cases over other matters. On the face
these practices appear gender neutral but their effect is to indirectly discriminate
against indigenous women (ALRC, 1994: 5.31).

As the Sex Discrimination Commissioner observed in her submission to the

Northern Territory Inquiry into Aboriginal Customary Law in 2003, this
prioritisation of defendants in criminal cases meant that women victims of
violence were ‘perceived during consultations as often having difficulty in
obtaining legal advice where the offender is an Aboriginal man’ (Goward,
2003).
144 Megan Davis

Thus while in domestic violence cases involving Aboriginal people,

aboriginal legal services will prioritise representing the male offender,
there are other areas of law where injustice for Aboriginal women is also
entrenched, for example land rights. Bell writes about a land claim inves-
tigated under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976
(Cth) made by the Kaititja and Alyawarra people in which it was alleged
that the officers met primarily with men and only asked women for infor-
mation regarding genealogies and traditional foods (Bell, 1984: 29). Also
the diminishing of the spiritual and cultural beliefs of Ngarrindjeri women
in Kartinyeri v the Commonwealth—the Hindmarsh Island Bridge case—
further highlights Aboriginal women’s marginalisation,

The same colonial processes which have left women such as the Ngarrindjeri
most vulnerable to ‘spiritual dispossession’ have been reinvented in order to deny
the legitimacy of their claims. The uncertainties and contradictions surrounding
the ‘women’s business’ in this case have been used as ‘proof’ that the women
are lying, rather than as proof of the dislocating effect of colonisation on such
knowledges (Bourke, 1997: 349).

This is illustrative of that fundamental disrespect of public institutions that

Dodson and Strelein have alluded to in ‘the ongoing tolerance of disrespect
that maintains racism as a core value of Australian society’ which manifests
itself in the ongoing oppression of Aboriginal women (Dodson and Strelein,
2001: 3).

A Critique of International Law

The failure to acknowledge the different needs and issues of indigenous

women and men is repeated throughout international law. Most alarmingly,
this flaw appears in the text of the United Nations Draft Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which will be the first UN instrument
enumerating the rights of indigenous peoples (outside International Labour
Organisation instruments). The paucity of feminist critique of the draft
declaration is surprising given its fundamentally flawed assumptions about
the socio-economic status of Aboriginal men and women, assumptions that
mask gendered differentials in legal and political systems affecting both
opportunity and access.
First, the draft Declaration provides for the recognition of aboriginal cus-
tomary law and ‘the right of aboriginal people to manifest, practice, develop
and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies’.
This particular article is worrying because while these customary systems
are intended to be ‘in accordance with internationally recognized human
rights norms’, without an itemisation of such norms, there is no specific
recourse against such discrimination (Bigge and von Briesen, 2000: 299).
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 145

The protection of aboriginal customary law in Australia is vital for those

Aboriginal people who continue to practice and teach custom in rural and
remote areas on traditional land. It is equally important for those Aboriginal
people whose custom and tradition is essentially a modern evolving
construct—a hybrid of experiences of mythologies that are the result of
displacement, dysfunction, and dispossession, as well as ‘tradition’.
Because many Aboriginal people were subjected to state policies of
assimilation and removal as well as relocation from their families and
traditional lands, this has contributed to a state of cultural confusion for
many Aboriginal people in Australia and so the right to manifest, practice,
develop and teach is important. However, the reality is that indigenous
women globally have been the victims of corrupted customary practices and
customary culture that has resulted in the marginalisation of women and
manifested itself in egregious violence toward them.
The draft Declaration specifically mentions women in only one article,
Article 22, ascribing special measures for economic and social conditions:
‘Particular attention shall be paid to the rights and special needs of indig-
enous elders, women, youth, children and disabled persons’. The sole specific
consideration of women in the text of the draft Declaration raises important
questions about the assumptions made by the drafters of text and inter-
national law about indigenous women within the state. Article 22 reinforces
dominant stereotypes in international law about women and women’s
experiences. Women are considered only in the context of indigenous elders,
youth, children and disabled persons. As Iorns (1993) points out, the focus
on ‘special needs’ perpetuates ‘the stereotype of woman as victim, unable to
defend herself or cater to those needs herself, and thus unable to take control
over her own life’. It would be far preferable to focus on ‘the positive rights
of women to participation in decision-making and government and thereby
to focus on the structures that perpetuate their oppression’ (Iorns, 1993).
The underlying rationale of the official drafting reinforces indigenous
women’s existence and specific rights as calibrated according to patriarchal
notions of vulnerability within a society. The text can be seen as formalising
at international law the types of inequalities and marginalisation Aboriginal
women experience in liberal democracies. It is all very well for the draft
Declaration to recognise that:

Indigenous peoples have the right to have access to and prompt decision through
mutually acceptable and fair procedures for the resolution of conflicts and disputes
with States, as well as to effective remedies for all infringements of their individual
and collective rights. Such a decision shall take into consideration the customs,
traditions, rules and legal systems of the Indigenous peoples concerned.

But as we have seen, Aboriginal women do not have equal access to legal
remedies systems in Australia. Legal aid, for example, is generally siphoned
146 Megan Davis

to criminal matters. This often results in the situation where an Aboriginal

male defendant is represented over the Aboriginal woman applicant.
Finally, the right to self-determination is prescribed in the text of the draft
Declaration, but no consideration is given to the question of the capacity
of indigenous women for economic and political empowerment, given their
limited opportunities to participate in decision-making.

Exclusions−Lessons from ATSIC Governance

The former peak political body for indigenous peoples in Australia, the
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) provides an
excellent example of the way in which Aboriginal women are excluded
from political decision-making. ATSIC, an independent statutory authority
established by the Commonwealth government in 1990, embodied a clas-
sic minimalist liberal democratic structure in that aboriginal participation
extended only to voting at the ballot box. Elections were said to have been
‘full, free and fair’ (Sanders, 2003: 4). But were they? Women have been
under-represented from the start.4 The general trend has been a steady
reduction in the participation of women in indigenous politics since 1990,
particularly after the minister’s power to appoint a commissioner ceased.
According to a report made in 2000 noting the discrepancy in gender
participation and representation in ATSIC elections, ‘women do not seem
to be successful in being elected nor in attaining higher elected ATSIC
office’ (Sanders, Taylor and Ross, 2000: 16). The last chairman of ATSIC,
hampered by sexual assault allegations himself, declared his final election
to be ‘a victory for the Aboriginal community’ and he thanked ‘all those
Aboriginal females’ who had voted, saying: ‘You’ve given us a mandate,
you’ve returned the traditional role to Aboriginal men’ (Clark cited in
Jopson, 2002).
During its final years, ATSIC prioritised the ‘rights agenda’ that ranged
from targeting United Nations committees in international human rights
law to advocacy within Australia for a treaty between the state and indig-
enous peoples. Yet the neutrality of ATSIC’s rights objectives masked the
gendered reality of Aboriginal women’s already disadvantaged position
and the way in which rights have a different impact on women compared
with men. One Aboriginal woman despaired, asking how black Australians
could ‘scream for equality when we can’t even give equality to our own
women?’ (Marks, 2001).

4 In 1990, there were only two women on the ATSIC Board of Commissioners (both

appointed by the minister); in 1991−93 there were four women (two appointed by the minis-
ter); in 1994−96 there were six women (two appointed by the minister) and in 1996−99 two
women were elected to the board. In the penultimate term, five of 18 commissioners were
women (all elected). And in the final term, only one of the 18 commissioners was a woman.
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 147

While there had always been a healthy scepticism within the indigenous
community toward ATSIC, which had been seen as a colonising tool, what
needs to be emphasised is that even colonising tools have a differing impact
on men and women:

Colonising practices embedded within decolonising institutions must not be

understood simply as negligible side effects of essentially benign endeavours but
rather the embeddedness may conceal, naturalise, or marginalise continuing colo-
nising practices. (Bird Rose, 1996: 28)

Male domination of indigenous politics is a case in point.

Aboriginal Women, Distorted Customary Law and the Australian

Judiciary

Despite the promise of Mabo, indigenous peoples have had little success in
forging a place within Australian public institutions or advocating for law
reform in areas such as protection of cultural activities. This status quo
will not alter as long as the Conservative prime minister continues to hold
to ‘the principle’ that no group in the Australian community should have
rights that are not enjoyed by another group. This view encapsulates the
prism through which indigenous policy is contemporarily viewed by the state
under Conservative governance. It reflects the principle of formal equality
that asserts the same treatment for all Australians regardless of the exigencies
of socio-economic status, despite such exigencies actually being the trigger
for differential treatment. It would be of greater advantage if indigenous
Australians could move beyond being mere beneficiaries of ‘special measures’
to being recognised as a distinct cultural minority in their own right.
The clearest example of the inertia in relation to indigenous Australian
legal issues that has led to injustice and the prolonging of disadvantage
is that of the conflict of customary law and Aboriginal women’s human
rights—a conflict that arises frequently in the Northern Territory and
Western Australia, areas where traditional law is still widely practised.
The fundamental issue is that while Australia is signatory to many interna-
tional human rights instruments, the failure to formally institute processes
to filter the acceptance of traditional law in evidence has led to the use of
distorted customary law to mitigate offences and justify the sexual assault
of Aboriginal women.
The sharpest controversies arise in relation to the sentencing of
Aboriginal men where courts take into account evidence of aboriginal cus-
tomary law. Frequently the evidence of Aboriginal men will be supported
by anthropologists. In some cases the crime may be mitigated because it
was committed under traditional law. In a few cases, the judiciary has given
lighter sentences because of the more harsh indigenous punishment such
148 Megan Davis

as spearing for a crime such as murder, or in other cases the judiciary may
hand down a harsher sentence to prevent the Aboriginal man from being
punished by his tribe. The fact that there will be further punishment under
indigenous law can lead to a variety of considerations such as mitigation in
sentencing or refusal to grant bail.
To take some examples: in the 1976 case of Sydney Williams, the
Aboriginal defendant had murdered a woman after allegedly being taunted
by the woman who had been disclosing customary secrets. Williams was
later speared through the thigh. The sentencing judge took into account the
fact that the community wanted to deliver traditional punishment and so
Williams’ sentence of two years was suspended conditional on his receiving
12 months of tribal instruction from elders. The Australian Law Reform
Commission, noting this decision, found that Williams then went on to commit
assaults on a number of other Aboriginal women (ALRC, 1986: 492).
In the 1997 case of Barnes, the judge refused bail on the grounds that
customary punishment would be meted out on returning to the community.
In that case however the sentencing judge, Mildren J, suspended the balance
of the four-year prison sentence in the knowledge that Barnes would be
punished on returning to his community. Decisions such as these highlight
‘the problems of predicting the course of traditional dispute resolution
procedures which are flexible and dependent upon changing circumstances
as well as being open to misunderstanding by lawyers’ (McRae, Nettheim,
Beacroft, and McNamara, 2003: 549).5

‘Bullshit Law’

Aboriginal lawyer, Sharon Payne, has described ‘bullshit law’ as ‘a distor-

tion of traditional law used as a justification for assault and rape of women’
(1993). Bullshit law is also known as distorted customary law and relates
to ‘the sort of assault on women which takes place today for illegitimate
reasons, often by drunken men which they then attempt to justify as a tradi-
tional right’ (Bolger, 1991). Bolger argues that there are now three types of
violence in aboriginal communities: drunken violence, traditional violence
and bullshit traditional violence.
This view is supported by Mick Dodson who argues that some of ‘our
perpetrators of abuse and their apologists corrupt these ties and our culture
in a blatant and desperate attempt to excuse their abusive behavior’ (Dodson,
2003). The adversarial nature of the Australian common law has been

5 The Beijing Platform for Action defines violence against women to include traditional

practices that are harmful to women: Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action adopted
by the Fourth World Conference on Women, A/CONF.177/20/Add.1 (15 September 1995)
[113(a)].
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 149

highlighted as the main facilitator of distorted customary law: ‘In particular

the adversarial nature of our legal system has provided opportunities
for white legal counsel representing Aboriginal men to employ distorted
custom in defence’ (Davis and McGlade, 2004: 13).
The most recent public controversy about this practice occurred in
2003−04 in the Hales v Jamilmira case (Bryant, 2002). In this decision the
defendant Jackie Pascoe, a 50-year-old Aboriginal male, used aboriginal
law in defence of statutory rape. In a recorded interview at Maningrida
Police station Mr Pascoe stated that: ‘She is my promised wife. I rights to
touch her body’ and that ‘it’s Aboriginal custom, my culture. She is my
promised wife’. In this particular case, the court held that Mr Pascoe held
a reasonably sophisticated knowledge of the criminal law and reduced the
original magistrate’s sentence of four months to one-day imprisonment. The
judge stated: ‘She didn’t need protection from white law. She knew what
was expected of her … It’s very surprising to me [Pascoe] was charged at
all’ (cited in Toohey, 2002: 2).
There are many examples of judges making such derogatory comments
about Aboriginal women. In the 1980 case, R v Burt Lane, Ronald Hunt
& Reggie Smith, the Aboriginal defendants were accused of the rape of an
Aboriginal woman who had offered them a cigarette and who later died.
According to Audrey Bolger, the defence adduced evidence, all obtained
from non-Aboriginal males, to show that rape was not a very serious crime
in aboriginal society and by approaching the men and asking for a cigarette
‘the woman may have been seen as inviting the men to join her’ (Bolger,
2002). According to Bolger, the opposing evidence of a female anthropolo-
gist stated that ‘an assault on a woman’s sexual character was treated seri-
ously and that, traditionally, women punished men severely for it’ (Bolger,
2002). The judge stated that, rape was ‘not considered as seriously in
aboriginal communities as it is in the white community’, since ‘the chastity
of women is not as importantly regarded as in white communities’ and the
‘violation of an Aboriginal woman’s integrity is not nearly as significant as
it is in a white community’.
There are other cases where the defence has argued that it is the customary
law for husbands to assault their wives. In the 1991 case of Mungkilli, Martin
and Mintuma, the court stated that rape was not acceptable in aboriginal
communities but not ‘regarded with the seriousness that it is by the white
people’ (per Millhouse J). These judicial statements based on bullshit law
have been widely condemned by indigenous women (Davis, 2006).

Reconciling Aboriginal Law and the Australian Legal System

Over two hundred specific and unique tribal groups constitute aboriginal
Australia, across the continent. Aboriginal law is not written law—it is an
150 Megan Davis

oral legal system. If the way forward is underpinned by the international

legal principle of consultation then reconciling the problems of bullshit
traditional law will require systematic consultation with the community.
Indeed consultations for the Western Australia law reform inquiry into
aboriginal customary laws found that the community thought elders could
play a key role in verifying the use of customary law (WALRC, 2004).
It should be noted that there are divisions of opinion within aboriginal
groups—some want aboriginal law to be formally recognised by the
Australian legal system (WALRC, 2004). Others say this will prevent them
from evolving. One issue is that in cases where anthropological evidence is
given to support the sexual assault of women, it would assist in the testing
of that evidence that the laws are written down.
Another key concern is the determination of punishment in sentencing
where a number of issues may arise that conceivably conflict with inter-
national law. For example, it needs to be determined whether aspects of
traditional punishment may constitute torture. While domestic law permits
aboriginal law to be taken into account, the extent and degree may be limited
by Australia’s international human rights obligations. Again, this is informed
by how international law is incorporated into the municipal legal system. It
is conceivable that there will be circumstances where customary law will be
recognised yet other circumstances where recognition may be prohibited on
the basis of international human rights law. Ultimately recognition will be
accorded in a contextual framework, based on a particular factual situation
and because of this, it is difficult to predict in the abstract what courts may
decide on a case by case basis and whether the particular aspect of aborigi-
nal law breaches Australia’s obligations under international law. This is also
because of the discretionary power of magistrates and informs already the
inconsistency in how individual magistrates apply the law. In sharp contrast
to the sentencing remarks of the judges cited above, there are judges who
have found the breach of Aboriginal women’s rights to be deplorable. For
example, when the Barnes decision was appealed, the appeal court recog-
nised the need to protect Aboriginal women from distorted customary law.
Similarly, in the 1997 case of Daniel, the judge observed that:

It would be grossly offensive for the legal system to devalue the humanity and
dignity of members of aboriginal communities or to exacerbate any lack of self
esteem felt within those communities by reason of our history and their living
conditions … Aboriginal women and children who live in deprived communities
or circumstances should not also be deprived of the law’s protection … they are
entitled to equality of treatment in the law’s responses to offences against them,
not to some lesser response because of their race and living conditions.

Again, in the 1981 case of Edwards, the judge commented that he was
‘just not prepared to regard assaults on Aboriginal women as a lesser evil
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 151

to assaults committed on other Australian women’. In the 1998 case of

Amagula v White, the judge expressed the view that:

The courts must do what they can to see that the pervasive violence against
women in aboriginal communities is reduced. There is a fairly widespread belief
that it is acceptable for men to bash their wives in some circumstances; this belief
must be erased (per Kearney J).

This highlights the inconsistency that arises when judges respond differently
to aboriginal bullshit law or even traditional law and it also highlights the
inconsistency in the application of human rights law. The reality is that in
Australia these decisions will be left to the courts. However, the way in
which traditional law is recognised or referred to and the way in which
Aboriginal women can have their say will be through the parliamentary
process. It will be through consultations with Aboriginal women that leg-
islation guiding sentencing, for example, can be altered. What elements of
aboriginal customary law breach what elements of international human
rights law that are recognised by the Australian legal system will require
full and free consultation of parliaments with aboriginal communities. This
would mean that the judiciary would not be as inconsistent as it has been in
its application of human rights law to Aboriginal women. It would certainly
mean that elders would play a greater role in determining whether or not
evidence proffered is traditional or distorted.

WHO SPEAKS FOR WHOM? ABORIGINAL WOMEN AND FEMINISM

Many indigenous women consider the collective needs of their community

above all and instinctively censor accusations of abuse and endemic vio-
lence perpetrated by Aboriginal men in order to avoid the double edged
sword of national debate on indigenous issues: racism. As Dodson says:

People are also silent because they fear the interrogation of the police more than
the fear of repeated violent acts against them by their relatives. And there is
silence because ‘it is not our business to talk up’. (2003)

This is also a conundrum for white feminists who have been reluctant to
engage this issue for fear of accusations of prioritising sexism over racism or
of creating divisions within aboriginal communities and for fear of accusa-
tions of perpetuating the stereotype of the predatory and violent Aboriginal
male (Andrews, 1997: 918−19).
There is genuine fear in indigenous communities that public engage-
ment of indigenous issues always results in the exploitation of the race
debate by those wishing to support long-held popular prejudices or crude
theories of racial superiority. For indigenous women the reality of racism
152 Megan Davis

in contemporary society strengthens the presumption that matters of race

and ‘indigenousness’ trump notions of sex and gender. Indigenous women
in Australia reflect this presumption in their critique of feminism and white
women. Indeed the critique is often imbued as being an ‘extension of com-
munal responsibilities’. As Aileen Moreton-Robinson puts it:

White Australian feminists have been and continue to be complicit in the exercis-
ing of power in their relations with indigenous women … The exercising of white
race privilege is not interrogated as being problematic, nor is it understood as part
of the power that whiteness confers, instead it is normalised within feminist texts
and practice. (2000: 123)

Behrendt has said that white women have gained economically from this
dispossession arguing that:

Aboriginal women have been oppressed by white women. White women were
missionaries that attempted to destroy aboriginal culture. They used the slave
labour of Aboriginal women in their homes. White women were the wives,
mothers and sisters of those who violently raped Aboriginal women and children
and brutally murdered Aboriginal people. White women can be as racist as
white men. White women have benefited economically from the dispossession of
Aboriginal people. (1993: 31)

The invisibility of race or of white power in public debate on indigenous

issues provides an opportunity for white Australia to engage with indig-
enous peoples yet avoid dealing with the underlying power subtext of the
relationship between white Australians and indigenous peoples (Davies,
2002). Since concerns about white feminism were raised by Moreton-
Robinson, Marcia Langton and Jackie Huggins, there has been a developing
corpus of statements by indigenous women and men about the importance
of breaking the silence on violence in aboriginal communities. Of course
this development is imbued with caution for Aboriginal people. One particu-
larly controversial incident arose in 1989 when anthropologist Dianne Bell
argued that:

No matter how unpleasant, feminist social scientists do have a responsibility to

identify and analyse those factors which render women vulnerable to violence.
The fact that this is happening to women of another ethnic or racial group can
not be a reason for ignoring the abuse. (1989: 404)

This position was condemned by Huggins and a number of Aboriginal

women (Huggins, 1991: 506) on a number of grounds. Huggins was
angered that Bell had co-authored a paper with an Aboriginal woman who
was positioned by Bell as ‘traditional’ thus providing Bell with cultural
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 153

sanction to comment on this issue (Huggins, 1991; Bell and Nelson, 1989).
Bell observed that ‘unlike African-American women indigenous women
have not engaged in theoretical debates about rape because they had not
yet recognised some of the feminisms that are relevant to them’ (quoted in
Moreton-Robinson, 2000: 112).
According to Moreton-Robinson, Bell was deploying herself as the
‘subject position middle-class white women to speak for us as the authori-
tative voice of the all-knowing subject’ (Huggins, 1991: 506). Huggins
responded stating that rape in indigenous communities was not every-
body’s issue but rather it was the business of indigenous people (1991).
Interestingly, Aboriginal women, such as the Pitjantjatjara women of
Central Australia supported Bell and her comments (Lloyd and Rogers,
1993). It is these traditional women in rural and remote areas who bear
the brunt of alcohol abuse and domestic violence who are beginning to
break the silence.
Notwithstanding these continuing debates, it would seem that there is a
crystallising of views among Aboriginal women that a human rights frame-
work can be effective in providing better protection for Aboriginal women
suffering domestic violence, sexual abuse and marginalisation, particularly
in the criminal justice system.

CONCLUSION

In 2001 when the boat MV Tampa entered Australian waters and the SAS
boarded the ship to demand captain Rinnan turn the boat around, it set
off a vigorous national debate played out on talk back radio, in opinion/
editorial pieces and on national television. The vocabulary employed was
more often than not the language of international law. Of course inter-
national law is often manipulated to support one’s ideological agenda as
the war in Iraq has illustrated. However, the many issues that were mined
during the asylum seeker debates included full and proper explanation
to Australian citizens about what laws are actually incorporated into
Australian law or what international standards Australia has an actual
obligation to fulfil. Once that is established there can be a debate about
whether Australia is breaching those obligations in relation to Aboriginal
people.
When it comes to issues of indigenous peoples and international human
rights, in particular the practice of aboriginal customary law, it is, in
Australia, acceptable to just wave a hand at an amorphous body of human
rights instruments and declare that all aboriginal customary law unques-
tionably infringes ‘international law’ without a robust discussion. The
reality is that there are few rights protected in Australian law. Few of our
international human rights instruments are incorporated domestically.
154 Megan Davis

Despite the paucity of the formal recognition of aboriginal customary law

particularly in the context of criminal law in the jurisdictions of Northern
Territory and Western Australia, courts continue to permit the invocation
of ‘customary law’ for the mitigation of crimes. This is inevitable given that
customary law is still practised in these areas. The issue, as this chapter has
discussed, is how that evidence is received by the legal system particularly
a legal system that is patriarchal:

Reading many court transcripts relating to cases of rape, murder and assaults on
women is like reading the minutes of a male club. Judges, lawyers and witnesses
act to confirm each other’s prejudices that men may be provoked into violence by
women’s actions, that women are inferior and that rape is not a serious offence
in Aboriginal society. (Bolger, 1991: 85)

International human rights law has been integral to the advancement of indig-
enous people’s rights and the improvement of aboriginal lives in Australia.
The conflict between the individual nature of human rights law and col-
lective rights does not mean that indigenous peoples eschew human rights
law as it relates to aboriginal culture. That is too simplistic. It is often over-
looked in arguing that indigenous practices conflict with human rights law
that the United Nations has provided guidance as to how the two can be
reconciled. At the crux of this is consultation with both men and women in
aboriginal communities. The other important point to make is that the use
of aboriginal law in some circumstances has been distorted, has become
what Aboriginal women call ‘bullshit law’. The reform that Aboriginal
women are asking for is that those practices harmful to Aboriginal women
should be prohibited in aboriginal culture so that the culture evolves.
But as it relates to bullshit law, there needs to be law reform to institute
procedures by which the courts can filter bullshit law. It is an example
of how the adversarial nature of the common law cannot accommodate
unwritten customary laws. Discussion and reform in this area of law must
be conducted with the same nuance as is afforded to all complex areas of
law that involve competing legal systems. It is readily done in relation to
international trade law and international commercial transactions. There
is no reason—apart from race—that such nuance can not be achieved as it
relates to Aboriginal women and customary law.
The most significant difference to Aboriginal women’s human rights
would be to acknowledge the imbalance in power between Aboriginal men
and women in governance structures, including lack of access to educa-
tional opportunities, participation in decision making or specifically des-
ignated support for Aboriginal women. Until these patterns are recognised
and rectified, Aboriginal women will continue to suffer from the convenient
employment of the term ‘indigenous’ in a way that reinforces patriarchal
 Aboriginal Women and the Practice of Aboriginal Customary Law 155

structures—distorted or traditional—within aboriginal communities and

the mainstream Australian community.

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—— (1994) Report 69, Equality before the law: Justice for Women (Australian
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Bigge, DM and von Briesen, A (2000) ‘Conflict in the Zimbabwean Courts:
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156 Megan Davis

—— (1998) ‘Linking international standards with contemporary concerns’ in Sarah

Pritchard (ed) Indigenous Peoples, United Nations and Human Rights 21.
—— and Strelein, S (2001) ‘Australia’s Nation-Building: Renegotiating the
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Goward, P (2003) ‘Submission to the Northern Territory Law Reform Committee
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Iorns, C (1993) ‘The Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ 1(1)
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Jonas, B (2002) Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner,
Tenth Report (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission,
2002) at 136.
Jopson, D (2002) ‘No Change at Top as Clark Lays on the Charm’ Sydney Morning
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—— (2003) ‘ATSIC Elections and Democracy: Administration, Self-Identification,
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Expert Group Meeting, Gender and Racial Discrimination 21−24 November
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Williams, G (2004) An Australian Bill of Rights and the War on Terror (Sydney,
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Cases

Nicholas Amagula v John Raymond White [1998] NTSC 61 (7 January 1998).

Edwards (Unreported, Northern Territory Supreme Court, 1981, SCC No 155, 156).
Hales v Jamilmira [2003] NTCA 9.
Koowarta v Bjelke-Peterson [1982] 153 CLR 168.
Mabo v Queensland (No 2) [1992] 175 CLR 1.
Mungkilli, Martin and Mintuma (Unreported, South Australian Supreme Court,
Millhouse J, 20 March 1991).
R v Barnes (1997) 96 A Crim R 593.
R v Burt Lane, Ronald Hunt & Reggie Smith (Unreported, Northern Territory
Supreme Court, 29 May 1980).
R v Daniel (1997) 94 A Crim R 96.
R v Sydney Williams (Unreported, South Australian Supreme Court, Wells J, 14
May 1976).
Kartinyeri v The Commonwealth (1998) 195 CLR 337.

Legislation

Aboriginal Affairs Planning Authority Act 1972 (WA).

Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Cth).
Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT).
Native Title Act Amendment Act 1998 (Cth).
Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).
 Part IV

Rethinking Social Harm

in a Global Context
 9
Women and Natural Disasters:
State Crime and Discourses
in Vulnerability*
PENNY GREEN

T
his chapter explores the more general ways in which globalisation
has impacted on population vulnerability to natural disaster, and more
specifically the way in which gendered processes mediate the nature
and extent of vulnerability. Vulnerability to natural disaster is theorised in
terms of a state crime paradigm. There is, however, a real dearth of reliable
data on gender and natural disasters making conclusions more difficult to
draw. Moreover, there is virtually no research on masculinity and vulner-
ability or men’s particular experience of natural disaster (Fordham, 2000).
Much of what is written about natural disasters and women’s vulnerability
is anecdotal and there is very little gender-disaggregated data emerging from
natural disasters (gendered statistics on disaster mortality and morbidity
are, for example, generally unavailable). One of my key concerns here is to
examine vulnerability to a natural disaster as a function of state crime. The
emphasis on women’s specific vulnerabilities in feminist work in this area
has, it is argued, detracted attention from the culpability of states for the
catastrophes so often linked to natural hazards. State crime is defined here
as state organisational deviance which results in human rights violations
(Green and Ward, 2000).
This chapter therefore seeks to establish a framework for understanding
the relationship between gender, globalisation and natural disasters through
a state crime lens. In doing so, it explores the significance of gender in terms
of vulnerability to the disaster itself, rather than in the relief and reconstruc-
tion processes, because it is at this stage that the state as criminal is most
pronounced.

* This chapter was prepared for an Oñati conference in 2003 and, although it has been

revised in minor ways since then, has not been significantly rewritten to take account of devel-
opments since that time.
162 Penny Green

I have argued elsewhere, with Tony Ward, of the need for a definition
of state crime which transcends the limited parameters of the legal defini-
tion (Green and Ward, 2000; 2004). If states define crime, it follows that
a state will only be criminal on those exceptionally rare occasions when it
denounces itself for breaking its own laws. With a natural disaster where
the culpability of states may appear remote or obscure, reliance on a legal
definition of crime is even more problematic.
The opportunity to apply this paradigm to natural disasters arose dra-
matically in August 1999 with the devastating Marmara earthquake and
later with the 2003 Bingöl earthquake. I was, at the time, researching the
intersection between penal policy and human rights violations in Istanbul,
torture and repression being endemic in the Turkish political landscape. It
was only a short step to extend our existing analysis of state crime, criminal
justice and human rights violations in Turkey to state crime and apparently
‘natural’ earthquake disasters.

THE 1999 MARMARA EARTHQUAKE

At two minutes past three in the early morning of 17 August 1999, the heavily
industrialised Marmara region of Turkey, southeast of Istanbul, experienced an
earthquake of the momentous magnitude of 7.4. The earthquake resulted from
a rupture—approximately 125 km long—along the North Anatolian Fault
Zone (NAFZ) killing an estimated 40,000 people.1 Most of the victims were
killed when their concrete apartment buildings collapsed while they slept. Over
285,211 residences and 42,902 businesses were destroyed and an estimated
200,000 people were made homeless. Losses to Turkish industry were estimated
to be around $US3.5 billion (Ministry for Public Works and Housing, 2000).
Turkey lies over one of the most seismically active regions in the world.
Ninety-five per cent of Turkey’s surface area is at first or second-degree risk
of earthquakes, an area which is home to 98 per cent of its industry and
92 per cent of its population. According to one commentator, ‘a damaging earth-
quake occurs somewhere in Turkey once every nine months’ (Coburn, 1995:
66) and the probability of a large earthquake occurring in or near Istanbul in
the next thirty years is now estimated to be 62 per cent (Parsons et al, 2000).
The devastated region was heavily industrialised and had attracted thou-
sands of migrants fleeing repression and poverty in southeastern Turkey.
The influx of internal migrants had led to significant housing shortages in
the region and much of the demand for housing new immigrant workers
was met by the construction of illegal 3-to-6 storey reinforced concrete

1 The death toll has been highly contested because the government has refused to issue a

list of the missing. The official death toll is 17,840 with 43,953 injured and 505 permanently
disabled.
 Women and Natural Disasters 163

buildings with hollow clay tile infill walls. Thousands of these buildings
were to collapse. The buildings most likely to collapse or to be damaged
were buildings of four storeys or higher, and proportionally, the newest of
the buildings suffered greatest damage indicating deterioration in construc-
tion quality across time.
The findings of international engineering research teams established
that the scale of destruction was directly attributed to a lack of adequate
engineering, a lack of industry inspection and quality assurance and a lack
of discipline on the part of the state authorities. The very heavy damage
suffered in some regions, particularly Adapazarı, Izmit and Yalova was
attributed to soil profiles—loose silt and sand layers and soft organic clay
layers which turn to liquid in earthquake conditions; the weakening effects
of the removal of walls in many buildings; the poor quality cement used;
inadequate reinforcing members and the proximity of building structures
to the Izmit Bay shore (EEFIT, 1999; MCEER, 2000; EERI, 1999).

NATURAL DISASTERS AS STATE CRIMES

Given the definition of state crime outlined above, natural disasters con-
stitute state crime when, in addition to violating human rights, those vio-
lations result from a form of state organisational deviance. Earthquakes,
famines, cyclones, floods, fires or volcanoes result in death and injury on
a mass scale. In addition, they deprive people of other basic needs such as
shelter, food and sanitation. Clearly, the geophysical hazard or climatic
extreme has not violated those rights because such violation requires
human agency. The form of agency that concerns us here is that of state
organisational deviance.
The types of state organisational deviance which emerge from the literature
on natural disasters may be summarised as follows: systemic corruption; state-
corporate crime involving the collusion of governments in illegal and danger-
ous acts by private corporations; the collusion of governments in illegal acts
by members of the governing elite itself, including illegal deforestation leading
to floods and landslides; war crimes as a cause of famine and negligence,
such as the gross failure of state agencies to pursue effectively their publicly-
proclaimed goals or to follow generally accepted professional standards, for
example in civil engineering. Examples of such negligence include wilfully
ignoring scientific warnings; failing to develop national systems of quality
assurance or regulation in industries like construction; failing to install early
warning systems in areas prone to cyclones or hurricanes and encouraging or
forcing land settlements in hazardous zones. Also to be considered are post-
disaster cover-ups and concealment of evidence, indicating governments’ fear
of censure if the true consequences of their acts and omissions became known,
and the failure to protect women from domestic and sexual violence.
164 Penny Green

GLOBALISATION AND VULNERABILITY

In a useful definition of natural disasters, Hewitt and Burton (1971) highlight

the continuity between disaster events and everyday life and define disaster as
an extension of everyday life, an interaction between ‘the physical event itself
and the state of human society’. A natural hazard need not be a disaster, as
earthquakes in California and New Zealand reveal. Susman et al introduced
an important political component to the definition when they focused on the
notion of vulnerable groups, defining disaster in relation to its victims:

without people there can be no disaster. And poor people are generally more vul-
nerable than rich ones. Disaster is therefore defined as the interface between an
extreme physical event and a vulnerable human population.
(1983: 264)

As Watts demonstrates in his work on famine and natural hazards, differen-

tial vulnerability ‘usually grows out of historically situated inequalities that
limit access of some to secure housing, adequate incomes, food supplies and
legal rights’ (1991). This notion of vulnerability is crucial to understanding
disaster as a form of state crime and plays a central analytical role in the
examination of state responsibility and culpability.
There is a strong body of evidence which now suggests that globalisation
has increased vulnerability to disaster in the developing world. Despite evi-
dence of widespread global wealth, many millions of people continue to die
from intermittent famines and from endemic under-nourishment and depri-
vation. The Hunger Report (2004) reveals that while world hunger has been
reduced over the past 30 years from 37 per cent to 17 per cent, 842 million
people are hungry and 798 million suffer chronic under-nutrition in the devel-
oping world, while 200 million people were vulnerable to the risk of famine
throughout the 1990s (Bread for the World, 2004; 2001). Between 1994 and
2004 over 90 per cent of those killed by natural disasters lost their lives in
hydro-meteorological events such as droughts, windstorms and floods (IFRC,
2001). Despite an increased number of disasters, early warning systems and
satellite forecasting have resulted in a decline in average annual deaths from
over 75,000 per year (1994−98) to 59,000 per year (1999−2003). However,
over the same period, the numbers affected by disaster rose dramatically.
Between 1994 and 1998 the International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies reported that an average of 213 million people were
affected. The following five years to 2003 saw this figure rise by over 40 per
cent to an average of 303 million per year (IFRC, 2004).
The increase in those affected is a direct consequence of the general rise
in population vulnerability. For every disaster related death in the devel-
oped world, there are fifteen in less developed countries (Aptekar, 1994).
According to the World Bank, between 1990 and 1998 around 97 per cent
of natural disaster related deaths took place in the developing world (World
 Women and Natural Disasters 165

Bank, 2000b: 170). Similarly, in terms of economic loss as a proportion

of GNP, developing countries suffer damage far in excess of developed
countries (UNDP, 2003). Moreover, natural disasters and extreme weather
events now displace more people from their homes than conflict and war
(IFRC, 2001).
While the UN interprets the increased vulnerability of people who live in
the developing world as ‘induced by current and human determined paths
of development’, the reality is that it is states, international organisations
such as the World Bank and IMF and multi-national corporations which
play the primary role in determining these paths. Consider, for example, the
three fundamental conditions which enhance a population’s vulnerability to
natural disasters: poverty, corruption and political authoritarianism. These
three conditions—often, although not always, mediated by race, gender,
age, culture and ethnicity—emerge throughout the literature on disasters
as causally integral to large-scale catastrophe. Without question, these
conditions locate natural disasters within the subject frame of criminology.
Relatedly, while the literature on gender and natural disasters has addressed
poverty, it has singularly failed to link vulnerability to either corruption or
repressive political systems. This chapter explores all three vulnerability
factors in the context of globalisation.

POVERTY

Poverty dramatically increases vulnerability to disaster and without arguing

that poverty creation is itself a state crime, it is important to underscore
its centrality in the victimisation of those at risk of natural disaster.2 The
literature suggests that globalisation has contributed to the vulnerability
of those in the poorest and most marginalised countries in the world.
Certainly, globalisation has impacted unevenly on economic growth. While
there has been a dramatic rise in global finance capital flows, these new
trade networks have operated to exclude and marginalise the world’s poor-
est countries. Globalisation has resulted in clear benefits for the economic
regions of North America, Western Europe and South-East Asia while the
majority of countries in Africa and much of south and central Asia and
Latin America have remained on the economic periphery (Ellwood, 2001:
33; Held et al, 2000: 177−82; Hirst and Thompson, 1996).
A similar pattern emerges in relation to foreign direct investment,
which in the developing world, has tended to be in those countries with
a relatively skilled and well-paid workforce, such as newly industrial-
ising countries like Malaysia and parts of India. According to World

2 I would argue that poverty creation falls more usefully into the category of ‘social harm’.

For a discussion, see Ward (2004).

166 Penny Green

Bank figures, between 1990 and 1998 foreign direct investment in ‘low
income’ countries increased from $2201 million to $10,674 million; in
‘middle income’ countries from $21,929 million to $160,267 million
and in ‘high income’ countries from $169,252 million to $448,316
million (World Bank, 2000a: 315). This ‘privileging’, through globalisa-
tion, of wealthy countries has served to increase social inequality and is
made significantly worse by recession and the debt crisis. By 1999, Third
World debt had reached nearly $3000 billion, representing approxi-
mately $400 per person in the developing world, where average income
is less than $1 per day (Ellwood, 2001: 48). According to the United
Nations Development programme, there were 54 countries in the world
poorer in 2003 than they were in 1990. In 21 of those countries a larger
proportion of the population is poorer; in 14 infant mortality under the
age of 5 is higher than it was and in 34 life expectancy has fallen. As
The Human Development Report comments, such ‘reversals in survival
were previously rare’ (UNDP, 2003: 14).
Women have been particularly vulnerable to market strategies which char-
acterised the restructuring of the global economy during the 1990s (Steans,
2000). In the Third world women are heavily concentrated in Export
Production Zones. These are specific areas specially created for the develop-
ment of industries to produce goods for the global market—a requirement
of the export-led growth demanded by the IMF and World Bank. Women
also remain concentrated in the lowest paid forms of employment. More
broadly, Mike Davis argues convincingly that linkage to the world economy
has made the peasantry of the developing world much more vulnerable
to the ravages of flood and drought (2001: 15). This argument can be
extended to other natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones and land-
slides. For example, the impact of American banana companies in collusion
with regional governments has significantly increased the vulnerability of
the poor in Central America. Extensive deforestation of fertile valleys and
the development of roads and railways to facilitate banana production and
export forced local peasants to cheaper land, often on hill and mountain-
sides. In order to grow their staple maize these peasants were forced to clear
forests leading to severe soil erosion and, ultimately, to flooding and land-
slides in the event of hurricanes and cyclones to which the region is prone.
Many of the world’s most impoverished people live in the most hazardous
of environments. In Bogota over 60 per cent of the population live on steep
slopes subject to landslide induced by heavy rains and earthquake. Many of
Asia’s most destitute live in slums on hazardous flood plains and a quarter
of Kenya’s population live in drought-prone ‘marginal’ lands.
There is little doubt that wealth is a major protection against natural
disaster. If wealthy households choose to live in hazardous environments
they normally have the resources and access to information to reduce their
vulnerability. Indeed, it has been suggested that it is precisely access to
 Women and Natural Disasters 167

knowledge, resources, legal rights and entitlements that places people in a

position to manage disaster successfully (Dreze and Sen, 1991). According
to the disaster reinsurance giant Munich Re (which importantly does not
include famine in its own definition of disaster) almost 561,000 people
were killed in natural disasters between 1985 and 1999. Only four per
cent of those killed were from fully industrialised countries. The remaining
96 per cent of victims lived primarily in Asia (77 per cent) and in South and
Central America (14 per cent). UNDP figures show that 24 of the 49 least
developed countries face a high level of disaster risk (UNDP, 2001).
Early warning and detection systems and the implementation of disas-
ter prevention strategies mean that single great catastrophes which may
claim the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are infrequent occur-
rences (Abramovitz, 2001). At the same time, however, there has been no
equivalent decline in economic loss arising out of disaster; rather ‘economic
losses’ during the 1990s were more than three times the figure in the 1980s,
almost nine times that in the 1960s and more than 15 times that in the
1950s (Abramovitz, 2001: 12). Munich Re presents evidence to show that
economic losses have increased more than ten times each decade during
the last 4 decades Economic losses have a far more devastating impact on
poorer countries where often uninsured losses comprise a proportionately
much larger share of the national economy. While the most economically
advanced countries sustained 57.3 per cent of recorded economic losses,
this represents only 2.5 per cent of their GDP. For the poorest countries
which endured 24.4 per cent of the total economic loss for disasters this
meant a huge 13.4 per cent of their GDP. There is a very clear correlation
then between poverty, class and population vulnerability.

CORRUPTION

According to the World Disasters Report, Corruption and vested interests in

and around government play ‘a large role in many of the long-term precursors
to disaster’ (IFRC, 1999). Recent figures from Transparency International
suggest that political corruption has fared well under globalisation. Peter
Eigen, chair of Transparency International, launching the Global Corruption
Report 2004, linked corruption directly to human rights violations:

Political corruption undermines the hopes for prosperity and stability of develop-
ing countries and damages the world economy … [it] deprives the most needy of
vital public services, creating a level of despair that breeds conflict and violence.
(Transparency International, 2004)

Systemic political and administrative corruption usually results in violations

of human rights (Transparency International, 2004; Green and Ward, 2004).
One way in which it does so is by aggravating and precipitating natural
168 Penny Green

disasters. Systemic corruption tends to occur in societies characterised by

clientelism, patrimonialism and informal exchange relationships. Moreover,
systematic corruption is particularly relevant in the study of earthquake
vulnerability as the Turkish experience reveals.
In the 1980s, the Turkish economy underwent widescale liberalisation and
globalisation. As part of this process, public lands were made increasingly
available for privatisation. Rules and regulations which had been seen to
hamper industry were repealed and Turkish entrepreneurs were encouraged
to ignore those that remained. Many capital-poor entrepreneurs established
construction companies in this period and in the process relied on the help
of friends in local politics to secure contracts. Enterprising firms and indi-
viduals were effectively encouraged to build on undeveloped public land.
These illegal housing developments would then acquire legitimacy on the eve
of elections when the passing of construction amnesties could be virtually
guaranteed. Vast unlicensed housing developments were then legitimately
sold to individuals or companies.
In Istanbul, home to over twelve million people, some 65 per cent of hous-
ing, is kaçak (unlicensed). Illegal building and illegal housing have flourished
as a direct result of state policy and practice and, given that at least 60 per cent
of land in Turkey is state-owned and the majority of illegal housing has been
built on state land, responsibility for the consequences arising from natural
disasters in these settlements must lie with the state. In Turkey building code
violations are part of a well-entrenched corrupt political process between
professional groups, government and industry. Thus state ownership of land
coupled with the customary practice of the unregulated informal appropria-
tion of it has suited Turkish politicians operating within a context of populist
clientelism (Keyder, 1999) For their own electoral advantage these politi-
cians, through the arbitrary allocation of services, licences, permissions, the
regular turning of a blind eye and the granting of other privileges to those
building illegally, have been able to secure popular support. In these myriad
ways they have ensured an increased risk to the safety of those forced to live
in the dangerous housing which emanates from those decisions. The role of
central government has been crucial in sanctioning the excessive trade-offs
witnessed against the value of life-safety, in pursuit of state organisational
goals. Corruption nurtures, institutionalises and legitimises those trade-offs.
The advantage for the state is two-fold: clientelism creates the climate which
allows local corruption to flourish; corruption, in its turn, ensures the provi-
sion of cheap mass housing. Corruption is thus a cheap and devolved means
by which the Turkish state ‘addresses’ social housing provision. In this sense
it can be said to foster state organisational goals and may explain why it is
so widely tolerated.
Clientelistic practices systematically undermined the possibility of compli-
ance with and enforcement of existing (and wholly satisfactory) building
standards and regulations. The magnitude of the disaster was a function
 Women and Natural Disasters 169

of systematic corrupt practices by state actors in both urban planning and

development, local and national government, and the construction industry.

AUTHORITARIANISM AND REPRESSION

Elsewhere I have, with Tony Ward, located the authoritarian nature of

a state as central in predicting and assessing vulnerability to catastrophe
which may follow an extreme geophysical event (2004). Catastrophe is not
simply the result of underdevelopment, but the weakness of civil society
under repressive political arrangements. As Robert Putnam (1993) has
shown, the absence of civil society correlates with an absence of or weak
democratic processes. An assessment of major disasters reveals a strong cor-
relation between the absence of a highly developed civil society—one with
strong domestic grass roots and other non-governmental organisations—
and the scale of death and destruction. Government commitment to civil
and political rights has proven itself a protection against needless devasta-
tion from so-called ‘natural’ disasters and as de Waal demonstrates in his
study of famine, the number, variety and resilience of liberal institutions
‘make it more difficult for famine to recur’ (1997: 11).
In 1999 repression, forced migration and dangerous housing converged
to create disaster in Turkey. The state’s devastating war with Kurdish sepa-
ratists in the southeast has played a crucial role in increasing population
vulnerability to earthquake disaster. Turkey’s campaign of terror in the
southeastern provinces forced hundreds of thousands to seek a better qual-
ity of life elsewhere in the country. The people of Bingöl, Elazil, Mardın,
Siirt, Van, Adiyaman, Batman, Bitlis, Mulla, Dıyarbakır, Hakkarı, Sirnak
and Tünceli had lived under a state of emergency rule from at least as far
back as 1987 (Amnesty International, 2002).3 Repression, intimidation and
violence, economic deprivation and limitations on a range of freedoms,
defined daily life under emergency rule.
The 2003 Bingöl earthquake tragedy in which 85 children died while
sleeping in a state school dormitory graphically illustrates this point. This
catastrophe was a stark consequence of the impact of the war and political
dispossession of the largely Kurdish population in the southeast of Turkey.
Bingöl is an impoverished region which had existed for some 15 years
under emergency rule. The diversion of national funds into prosecuting the
war against Kurdish insurgents and maintaining institutions of state repres-
sion has ensured the impoverishment of the region’s infrastructure. Most
of the children sleeping in the school lived in villages without local schools
and were forced to board because of the failure of the Turkish government

3 Emergency rule was finally ended in Turkey’s southeast in November 2002 when it was

lifted from the two remaining provinces of Diyarbakir and Sirnak.

170 Penny Green

to invest in regional infrastructure and services in the region. As an uncle of

one of the victims told a Guardian journalist, ‘I am angry at the dishonest
builders who built this trap for our children and their political allies who
let them get away with it’ (Guardian, 3 May 2003).
The absence of a strong civil society means that authoritarian states
are also more likely to attempt to conceal evidence of state deviance. This
was clearly apparent in the Turkish earthquake. The striking discrepancy
between the official and unofficial earthquake figures and the government’s
determined refusal to issue a missing list strongly suggest that the Turkish
state reduced the number of dead in order to reduce the impact of its incom-
petence and the scale of its own corrupt practices.
In states where violations of human rights are institutionalised and high
levels of corruption are commonplace large-scale devastation as a result of
‘natural catastrophe’ is an unsurprising phenomenon. The immigrants from
Turkey’s southeast who came to live in the shabbily built and dangerous
housing of Izmit Bay illustrate the direct link between repression and natu-
ral disaster. The Turkish state’s 15-year war against the Kurdish minority
in the country’s southeast had a dramatic impact on internal migration:
millions left the devastation and repression of the conflict zone to seek jobs
in the more secure industrialised parts of the country. It was from this pat-
tern of forced migration that much of the demand for mass cheap housing
emerged and it was this population—already victims of state repression—
who became victims of a wilfully negligent state and the dangerous housing
it positively encouraged which collapsed in the earthquake.
One recent case from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR)
illustrates this well. There are many cases like that of the Yöyler family who
lodged a case against Turkey in the ECHR. On 16 September 1994, three
young women disappeared from the village of Dirimpinar in southeastern
Turkey to join the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK). When the fathers of these
women reported their daughters missing to the gendarmerie, the gendarme
commander of Malazgirt region came to the village and threatened to burn
the village to the ground unless the girls were brought to him within three
days. The Yöyler family and the families of the girls, frightened by the threat,
loaded up their possessions and fled. They were intercepted by the gendar-
marie and forced back to a house in Dirimpinar where they were assaulted.
The gendarmarie departed urging the villagers to take good photographs of
their homes as that would be all they would have to remember them by. On
18 September at 8.00pm, masked special gendarme teams accompanied by
village guards entered the village and ordered villagers into their homes. The
security forces then took diesel from the villagers’ tractors and set fire to the
homes of the extended Yöyler family—six houses in all. The family fled this
carnage and settled in Adapazarı in northwestern Turkey in the hope of peace
and security. In 1999, Adapazarı was one of the towns most devastated by
the Marmara earthquake (ECHR, 2003).
 Women and Natural Disasters 171

THE TURKISH STATE AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS

As the work of Amnesty International (2003), Human Rights Watch and

others make clear, there are specific structural patterns of discrimination
which place certain women inside Turkey at greater risk of state and domestic
violence, thereby, it might be argued, increasing their vulnerability to natural
disaster. Gender discrimination is widespread socially, economically and polit-
ically. Girls are educationally disadvantaged, women in many circumstances
are unable to choose their own marriage partner, men earn proportionately
higher wages, own over 90 per cent of all property and 90 per cent of GDP;
and only 4.3 per cent of politicians are women—despite having a woman as
a former Prime Minister. Kurdish women living in southeastern Turkey are
the most vulnerable, particularly if they hold political views contrary to those
of the government and the military. Here systematic torture (particularly in
the anti-terror branches of police headquarters), disappearances, unlawful
detention, the razing of villages and the persecution of political activists and
journalists continues. Amnesty has shown how patterns of discrimination
perpetrated by the state contribute to continued violence against women
and compound the consequences of that violence for those women (Amnesty
International, 2004).

Women, Vulnerability and Natural Disaster

In the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction 1990−2000, 1995

was designated the year of gender focus. A review of much of the literature
which came out of that focus suggests that mainstreaming gender has resulted
in a range of relatively small-scale local strategies to improve women’s aware-
ness of risk and practical measures which might improve life-safety. Nora
Sequeira complains that most of the case study material available on gender
and disaster risk focuses ‘on how disasters impact men and women in different
ways’ and how disaster response ‘fails to take into account gender’ (2001: 6).
By contrast, there is little to suggest that gender assists in explaining the fun-
damental causes of the disasters which follow natural hazards. Fothergill’s
nine-stage typology to explore gender and exposure to disaster risk illustrates
the general failure in the feminist literature to address fundamental issues
of political economy which would reveal widespread state crime as causal.
Rather, the typology emphasises individual responsibility and individual solu-
tions by focusing on exposure to risk, risk perception, preparedness behav-
iour, warning communications and response, physical impacts, psychological
impacts, emerging response recovery and reconstruction (1998: 34). It seems
that the focus on women (because in most of this work ‘gender analysis’ is
singularly concentrated on women) encourages individual and local responses
rather than an examination of the root causes of disaster.
172 Penny Green

In terms of the impact of economic globalisation, women have suffered

disproportionately. According to the United Nations Development Programme
(1995) 70 per cent of the 1.3 billion people living in poverty were women.
Much has been written about the ‘feminisation of poverty’. Women now make
up some 34 per cent of paid workers in the world, yet they earn on average
30–40 per cent less than their male counterparts (Steans, 2000: 371). According
to Elaine Enarson, one of the leading feminist scholars on disasters,

the gendered division of labour, maternal health, women’s longevity, household

and economic structures and the gendered inequalities embodied in everyday life
put girls and women at special risk. Women’s inability to enjoy their full human
rights; their poverty, economic insecurity and lack of land rights; limitations on
personal autonomy and political expression; barriers to literacy, education and
training; constraints on health, time and leisure … all these combine to undermine
women’s ability to anticipate, prepare for, survive, respond to, and recover from
disasters. This is what gendered vulnerability means for women’. (2000: 2)

She argues too that economic globalisation has increased women’s eco-
nomic insecurity through higher rates of informal work and job losses in
restructuring industries. Structural Adjustment austerity measures imposed
by the IMF and World Bank which result in major social service spending
cuts result in an expansion of unpaid work for women. Furthermore:

Urban migration and hyperurbanisation bring women to unsafe living conditions

and informal sector work in huge urban centres, where they are increasingly
exposed to environmental pollution and disasters such as mudslides and earth-
quakes. (2000: 3; her emphasis)

Steans has extended this analysis in terms applicable to disaster vulnerability,

arguing that:

states set the parameters for women’s structurally unequal position in families
and markets by condoning gender-differential terms in inheritance rights and legal
adulthood, by tacitly condoning domestic and sexual violence, or by sanctioning
differential wages for equal pay or comparable work. (2000: 371)

The same conditions which place certain women at risk in their everyday
lives—lower pay, less political power, fewer positions of authority, reduced
access to information about environmental hazards and other specific
forms of cultural oppression—serve to fashion a gendered vulnerability
to natural disasters. And certainly in relation to famine, Dreze and Sen
(1991) have argued that in contexts where women have full equality, social
freedom, property rights and access to employment and resources equal to
men’s rights, then gender-based vulnerabilities are reduced. Clearly, more
empirical work needs to be done to determine the degree to which gender
increases vulnerability to natural disasters.
 Women and Natural Disasters 173

GENDER SPECIFIC VULNERABILITIES

According to the only review of research on women and exposure to natu-

ral disaster risk—gender does influence vulnerability in disasters (Fothergill,
1998: 13). Essentially, the research suggests that increased risk exposure for
women is predicated on their social class, care-giving roles, privatised role
in the domestic sphere and relative lack of power and status. While the
data are very thin on the ground, the extant research suggests a number of
features which assist in understanding the relevance of gender to disaster
vulnerability. First, women are less represented in disaster management
and preparedness. They are noticeably absent in the decision making and
leadership roles and in higher levels of the emergency management field
such as large formal disaster planning organisations. Moreover, this is true
of both the developed and developing worlds (Enarson and Morrow, 1998;
Fordham, 2000; Sequeira, 2001).
Secondly, it has been argued that women-maintained households are
economically and politically disadvantaged, with evidence suggesting that
women with responsibility for children may experience higher mortality
rates in earthquake disasters (Parasuraman, 1995; Rivers, 1982). While
there is no direct evidence that women experience higher mortality rates
than men, there is some limited research that suggests that they might,
inasmuch as domestic space, more frequently occupied by women, children
and the elderly, is particularly at risk in earthquakes. Residential housing in
a country like Turkey is frequently self-built or built by unskilled and cor-
rupt contractors using poor quality materials, breaching building codes and
without the necessary soil checks and permissions (Hewitt, 1997). It is still
unclear, however, whether women are disproportionately disadvantaged by
this dangerous housing. Fordham cites earthquake examples where female
fatality was reportedly higher. One was in Friuli, Italy in 1976 where, because
of the timing of the earthquake, more women were in the home preparing
the evening meal (Hewitt, 1997); in Maharashtra, India in 1993 where a
tradition of sleeping outdoors protected men while women and children
were crushed while sleeping indoors (Maybin, 1994) and in Afghanistan in
1998 where men at the mosque or in the fields were safer than women and
children in homes or schools (IFRC, 1999).
Thirdly, poor people are more vulnerable because of poor housing materi-
als, type of housing, location of housing and a lack of access to information,
and women are disproportionately living in poverty. Women suffer dispro-
portionately from growing ‘flexibilisation’ in the economic sector and grow-
ing instability of employment; from the reduction of social welfare spending
and by the privatisation of public utilities, especially health (Guzman, 1998).
There is no direct evidence, however, that this leads to increased mortality
rates in disaster conditions. Fourthly, there is contradictory evidence in rela-
tion to early warning systems which are particularly relevant in the context of
174 Penny Green

cyclones, hurricanes, volcanic eruption and flooding. According to Anderson

(2001) and Drabek (2000) women are less informed of early warnings but
more likely to act if they are warned. Research in Bangladesh reveals that
because cyclone warnings were transmitted through loudspeakers in public
places, women were less likely, because of their confinement to domestic
spheres, to receive them in good time (D’Cunha, 1997). This is one of the
key gendered arguments emerging in the vulnerability literature. However,
Alice Fothergill’s extensive review of gender and disasters research suggests
that women are in fact more likely to receive warnings than men and in turn
more likely to act (Fothergill, 1998).
The available data do not provide a particularly compelling argument
that gender is significant in defining disaster vulnerability. This is partly
because of the lack of comparative research on men’s experience of vul-
nerability. In some specific disasters, confinement in the home may have
contributed to higher mortality rates for women and children, but equally,
domestic confinement might serve to protect those in the home in other
disasters. It may be that working in exposed places increases vulnerability
to disaster impact. Further research is required into these issues.

CONCLUSION

A review of the limited evidence which does exist suggests that gender alone
cannot be demonstrated to be a key contributor to population vulnerabil-
ity. However, like age, disability, race, sexuality and ethnicity, it forms part
of a complex mediating tapestry through which the chief determinants
of vulnerability—poverty, corruption and political authoritarianism—
are realised (Green and Ward, 2004). To explore gender vulnerability to
natural disasters without the concepts of state crime and the specific exam-
ples of organisational deviance—authoritarianism and corruption—makes
little intellectual or pragmatic sense. Wisner has argued that women ‘may
not be particularly vulnerable qua women’, but more commonly poor
women, and in particular, old, poor, minority women in disasters (1993: 22
cited in Hewitt, 1997: 148). Wisner’s analysis is necessary if we are to
properly understand gender in the context of disaster vulnerability. But
what is needed is a conceptual focus that incorporates gender, class and
state power. For gender is not a homogenous category which impacts on all
women or all men in a uniform way. Its impact is differential and context
specific and determined by potent vulnerability-inducing factors discussed
in this chapter.
Gender fundamentally fashions the way in which men and women experi-
ence national development and environmental events but it cannot be disag-
gregated from political economy. While considerable academic work has been
done on gender and globalisation, and gender and class, there is very little
 Women and Natural Disasters 175

to elucidate the way in which the two other determinants of vulnerability

in the face of natural disaster—corruption and authoritarianism—are medi-
ated by gender. The state crime perspective may thus provide new directions
for exploring these intersections.

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 10
Global Feminist Networks
on Domestic Violence
RHODA REDDOCK

INTRODUCTION

O
ne of the most important achievements of feminism and the
women’s movement during the last three decades of the twentieth
century has been the de-legitimisation of violence against women.
It is not yet clear whether in all instances this has also led to a reduction in
the prevalence of violence against women, but certainly one would be hard-
pressed to find a society which still unquestionably accepts the right to bat-
ter women without having to provide some form of justification. This has
certainly been the case in the English-speaking Caribbean where, as I have
argued elsewhere, violence against women was the one unifying theme around
which women of all classes, political persuasions and ethnic groups have been
able to organise collectively and collaboratively (Reddock, 2003). This is so,
in spite of the fact that in the current climate of early twenty-first century
conservatism and competing religious fundamentalisms, some suggest that
there are signs of an increase in violence against women, perhaps as a backlash
against the gains of the women’s movement and as an attempt to re-establish
patriarchal and community control over women.
This chapter draws on my experience over some decades as an active
participant in the Caribbean and global women’s movement as an early
member of a community-based women’s group (Working Women for Social
Progress in Trinidad and Tobago), as a founder member and first chair of
CAFRA (the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action)
and as a feminist scholar involved in establishing academic Women’s
and Gender Studies at the University of the West Indies. I have also been
involved in international feminist practice.1 This involvement at national,

1 The author has served in a number of international capacities, most notably as President

of Research Committee 32 (Women and Society) of the International Sociological Association

(WISISA) from 1994−98.
180 Rhoda Reddock

regional and international levels has made me aware of the contradictions,

challenges, critical concerns and achievements which characterise the global
movements against domestic violence in particular and violence against
women in general.
The de-legitimisation of domestic violence has been a significant change
in many countries, including the nations of the Caribbean. However, the
sanctity of marriage and family, the control of women’s fertility and sexual-
ity, customary law and practices and religious admonitions which allow for
women to be corrected, chastised and punished through the use of physi-
cal violence, stoning, beating, raping, whipping and murder all combine
to make violence against women accepted, normalised, invisible and even
silenced. While campaigns have often focused on the broader issue of what
is termed ‘gender-based violence’, this chapter will focus on domestic vio-
lence which in a global context may include wife/spouse battering, spousal
rape, child abuse, honour killings and spousal murder.2
The success of the campaign to de-legitimise, criminalise and eliminate
domestic violence has been the result of collective action by feminist
women activists, pro-feminist men activists, and officials of international,
regional and national state and quasi-state agencies. In this continuing
movement, the work of global networks has been pivotal. Accordingly, I
begin with a general discussion of global feminist networks and some of
the ongoing debates relating to them. I consider what global feminist net-
works have achieved, and their relationships with the face to face feminist
groups at a local level within which feminist theory and, importantly,
feminist modes of organising as well as feminist political practice were
developed. I argue that these interlocking networks which connect local,
national, regional and international agencies constitute a new and effective
political form, appropriate for maintaining diversity and for reciprocal
learning in the global age. Secondly, I describe the structure and work of
two multiple agenda feminist networks with which I personally have been
involved. In the third section I consider single issue or specialised feminist
networks that focus specifically on domestic violence against women, and
that perhaps best illustrate a strategy harnessing the global and the local.
Finally, I return to the international movement, and offer an evaluation of
our achievements.

GLOBAL FEMINIST NETWORKS: A DISCUSSION

Peggy Antrobus distinguishes between the international women’s movement

and the global women’s movement. The former she sees as characteristic

2 It should be noted however, that it is sometimes difficult to extricate domestic violence

from other forms of violence as the feminist movement increasingly sees them as interrelated.
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 181

of the mid-1970s at the launching of the ‘Decade for Women’ where national
and cultural differences between women were paramount with separate axes
of north−south and east−west. The ‘global’ women’s movement on the other
hand she postulates is characterised by greater coherence, common practices
and common positions in policy debates around issues such as the environ-
ment, poverty, violence and human rights (Antrobus, 2004: 17). For her part,
Val Moghadam defines transnational feminism as ‘the discourse and movement
of women aimed at advancing the status of women through greater access to
resources, legal measures to effect gender equality, and the self-empowerment
of women within national boundaries through transnational forms of organis-
ing and mobilising’, the term ‘transnational’ suggesting ‘a conscious crossing of
national boundaries and a superseding of nationalist orientations’ (Moghadam,
2000: 61). While international activism has been characteristic of both first and
second wave feminism (Alvarez, 2000) it is also true to say that it is a defini-
tive characteristic of the current phase. The international organisations which
characterised the earlier women’s movement, such as the International League
for Peace and Freedom (ILPF) and the Women’s International Democratic
Federation (WIDF) can be differentiated from the transnational feminist net-
works of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries inasmuch as the
globalising processes of the modern world economy provide the basis for the
development of transnational identities (Moghadam, 2000).
While some analysts see transnational feminist networks as both a response
to and a criticism of globalisation, others see feminism and the international
women’s movements as outgrowths of globalisation. This assumption draws
our attention to the difficulties in defining globalisation and its starting
point and the varied meanings which it may have in differing contexts. For
example, in Eastern Europe globalisation is perceived as a democratising
force, introducing not only ‘free markets’, but political freedom and ‘democ-
racy’ (Moghadam, 1992). For Caribbean feminists on the other hand, glo-
balisation is perceived as an intensification and expansion of an exploitative
capitalist process established several centuries ago in the forms of slavery
and colonialism, within which their region was central (Robertson, 1992).
This view is in part supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
which has argued that globalisation is a process dating back to the nine-
teenth century that was interrupted in the first half of the twentieth century
by decades of protectionism and aggressive nationalism (IMF, 2001: 1).
However, a major difference, as Robertson (1992: 183) points out, is that
the current situation has stimulated a global consciousness, where people
have a significantly heightened awareness of the experiences of others. This
is largely due to the expansion of the communications media, in particular
global television, internet technology, and other technologies for fast travel
and instant communication.
Analysts have also noted the role of the United Nations in facilitating
interaction and collaboration through its bodies, expert meetings, preparatory
182 Rhoda Reddock

meetings and conferences (Moghadam, 2000, Alvarez, 2000). According to

Moghadam:

The UN has played a key role in facilitating interaction and cooperation among
feminist organizations. Key UN events have been various world conferences
including the world conferences on women, as well as numerous regional prepara-
tory meetings in advance of the conferences. Many TFNs [Transnational Feminist
Networks] were formed and numerous women’s organizations came into contact
with each other between the 1985 Nairobi conference and the Fourth World
Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Almost as important as the networking
at Nairobi and Beijing were the women’s caucuses that formed in connection with
other UN conferences of the 1990s. (2000: 61)

She lists as examples of such caucuses those at the UN Conference on

Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, at the
World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, at the World
Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994 and at
the World Summit on Social Development held in Copenhagen in 1995.
What is often ignored however, is the role of feminist women within
international institutions including UN agencies, as well as the impact of the
feminist movement on the UN itself in the years since its inception. Indeed,
as Alvarez notes, the idea of a top-down process growing out of the UN
‘Decade for Women’ and the world summits of the 1990s is problematic
(2000: 30). I would argue that the role of women’s movements and indi-
vidual feminists in propelling these processes from differing locations also
needs to be acknowledged. While feminists in the north were instrumental
in pressuring state aid and local foundations to create special funds for
women’s programmes, feminists from the south through their critiques of
‘development’ challenged so-called ‘development’ agencies to evaluate the
impact of development projects on women and the poor. Antrobus (2004)
has reported how feminists from the South3 have continuously re-shaped
the agendas of the three World Congresses on Women held between 1975
and 1995, while Brautigam (2002) has discussed the empowering effects
of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against
Women (CEDAW) at local as well as international levels.4 As well, feminist

3 ‘North-South’ came into usage in the development literature around 1980, after the pub-

lication of the report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues,

popularly known as the Brandt Commission because it was led by the late Willy Brandt, for-
mer Chancellor of the then West Germany. It was selected to emphasise the economic divide
between the North (what they defined as rich countries or Economic North) and the South
(what they defined as poorer countries or Economic South) and to highlight the desirability of
a North-South Dialogue grounded in a common concern for global problems not complicated
by the Cold War concerns of East-West.
4 CEDAW, created in 1999, enables local women’s groups which have UN recognition to

meet with the committee to discuss national reports in advance of the official discussion of the
national report between the committee and the representatives of national governments.
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 183

funding agencies emerged with their own mission of encouraging feminist

philanthropy in support of the work of the movement. Examples of these
include the Global Fund for Women and Womankind.
What also needs to be acknowledged is the emergence of regional and
international networks which preceded and operated independently of the
UN processes. One example is the 1976 International Tribunal on Crimes
Against Women, held in Brussels, an event which was actually organised as a
feminist alternative to the UN International Women’s Year Conference held
in Mexico in 1975. But additionally, the activism of the period served to radi-
calise some of the mainstream organisations of the earlier part of the century,
hence the International Association of Business and Professional Women’s
Clubs facilitated the emergence of women’s shelters for victims of domestic
violence through its member organisations at the local level.5 It is therefore
true to say that the Declaration of the UN ‘Decade for Women’ which com-
menced with the 1975 Mexico conference created a space and a climate
within which organisations and activists could work with increasing inten-
sity and which forced national governments to become accountable for their
actions related to women and gender including violence against women.
However, in the discourse on global women’s networks, a number of
tensions have become apparent. First, there is the tension between the global
and the local. It has been argued that the transfer of energies and human
and financial resources to regional and international networks has reduced
the efficacy of local movements. Additionally, a focus on policy change
and international negotiation has required different skills from those of
organising and activism. These two points are highlighted by Amrita Basu.
Drawing on Alvarez’s observation that women’s movements are becoming
increasingly bureaucratised as they have come to work more closely with
NGOs, political parties, state institutions and multilateral agencies, Basu
argues further that as women’s movements have become more transna-
tional, ‘their commitment to grass roots mobilisation and cultural change
has diminished’ (2000: 69).
What is true is that the connections made at international and regional
meetings, workshops and other forums have been invaluable in building sup-
portive transnational relationships and friendships. An oral history of these
participants would weave a web of connections and influences which would
have been inconceivable outside of a global women’s movement. The other
issue which has emerged, however, is the way in which global networks have
been used to speed up the process of change, by bypassing local governments
and working to establish international conventions and agreements which
then demand or facilitate local compliance. An excellent example relates to
CEDAW, which many governments have ratified, as a consequence of which

5 This was the case in Trinidad and Tobago where the first shelter for battered women was

established by the Business and Professional Women’s Club of South Trinidad.

184 Rhoda Reddock

they are obliged to report to an international committee on their progress

in implementing its provisions. Women’s organisations are also allowed to
submit a shadow report providing their own assessments of progress in these
areas. Global networks have also been important in providing solidarity
among women on similar issues in different contexts, both on single issues,
such as in the case of Amina Lawal of Nigeria, as well as on broad issues
such as women’s human rights.
The tension between the global and the local may also be related to the
political life cycle of the activists themselves as evidenced by ‘femocrats’ of
the international networks, UN agencies and ‘gender’ units of international
organisations which are staffed by activists from the North and South. After
years of activism in insecurely funded groups and organisations at the local
level, feminist women are recruited into these international feminist bureau-
cracies and so are no longer available to the local movements in the same way.
On the one hand, it is argued that this should be seen as an institutionalisation
of the movement and a mainstreaming of the ideas and policy issues of the
movement; but it has also meant a reduction of important and experienced
person power on the ground in contexts which still require activism and
consciousness-raising. Some perceive the result as an absence of an automatic
group of younger feminist activists to replace these pioneers of the interna-
tional movement, which has contributed to the decline in local feminist politics
as we know it. However, the new visibility of a cadre of younger activists as
well as the emergence of training institutes for young feminist activists such as
the DAWN Training Institute suggests that this new generation may be slowly
asserting itself, possibly in different ways (Wilson, Sengupta and Evans, 2005).
While from some perspectives these developments and initiatives seem patchy,
from others their very independence guarantees that a diversity of local
perspectives continues to be fed into regional and international debates. In
addition, skills and awareness may also be developed on university campuses
across the world, the example best known to the author being the Centres
for Gender and Development Studies of the University of the West Indies in
Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

MULTIPLE AGENDA FEMINIST NETWORKS

The issue of violence against women was central to virtually all feminist activ-
ism of the 1970s and 1980s. The radical feminist influence on body politics
and against sexual violence made it one of the central components of early
activism in the economic North as well as the South; although the manner in
which issues emerged and were taken up may vary among countries. In the
following section, I will examine two different networks—ISIS International
and the Caribbean Association for Feminist Research and Action (CAFRA),
a regional network.
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 185

ISIS International

ISIS International, founded in the 1970s and based in Rome, was initially
conceived as a documentation and communication centre aimed at coun-
tering negative information on feminism. Although the founders were all
from the North, very early on links and connections were developed with
activists of the South. Indeed, women from the south were integral to, and
active in ISIS right from the start. While many were in exile from countries
in Africa and Latin America, some were studying in Europe and others were
working with development organisations, and all had ‘links with women
in their home countries, women in liberation struggles, women organising
at the grassroots’. Some of their names have become well-known in the
women’s movement (Villariba, 1999: 48).6
The first ISIS publication, ISIS Bulletin, was published in English, Spanish
and Italian in 1976. It chronicled the testimonies presented at the first
International Tribunal on Crimes against Women held in Brussels that year.
Approximately 2000 women from 40 countries had attended, starting a
tradition which was to become important in the movement against violence
against women. Jane Cottingham describes how women gave testimony
about crimes perpetrated against them—‘political, economic, medical, and
societal crimes’ (cited in George, 1999). The women denounced, ‘often in
brutal terms, the discrimination they had experienced, the jobs lost because of
pregnancy, the forced sterilisation, the rape, the torture, the humiliation for no
other reason than that they were women. It was dynamite’ (George, 1999).
In 1979, several Chilean women who had been in exile in Rome returned
to Chile and began to coordinate the Latin American and Caribbean activi-
ties of ISIS and to produce the Spanish language ISIS Boletin. Around 1984,
the decision was made to separate the Rome and Geneva offices, with the
former retaining responsibility for documentation and communication
with the name ISIS International and the latter with responsibility for the
exchange programme with the name ISIS-WICCE (Women’s International
Cross-Cultural Exchange). Also in 1984, responsibility for networking
within Latin America and the Caribbean was transferred to the ISIS-
Santiago office in Chile as the rapid growth and expansion of the global
women’s movement placed numerous demands on the organisation.
At this time too, work began on shifting the base of ISIS International
from Rome to the Economic South. In 1991, this was achieved when the
office moved to the Philippines. At the same time ISIS-International Santiago
became autonomous from what now is ISIS International Manilla. In 1994,
ISIS-WICCE moved to Kampala, Uganda. The original single organisation
had morphed into three autonomous organisations, all now located in the

6 Brigalia Bam, Nita Barrow, Kamla Bhasin, Roxanna Carrillo, Anita Anand, Rhoda

Reddock, Magaly Pineda, Virginia Vargas, Kumari Jayawardena, Dando Prado.

186 Rhoda Reddock

economic south, but all still in many ways interconnected. This development
reflected the movement of the location of the epicentre of the global women’s
movement from the North to the South. From 1988, ISIS International coor-
dinated a programme on Violence against Women supported by UNIFEM.
In 1992, through ISIS-International Santiago, the Latin American and
Caribbean Network against Sexual and Domestic Violence was formed, with
participation from 21 Latin American and Caribbean countries. The two pri-
mary tasks of the network were first, to serve as a communications channel
and secondly, to provide comparative qualitative and quantitative informa-
tion on violence against women (ISIS, 1999 (3): 20). In 1993, with a new pro-
fessional coordinating team in place, a structure of five sub-regional branches
of the network—Andean, Brazilian, Caribbean, Southern Cone and Central
America was established. Each sub-region was responsible for coordinating
communication and group activities among groups and institutions in the
sub-region as well as with the central coordinator. They were also responsible
for establishing national networks, organising sub-regional meetings and
developing awareness of the issue (ISIS, 1999 (3): 20). The developments over
this decade (1988−99) epitomise the quasi-autonomous connections between
the global (UNIFEM), regional and sub-regional groupings of the movement
allowing for policies to be initiated at all levels, supported by local as well as
international and regional resources. However, while keeping local creativity
alive and ensuring support for tailor-made local initiatives, this structure was
not without its problems.
By 1999, the network was reporting ‘considerable obstacles’ in
achieving its goals. The first obstacle was the bypassing of the regional
structure by the national structures, in that the national coordina-
tors and their networks were functioning autonomously. There were
national coordinating networks in Argentina, Brazil (with offices in the
north and the south), Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama,
Puerto Rico and Uruguay. In addition, national coordinators existed
in Paraguay, Colombia and Venezuela. One of the main areas of
weakness was the English-speaking Caribbean. Because the bulletin
was prepared in Spanish, the anglophone Caribbean was never fully
part of this network although efforts were made.7 As would be expected,
the other problem was the difference in the quality and effectiveness of var-
ious coordinators and networks. One of the many proposals intended to
stimulate the work of the network was made at the 1999 Latin American
and Caribbean Feminist Encounter in the Dominican Republic. This was
for a campaign to make 25 November the ‘International Day Against
Violence to Women’ (ISIS, 1999: 22). In the late 1990s also, through the
work of feminist activists in the Inter-American Legal Services Association
(ILSA) and the Latin-American Institute for Alternative Legal Services, ISIS

7 This claim is based on my personal experience as a research associate of ISIS at this time.
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 187

Santiago became involved in the work of Women, Law and Development

International and the Global Campaign on Women’s Human Rights.
Of the three organisations, ISIS International Santiago has had the
most consistent and concentrated programme on violence against women.
Violencia Contra La Mujer continues to be an important programme area
for this organisation. As part of this programme, it maintains the ISIS
International Bibliographic Database on Violence Against Women and
Human Rights which is included on its website, and it responds to requests.
In 2000, they were involved in aspects of the UNIFEM/UNDP coordinated
UN Inter-Agency Campaign Against Gender-based Violence. In 2003, the
Call to Action for 25 November was ‘POR LA VIDA DE LAS MUJERES,
NI UNA MUERTE’ (‘For the life of women, not one more death’). In the
publications of all three ISIS organisations however, articles and campaigns
related to domestic violence were featured prominently. In 2006, there was
also a focus on some of the negative impacts on women of the new informa-
tion technologies (http://www.isis.cl).

CAFRA—The Caribbean Association for Feminist Research

and Action

CAFRA is a regional network of individual feminists, activists and

organisations which was formed in the Caribbean region in April 1985.8
Membership is open to women resident in or born in the Caribbean or
with Caribbean roots and its secretariat is located in Trinidad and Tobago.
Membership includes women of all countries and linguistic groups of the
region including Cuba and the other Spanish speaking nations, the French
as well as the Dutch-speaking and multi-lingual Netherlands Antilles and
Suriname. Members may take action at national level through national
CAFRA committees led by a national representative, or in regional pro-
grammes co-ordinated through the secretariat. All national representatives
and five additional elected members comprise the regional committee which
meets annually to consider the progress of the organisation. A general mem-
bership meeting is held every three years in a different Caribbean territory.
As indicated above, in the Caribbean region the issue of violence against
women, in particular domestic violence, has been one of the most impor-
tant issues on the feminist and women’s movement agenda. It was around
this issue that collaborative relationships with grassroots and more main-
stream women’s organisations were developed, which were able to influ-
ence national and regional legal and judicial systems within the Caribbean.
In 1987, preliminary links were being made between CAFRA and ILSA

8 Founding members included Peggy Antrobus, Rawidda Baksh Soodeen, Sonia Cuales,

Joan French, Honor Ford Smith and Rhoda Reddock.

188 Rhoda Reddock

on the possibilities of a project on women’s human rights and the law.

In preparation for this, a survey of legal services associations throughout
the Caribbean was carried out, coordinated by Gaietry Pargass (Pargass,
1988). The responses to the ILSA/CAFRA survey prioritised violence against
women as the key issue for action. In 1989, CAFRA embarked on a sub-
regional Women and the Law project in ten countries of the anglophone
Caribbean. The project aimed to create an awareness of laws which impact
on women’s daily lives and to generate knowledge and information which
would enhance the effectiveness of women’s legal services and women’s
rights campaigns. The main components of the project were: a review of
legislation from a feminist perspective in all ten countries; the hosting of a legal
education lecture series in a selection of these countries; a training workshop
on the preparation of popular education materials on legal issues affecting
women; a regional workshop on paralegal training for women involved in
organisations such as rape crisis centres, trade unions, and the production of
popular education materials on national priority areas. Domestic violence was
a priority in most instances. The project culminated in a regional conference
on Women, Violence and the Law which was held in Port of Spain, Trinidad
and Tobago in January 1991 (Clarke, 1991: 4; 1993: 5). In her concluding
reflections on the project, coordinator, Roberta Clarke had this to say:

The project aimed at being participatory and to the extent that women at the
community level were able to attend the workshops and the legal education train-
ing sessions and to determine the priorities for legal reform, the project met its
objective ... the implementation of the Women and the Law project also had its
limitations, the major one being resolving the difficulties involved in decentralising
the execution of the project. The experiences in the five project territories bears out
that where national level NGOs (as in Dominica and Grenada) have a strong his-
tory of collaboration, the implementation was most effective. Similarly, this factor
was the most important in ensuring a wide participation of women at community
level. (1993: 5−6)

This project was followed by a regional project on Gender and Human

Rights which began with a regional conference Critical Perspectives on
Human Rights in the Caribbean held in Port of Spain in January 1995.
In March 1996, a regional training seminar on the Use of National and
International Human Rights Instruments took place, in large part fuelled
by the involvement of Roberta Clarke in the regional and international
networks on women’s human rights which are discussed below.
Following these initiatives, CAFRA began a UNIFEM funded regional
project on Violence Against Women in the Caribbean in 1996, again coordi-
nated by Roberta Clarke. This included a pilot study on state and non-state
responses to violence against women; a pilot survey of incidents and responses
to violence against women in Trinidad and Tobago, a survey of judicial and
legal frameworks in the hispanophone, francophone and Dutch-speaking
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 189

Caribbean, and a regional workshop on domestic violence held in Paramaribo,

Suriname. In 1997, CAFRA was identified as the focal point for the UNIFEM/
UNDP UN inter-agency campaign on gender-based violence against women
and girls with the theme ‘A Life Free from Violence: It’s our Right’.9
While most of the programmes were developed by CAFRA at the regional
level, national CAFRA memberships also developed their own programmes.
For example in 1992, the membership in Guyana started a counselling ser-
vice for victims of domestic violence as part of a women’s rights campaign,
while in 1998, the Suriname membership hosted a national workshop for
police officers and social workers that had,

a decidedly practical focus, with sessions on recognising the signs of domestic

violence, helping victims of abuse to talk about their problem, and collecting
physical samples for possible DNA evidence. Other sessions focussed on the role
of social workers in assisting families damaged by domestic violence. Altogether
460 of the 1100 police officers who comprise the police force in Suriname, plus
160 social workers, attended the workshops. (Constance, 2003: 1)

The success of this programme led to demands from other parts of the
region and resulted in by far the most ambitious initiative of CAFRA—the
Regional Domestic Violence Intervention Training Programme for Police
Officers and Social Workers held in 2000. The project involved the develop-
ment and testing of training materials, training of regional trainers and the
development of national training programmes offered by the trainers in their
home countries for social workers, police officers and other people work-
ing in areas related to domestic violence.10 This project broke new ground,
reflecting as it did new approaches being used by women’s organisations
and networks which included collaboration with bilateral financial organi-
sations, many of which now had women’s or gender programmes, as well
as quasi-state organisations at the national and regional level. This often

9 This was a programme coordinated by Cathy Shepherd. It is possible to see some of the

connections between individuals and organisations at national, regional and international level.
During this period the regional programme director of UNIFEM Joycelyn Massiah, had previ-
ously served as regional coordinator of the Women and Development Studies Groups (WDSG)
of the University of the West Indies (UWI) which laid the groundwork for the establishment of
the Centre for Gender and Development Studies at the UWI in 1983. Cathy Shepherd had been
employed as a documentalist in the Project of Cooperation in Women and Development Studies,
a collaboration between the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague (ISS) and the University
of the West Indies between 1986 and 1995. This had been facilitated by my own location as
a graduate student at the start of the Women and Development Programme at that Institute
in 1979−80. Peggy Antrobus, first director of the Jamaican Women’s Bureau was a key figure
in the launch of CAFRA and in the establishment of the WDSGs in 1982, from her position as
tutor-coordinator of the UWI’s Women and Development Unit (WAND). Joycelyn Massiah was
replaced by Roberta Clarke as Regional Programme Director of UNIFEM in the Caribbean.
10 The countries involved were Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Belize, the British

Virgin Islands, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St Kitts and
Nevis, St Lucia, S. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and Turks and Caicos.
190 Rhoda Reddock

called for different languages, methodologies and protocols from those with
which the movements began their work in the 1970s and 1980s.11

SINGLE ISSUE FEMINIST NETWORKS AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

In this section, I examine networks which have focused on one main issue
relating to domestic violence. These networks were difficult to locate as
domestic violence has normally been linked to other issues. The three net-
works I examine are the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership, the Network
on Women, Law and Development and the White Ribbon Campaign, a
campaign of pro-feminist men.

The Centre for Women’s Global Leadership

The Centre for Women’s Global leadership, a collaborative programme of

six women’s programmes at Rutgers University, started in 1989. Its aim is ‘to
study and promote how and why women lead, and to develop programmes
that prepare women of all ages to lead effectively’ (www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/
globalcenter/about.html). The focus on women’s human rights has been a
major contribution of this programme which, although located within a United
States university, has through its programmes of training and advocacy con-
tributed to the emergence of an international network among women, many
of them legal practitioners, involved in activism and research in the area of
women’s rights as human rights. This network worked actively towards to
the UN Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993 (CWGL website).
Through a programme of Women’s Global Leadership Institutes, two-week
intensive residential courses are held annually attended by approximately 25
women from different parts of the world. Regional institutes have also been
established, two organised in collaboration with the network Women Living
Under Muslim Laws in Istanbul in 1998 and in Nigeria in 1999.
What is important to note is that this process did not originate in the
north but in relationships formed and ideas planted though international
connections. Many of the international initiatives had their origins in the
formation of a loose network which began to take form at the Nairobi
conference and which took as its theme, ‘Women, Law and Development’.
The network eventually led to the development of regional networks
including the Latin American and Caribbean Committee for Defence of
Women’s Rights (CLADEM), the Asia and Pacific Forum on Women,
Law and Development (APLWD) and Women in Law and Development

11 Among the outcomes of this collaboration was the greater incorporation of gender analy-

sis into the work of the regional Association of Commissioners of Police as demonstrated by
the completion of a Certificate in Gender and Development Studies by Commissioner Keith
Renaud at the University of West Indies, Barbados.
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 191

in Africa (WIDLAF). This network was strengthened with the hosting of

the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute held at Rutgers University
in 1989 on the theme of women’s human rights. Present at that institute
were a number of women who would go on to become leaders in the inter-
national movement against violence against women.12 The slogan which
emerged out of this institute was ‘Violence Against Women is a Violation
of Human Rights’. The institute had facilitated the combining of the issues
of women, law and development with women’s human rights. Because
human rights were seen as a framework for advancing gender equality, the
issue of discrimination was already part of the human rights framework,
hence the campaign for legal reform and legal rights. This theme was car-
ried into the International Conference on Women’s Human Rights held in
Vienna in 1993.13
The institute also initiated the annual global action known as ‘16 Days of
Activism Against Gender Violence’. The idea emerged among participants of
the 1991 institute, of using the 16 days between 25 November—International
Day Against Violence to Women—and 10 December—International Human
Rights Day—to campaign against violence to women. The point was to link
violence against women with human rights. Two other significant days were
also marked—1 December, World AIDS Day and 6 December, the anniver-
sary of the Montreal massacre of women university students. This action is
carried out in over 900 countries of the world. What is interesting is that
this action which began in the North took on a life of its own in the activ-
ism and advocacy of women from various parts of the world, contributing
to a network which has moved far beyond the original conceptualisation
of its originators.
The Centre for Women’s Global Leadership has also been the focus of a
number of international campaigns to coincide with the UN international
conferences. By far its most important initiative has been the mobilisation
and organisation towards the 1993 Vienna Conference on Human Rights
which hosted a tribunal of crimes against women and facilitated the chang-
ing of international human rights law to include private (domestic) violence
as a human rights violation.

Women, Law and Development International (WLDI)

Also central to the women’s rights as human rights actions has been the
Network on Women, Law and Development which originated at the 1985

12 Eg, Radhika Coomaraswamy, former UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women,

Noyleen Heyzer, former Director, UNIFEM and Florence Butegwa, later of WILDAF and now
of UNIFEM.
13 This section is based on an interview conducted with Roberta Clarke, a participant in

the first leadership institute and a former Coordinator CAFRA and Social Affairs Officer, UN/
ECLAC, 11 September 2003. She is Regional Programme Director, UNIFEM Caribbean Office.
192 Rhoda Reddock

Third World Conference on Women in Nairobi. The Network14, which led

to the development of regional women’s rights organisations mentioned
earlier—AWPLD, CLADEM and WILDAF—has focused on legal literacy,
research on women’s rights issues, and the use of legal systems to protect
women. In 1994, WLDI coordinated a two-year project, ‘From Basic Needs
to Basic Rights’, an international conference organised as part of this project
in Kuala Lumpur, in October 1994. The conference was attended by approxi-
mately 100 women who, according to Alda Facio, were convinced that a
human-rights based approach to achieving sustainable development would
‘highlight the need for eliminating the exploitation, violence, subordination,
oppression and discrimination experienced by women in all spheres, as well
as emphasising the need to eliminate other forms of violations of human
rights, including racism, homophobia, and ageism’ (1995: 21).
WILDAF’s board of directors also brings together many of the women
legal activists of the Global Leadership Institute as well as women who
have been involved in developing the regional organisations and initiatives,
emphasising once again the range of skills that a networked structure, as
opposed to a hierarchic organisation, can bring to bear on a single issue
in space and time. WLDI and the Centre for Women’s Global Leadership
privileged a ‘rights’ approach to dealing with violence against women
and issues of women and gender generally. In so doing, they were able to
develop a strong network of women lawyers and legal practitioners from
throughout the world. But this ‘rights’ approach has been criticised in some
areas as a liberal approach very much based on hegemonic Western demo-
cratic notions. In another piece, it might be useful to examine the ways in
which this approach was mediated by women activists in diverse historical,
social and legal contexts. That such mediations took place is apparent from
the unique characteristics of the Domestic Violence Acts of Trinidad and
Tobago, from the expanded definition of the relationships protected under
the Acts to the invention of the Undertaking as an intermediate (and popu-
lar) remedy (see also Robinson, 1999; Lazarus-Black, 2006; Cain, 2000).

The White Ribbon Campaign

The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) is, in their own words, ‘the largest
effort in the world of men working to end men’s violence against women’.
It was founded in Canada in 1991 by a group of men seeking to identify
with the movement against violence to women, who wore a white ribbon as
a symbol of their opposition to that violence. According to the campaign,
wearing a white ribbon is a personal pledge never to commit, condone nor

14 In 2006, the Network was led by Margaret Schuster who was a resource person at the first

International Women’s Leadership Institute.

 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 193

remain silent about violence against women. It is testimony to their views

that men and boys must be part of the solution. White ribbons are worn
particularly on 25 November and the days following, up to 6 December,
the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence in Canada,
which marks the date of the Montreal massacre. The role of men in feminist
struggles has been an issue of debate since the start of the second feminist
wave in the 1960s. One of the important achievements of this wave never-
theless has been the emergence of small but vocal men’s movements of dif-
fering political persuasions. Eight groupings have been identified within the
United States men’s movement, including pro-feminist men, the men’s rights
movement, the ‘mythopoetic’ movement, socialist men, gay men, African-
American men and evangelical Christian men. Most are anti-women, some
seeking to re-establish the anti-woman and anti-feminist status quo. The
pro-feminist men’s groups, which have radical and liberal wings of pro-
feminism, have argued against moral and biologically-based conservatism,
insisting that the traditional family is not the civilising institution that
moral conservatives claim it to be, but rather is an institution that is oppres-
sive to women and destructive of men’s ability to be caring, loving partners
to women (Clatterbaugh, 1997: 66).
The founders of the White Ribbon campaign fall within this framework.
They are aware of the suspicion and mistrust which they might experience
from feminists. They are also aware that men’s movements tend to take
public attention away from women’s issues. Their attempts to respond to
these concerns are reported on their website:

… when we first started, women’s groups had questions about the role and inten-
tions of the WRC. There were concerns (which we shared) about the dispropor-
tionate media attention in our first year (http://www.whiteribbon.ca).

The website further indicates that the philosophy of this organisation

acknowledges the central position of women in relation to the politics of
opposition to male VAW, and also indicates the group’s attention to col-
laborative work with women’s organizations. WRC now has branches in
Scandinavia, Latin America, Asia, Australia and the United States. While
this laterally-connected group is not linked with the increasingly lively and
complexly networked policy-making processes of feminism, WRC works in
alliance on specific campaigns and generates useful publicity and support,
particularly among men.

ACTIONS AND INITIATIVES

Over the past three decades of international collaboration, a number of

global initiatives and actions have emerged. Some of these have their origins
in the North while others were started in the South. Today they are all part
194 Rhoda Reddock

of the global actions against domestic violence and gender-based violence

more generally. These actions reflect the diversity and creativity of the
movement which has been able to capture the imagination of the various
publics that they serve.

25 November—International Day Against Violence to Women

It was at a regional gathering, the first Feminist Encounter of Latin

America and the Caribbean, held in Bogota, Colombia in 1981, that the
idea that 25 November should be adopted as the Day Against Violence
to Women for Latin America and the Caribbean. From very early there-
fore the day was marked in the Caribbean, among member countries of
CAFRA in particular.15 Similarly, activities in 1998 as reported on the CAFRA
website included Domestic Violence Week in Antigua and a candlelight vigil; a
solidarity rally and candlelight procession in Trinidad and Tobago; a regional
schools poster show in Barbados; the presentation of the findings of a research
project on violence against women in Belize and the UNIFEM organised
Regional Tribunal on Violence Against Women in the Caribbean. This day
(25 November) was adopted to mark the murder in the Dominican Republic
of Patria, Minerva and Maria-Theresa Mirabel Reyes, later to become popu-
larly known as the ‘three Mirabel sisters’, killed by government agents.16
The observance of 25 November spread first throughout the Latin
American and Caribbean region and then throughout the world and became
accepted by campaigns, groups and even governments. After effective lobby-
ing of the UN, on 8 March 1999, ‘International Women’s Day’, the United
Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution declaring 25 November as
International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. According
to the Tibetan Women’s Association, the General Assembly, alarmed that
‘endemic violence against women was impeding women’s opportunities to
achieve legal, social, political and economic equality’, made a point of insist-
ing that the term ‘violence against women’ refers to ‘acts capable of causing
physical, sexual or psychological harm, whether in public or private life’
(Tibetan Women’s Association, 2003).
Although most visible in the form of local demonstrations, the lobby for
recognition gathered strength through the activation of regional networks

15 A review of 25 November activities held in 1992, listed activities in Guyana, St Vincent

and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago and the regional network CARIPEDA (CAFRA
NEWS, 1992: 16).
16 On 25 November 1960 the three sisters, together with the driver of the jeep in which they

were travelling, went to visit the imprisoned husbands of the two older sisters. According to
CAFRA NEWS, they were intercepted en route along a lonely stretch of road. They were then
‘taken to a nearby field where they were savagely tortured and murdered. Later their bloody,
mangled, battered and lifeless bodies were placed in the jeep which was pushed over the edge
of a cliff in a feeble attempt to make it look like an accident’ (1989: 21).
 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 195

connected locally, intra-regionally and internationally. The campaign for

recognition of the International Day Against Violence to Women is thus
archetypal of feminist practice which gains its vitality from, and grounds
its core practice in the small and the local, with information and activists
moving ‘up’ and ‘down’ the complex, irregular, and frequently informal
networks from regions to the international sphere, with the result that an
ever widening range of new locales has been generated.

Tribunals

Tribunals organised by the women’s movement are another very important

type of action carried out around the world in recognition of women’s
human rights. These ‘para-legal spaces of denunciation and protest’ have
been an important mechanism for ‘documenting and publicising violations
of women’s human rights, raising public consciousness about the factors
that reproduce and legitimise violence against women, and establishing
the responsibilities of the states, international agencies and civil society’
(Obando-Mendoza and Suarez-Toro, 2000: 1).
One of the earliest international actions of the autonomous women’s
movement was the Tribunal on Crimes Against Women, held in Brussels
in 1976. This was the start of a trend which was to continue through this
stage of the movement. At the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in
1993, one of the highlights was the Global Tribunal on Women’s Human
Rights Violations. Women from all over the world testified about their
experiences of various kinds of violence ranging from rape, child sexual
abuse, battering, to war crimes before a distinguished international panel
of legal experts. A similar tribunal was organised in 1993 at the sixth Latin
American and Caribbean Feminist Encounter held in El Salvador. A num-
ber of tribunals were organised as part of the International Conference on
Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 and the Social Summit in
1995. Another Global Tribunal held during the NGO Forum at the Fourth
World Conference on Women, in Beijing, China focused on violence against
women in the family and in situations of armed conflict. This practice
has spread and tribunals have taken place in Asia dealing with the use of
Korean Comfort Women in Japanese Military Camps during the Second
World War while in Uttar Pradesh, India, tribunals were being used to
protest crimes of violence committed by the state (India Together, 2001).
Interestingly, the recently established International Criminal Court is also
mandated to address violence against women inasmuch as it is statute-
bound to recognise rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced preg-
nancy, enforced sterilisation and sexual violence as war crimes and crimes
against humanity. Furthermore, there is a Victim and Witness Unit within
the Court’s registry which provides gender-sensitive protective measures
196 Rhoda Reddock

and other services for witnesses, victims and others at risk on account of
their testimony (Women’s Human Rights Net, 2003: 1).
In 1997, a part of the UN Inter-Agency Campaign on Violence Against
Women and Girls, a Regional Tribunal on Violence against Women in the
Caribbean was held in Barbados, organised by UNIFEM. Fourteen women
from throughout the region or their advocates testified before a panel of
distinguished legal practitioners. The tribunal noted that some basic human
rights of all 14 testifiers had been violated—by the perpetrator and by law
enforcement and judicial personnel who failed to act positively or at all; and
by the state, in its failure to provide support services. The tribunal recom-
mended, inter alia, that Caribbean governments comply with their reporting
obligations under international conventions, to provide information on mea-
sures taken to combat gender violence; amend or enact legislation to make
‘battered woman syndrome’ available as a defence at trials involving crimes
of violence committed by women; enact, without undue delay, legislation
concerning sexual harassment; establish family courts with support services
for the hearing of matters pertaining to the family and enact legislation to
compel medical personnel to report all injuries which they suspect may be
due to violence committed within a family situation.17 Once again the pat-
tern is grass roots demand in conjunction with international resources and
organisational capacity. The economic progress of women to positions of
professional authority at national level intersects with the political need at
regional level. Pressure is levelled on national governments to take seriously
their obligations under international law. Outcomes can be used for regional
and local pressure and politics and to inform the grass roots.

Gains of the International Movement?

There is no doubt that the movement against domestic violence and other
forms of violations against women has become a truly global movement. It
could even claim to be the first and best example of a postmodern global
politics. It is therefore important to assess to what extent this has influenced
the levels of violence directed at women today. The global movement includ-
ing its local and regional components has been successful in advocating for
significant change on an international level where important steps have been
taken towards eliminating violence against women since the Beijing confer-
ence in 1995. An Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of
All Forms of Discrimination against Women has given women the right to
seek redress for violations of their human rights, including gender-based vio-
lence; and the General Assembly has adopted Model Strategies and Practical
Measures on the Elimination of Violence against Women in the Field of Crime

17 Adapted from Panos Briefing, no 27, March 1998.

 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 197

Prevention and Criminal Justice. Furthermore, the Statute of the International

Criminal Court, adopted in June 1998, specifically addresses gender-
based crimes, as do the Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and
Rwanda. Finally, a draft protocol to the United Nations Convention against
Transnational Organised Crime, focuses on trafficking in human beings, espe-
cially women and children (Women’s Human Rights Net, 2003: 2).
Additionally, many states have been forced to amend or enact new laws,
establish or support special courts, shelters, hotlines and crisis centres. In many
countries, rape or sexual assault in marriage is now a crime. Special domestic
violence units have been established, and work with male perpetrators of
violence has assumed greater importance. Yet Women’s Human Rights Net
has expressed concern that advance on the issue of violence against women is
being threatened by the wider backlash against the women’s rights as human
rights movement orchestrated by conservative forces in the North and South.
For example, at the March 2003 meeting of the UN Commission on the Status
of Women, the delegate from Iran, with support from Egypt, objected to the
inclusion of a paragraph that called on governments to ‘condemn violence
against women and refrain from invoking any custom, tradition, or religious
consideration to avoid their obligations with respect to its elimination as
set out in the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women’
(Women’s Human Rights Net, April 2003: 2).18
This is not to suggest that this is the only source of conservative opposi-
tion. Similar trends can be observed from the fundamentalist ‘Christian
Right’ in the United States with a global reach through the electronic media
and the world wide web. The international climate has become more antag-
onistic towards women, feminism and progressive movements generally
through the rise and alliances of political conservatism, religious fundamen-
talism and economic neo-liberalism. Moreover, male victimhood discourses
have served to turn the tide against the movement and to rationalise male
violence against women in many parts of the world. The combined impact of
economic neo-liberalism and the gains of the women’s movement combine
to create a very unstable situation for many men who increasingly perceive
themselves as victims. In such situations, women’s personal security becomes
once again at risk. In a context of increasing conservatism, it is left to be seen
how women’s global networks will respond to these developments.

CONCLUSION

To what extent has violence against women declined? This of course is diffi-
cult to evaluate as figures for domestic violence have always been problematic

18 Antrobus, ch 3, this volume, explores the political and economic forces that have

encouraged such retrogressive manoeuvres.

198 Rhoda Reddock

for reasons with which we are all familiar—under-reporting, failure to record,

poor data collection and normalisation of intra-familial violence. In some
parts of the world it is being suggested that the backlash and resistance to the
further advancement of women has occasioned an increase in some forms of
violence against women and the return of some ancient ones. In evaluating the
success of the movement, this would also need to be explored.
This chapter has traced the emergence of global/transnational feminist
networks which are firmly rooted in the local as a distinctive characteristic
of this second wave of feminism internationally. These networks have oper-
ated on single issues or multiple issues, they have connected sub-regional,
regional and global networks and have influenced the agendas of national,
bilateral, the United Nations and other international institutions in an
unprecedented manner. The relationship of these networks to the process
of globalisation is debatable and depends on the definition of globalisation
being used. Certainly, the increasing global awareness especially among
people from the Economic South has been noticeable since the beginning
of the new wave. Similarly the use of the world wide web has potentially
increased communication about and among women’s organisations and
networks.
Through the establishment of international protocols, norms and conven-
tions networked women have managed to force the hands of the state in
many local contexts. Indeed the international meetings which preceded and
intensified after the declaration of the UN Decade for Women are testimony
to that. However, there are also some negative implications of these devel-
opments. In many instances outstanding local level activists from the top
leadership of local and regional movements have been siphoned off to serve
in official capacities in the global networks or the international institutions
which they have helped facilitate. But state officials at the local level who
are required to report to global agencies such as CEDAW need to be assisted
with arguments, information and policy proposals. Where feminist NGOs
are strong they can assist, as occurred in the preparations in the Caribbean
for the Fourth World Conference in Beijing in 1995. Unfortunately, at this
time, many of these NGOs have been weakened for a number of reasons
mentioned above. Nevertheless, there are signs—as in the programmes of
the DAWN Training Institute19—that activists have become aware of this
danger and that younger women are beginning to create activism at the
grass roots.
The institutionalisation of feminist work at the local and regional level,
based in universities, regional organisations and UN agencies, has been
an important development and outgrowth of the movement. However,
the future of the women’s project of emancipation and social justice must

19 Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era.

 Global Feminist Networks on Domestic Violence 199

rely on the continuous inventiveness of feminist women and pro-feminist

men and the institutions they have created and continue to create, as well
as their demonstrated capacity to use mainstream and non-mainstream
regional and international bureaucracies without being incorporated into
them and de-politicised and weakened in the process.

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 11
Local Contexts and Globalised
Knowledges: What Can International
Criminal Victimisation Surveys Tell
Us About Women’s Diverse Lives?
SANDRA WALKLATE

PREAMBLE

I
n july 2003 I attended the British Criminology Conference held at the
University of Bangor in North Wales, UK. As a part of my attendance, I
had agreed to chair one of the sessions dedicated to studies in victimol-
ogy. The session, though not well attended, was nevertheless thought pro-
voking. The papers were diverse. One was concerned with the viability of
‘victim impact statements’ in Queensland, Australia; a second reported on
the findings of a criminal victimisation survey in Nigeria and a third reported
on findings relating to victims’ experiences of the criminal justice system in
Barbados. In some ways, then, quite a diverse range of presentations in
which to act as chair. Or was it? These papers raised many questions. How
do criminal justice policies travel, if they do? How do research methodolo-
gies travel, if they do? When we introduce a policy or a research method
from one socio-economic setting into another, is it actually doing the same
thing or something different? What is criminology’s role (or in this particular,
victimology’s role) in all of this? To what extent are intellectuals and policy
makers complicit in this, what are to all intents and purposes, global, if
not globalising, processes? Questions such as these, and the experience of
chairing that session, inform the chapter that follows.

INTRODUCTION

The impact of globalisation can no longer be treated as just one more phe-
nomenon to be studied. It is the context in which not only economic and
political decisions are made, but the context in which intellectual and policy
traditions are being constructed. Thus agendas are set, including academic
202 Sandra Walklate

research agendas, subject to influences above and beyond the particular setting
in which they are intended to unfold. There is some evidence to suggest that
criminology as a discipline is beginning to take note of the significance of
the global context in relation to the study of particular crimes, in relation
to the demands of international policing, and in relation to particular policy
agendas (‘Zero Tolerance’ campaigns and restorative justice initiatives are
two good examples). Indeed, there has been a particular growing interest in
the question of how crime policies travel (see Sparks and Newburn, 2002).1
However, my concern here is to explore, not the extent to which criminol-
ogy (or its sub-discipline, victimology) has taken account of this global
context and its developments some of which have been outlined above, but
to explore the extent to which both of these areas of analysis have been
implicated in, and as consequence are part of, embedding that global context
and what the impact of that embedding might look like. Do research meth-
odologies travel? What is the role of criminology/victimology in encouraging
that travel, and by implication, are there any alternatives currently taking
place? In asking these questions, I will take as an exemplar the International
Criminal Victimisation Survey (ICVS). In so doing I shall not be concerned
with the findings of the ICVS per se, though these may be referred to in the
context of the argument as it unfolds, but I shall be concerned with the ques-
tion of how those findings are produced and their relative value to us. The
connections that questions such as these have with issues of local context
and diversity of women’s lives will, I hope, become clear as the argument
unfolds. However, it is important to make clear that I am not necessarily
taking as my substantive example women’s lives per se. Nor am I concerned
to document the issues relating to sexual/gender violence. Rather, I want to
ask questions, arguably of a deeper nature, that have been and are brought
to the surface by the kinds of questions that an appreciation of the diversity
of women’s lives raises for how social scientists make claims to knowledge.
This chapter falls into four parts. The first will briefly summarise the
history and development of the ICVS. The second will explore some of the
questions of method, that is, how it is done. The third will explore ques-
tions of methodology—that is, how do we know what we know in relation
to criminal victimisation and whether or not there are other ways to know
such things. The fourth will explore what issues have been made visible
and left invisible by the ICVS industry. In conclusion we shall return to
the initial question of whether or not research methodologies travel and
whether there are alternative ways of exploring the questions in which
the ICVS proclaims interest. In summary we shall revisit the question of
diversity and women’s lives.

1 However, it has to be said that even Sparks and Newburn’s collection of papers has as its

central focus the local conditions that facilitate or inhibit travelling policies rather than the
question of whether or not they should travel at all.
 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 203

INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL VICTIMISATION SURVEYS

The ICVS was, and still is, organised by an international working group
of criminologists with interest and expertise in survey methodology. The
group began its life in 1987 and while its membership has changed in
the intervening years its work is still sponsored by the Dutch Ministry
of Justice. The development of the work of this group has to be seen as
an offshoot of the (then) increasing popular use and deployment of the
Criminal Victimisation Survey. A technique that had its origins in the late
1960s in the United States and whose main purpose then, and still is, is to
try and paint a more complete picture of crime and the impact of criminal
victimisation as a way of supplementing bureaucratic data sources, like
police statistics for example. Following this tradition, the first ICVS was
conducted in 1989 and there have been another three since then in 1992,
1996 and 2000.* During that time there have also been ‘supplementary sur-
veys’ conducted in non-industrialised societies using the ICVS methodology
conducted under the auspices of the United Nations Interregional Criminal
Justice Research Institute based in Rome. These have been city level surveys
largely with the purpose of trying to inform regional governments of prob-
lems in their urban areas. There have been two survey sweeps of this kind.
Not every survey has involved the same country on every occasion but as
the authors of the 2002 report state:

All told there have been about 140 singular surveys of the ICVS around the world.
These have involved interviews with over 200,000 respondents, of which 110,000
were interviewed in industrialised countries. (van Kersteren et al, 2002: 114)

The next ICVS is planned for 2004, with a view to looking for better ways
of including more ‘developing’ countries.
In this brief pen portrait it is simply not possible to do justice to the
wealth of data that all this activity has produced. Moreover, since it is not
my primary purpose to discuss ICVS findings per se, I shall not endeavour
to discuss them in detail. Suffice it to say that for some one so minded
there is a lot of information from the ICVS publicly available. Indeed in
many respects one of the features of the work conducted by the ICVS and
the UNICJRI is the apparent transparency that is associated with the work
done under the umbrella of these organisations. Reports on findings are
carefully worded and every effort is made both to make clear how data
have been collected and analysed and what can and cannot be read into
them. Its historical legacy, however, gives us some clues as to some of the

* The survey dates here are those used when the paper was presented to the Oñati confer-

ence. In our view the passage of time has not changed the arguments, and no alteration has
therefore been made. [Eds]
204 Sandra Walklate

(potential) problems inherent in the occidentalism (Cain, 2000) it implies. I

shall endeavour to separate out the questions that such occidentalism raises
into two main types: questions of method and questions of methodology.

THE QUESTION OF METHOD

By the question of method I am here referring to what might be called the

technical problems that are associated with trying to engage in comparative
research work of this kind. Such ‘technical’ problems range from how to
take account of the different legal frameworks in which the survey might be
being conducted, the data collection process, to the problems of language
translation each of which may differently have an impact on the findings
produced. All such problems are problems of data reliability: can you use
your research instrument repeatedly? For example, in a comparative study
of burglary victims, Mawby et al opted for a definition of burglary as being
‘a situation in which someone entered the home without legal permission
and either stole or tried to steal something’ (1999). This did not match the
legal definition of burglary for either Poland or Hungary (two partners in
the research) but was the definition that was the most easily translatable
for the purposes of interviewing burglary victims. Given the purpose of the
research, it was more important for us to get people to talk about their
experiences than it was to be able to accurately match with official statis-
tics. The ICVS, however, has different concerns. During the time since the
first ICVS much work has gone into refining and ‘standardising’ the survey
questions. In so doing the researchers report efforts to take account of dif-
ferent legal frameworks, different language translation issues and changing
crime agendas. Indeed, the kinds of things that people are asked questions
about have changed relatively little. So, for example, the 2000 ICVS asked
respondents questions about eleven forms of victimisation from household
crime, to personal crime, consumer fraud and street level corruption. In
addition, respondents are asked questions about reporting behaviour, and
their experience of the criminal justice system.2
The main method of data collection for the 2000 sweep of the ICVS was
a random sample of ‘computer assisted telephone interviewing’ (CATI),
though face to face interviewing was used in some countries. Face to face
interviewing has certainly been the main method of data collection for the
non-industrialised societies surveys conducted by the UNICJRI. The use of
the telephone obviously raises questions of telephone availability that the
ICVS seem well aware of, with face to face interviewing raising a range

2 The English versions of all four sweeps of the ICVS questionnaires can be found on the

internet at http://www.icvs.nscr.nl.
 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 205

of quite different questions some of which will have a greater or a lesser

impact on what the respondent will tell you dependent on the topic under
discussion. Much has been made of the importance of these dynamics in
relation to crimes of a sexual nature and it is well known that may be as
relevant for males as well as females. It should not, however, be assumed
that these are the only circumstances in which such dynamics might impact
on the data gathering process. Any crime in which the ‘offender’ is known
to the ‘victim’—the use of the apostrophes is deliberately intended to
convey the problematic nature of these terms—either as a relative or as a
member of the local community may result in the presence of interviewing
‘dynamics’ that cannot necessarily be controlled for. Issues such as these
may all differently impact upon the response rate of the survey.
The 2000 ICVS reports an overall response rate of 64 per cent which, given
the chosen method of data collection is quite impressive, though as the ICVS
itself comments, not much can be said about non-respondents and as a result
different data weighting techniques are employed to ensure the representative
nature of the sample subsequently obtained. It is at this point that technical
questions of method (the issue of standardisation that the ICVS is so focused
on) begin to merge with more philosophical questions of methodology. To
clarify, Stanley and Wise made the following observation some time ago:

If we wanted to ‘prove’ how terribly violent women’s lives were, we’d go to women
who live in violent places—run-down inner-city areas of large conurbations—
who have actually experienced male violence, and ask them about it … However,
if we called this research a ‘survey’, then with exemplary motives and using ‘sci-
entific’ means the ‘problem for those women there’ could be generalised into ‘the
problem for all women everywhere’. The consequence would be that we would
have over-estimated the amount of overt violence and actual powerlessness in the
average woman’s life. (1987: 10–111)

We could, of course, insert any structural variable into this quote and the
issue would remain the same: what are we actually finding out about, and
why are we doing it in the way that we are? It is at this juncture that it is
important to consider the relevance and impact of positivism and gender on
the sub-discipline of victimology and the development of the ICVS. These
are questions of methodology.

THE QUESTION OF METHODOLOGY

According to Eagle-Russett:

Women and savages, together with idiots, criminals and pathological monstrosi-
ties, were a constant source of anxiety to male intellectuals in the late nineteenth
century. (1989: 63)
206 Sandra Walklate

This anxiety was deeply embedded in what Eagle-Russett calls ‘sexual sci-
ence’, a term she uses to describe the powerful influence of the ideas of
evolutionary biology on the knowledge traditions being formulated during
the nineteenth century. I have mapped the impact of these traditions on both
criminology and victimology elsewhere and this is not the place to re-present
them in great detail.3 However, briefly, what these traditions built upon
were already established conceptions of science, not only of what counted
as knowledge, but who could know things. Bacon, for example, believed
that the ‘man of science’ could make ‘nature a “slave” to man’s needs and
desires’ (Sydie, 1989: 205). Nature is, of course, female. As Smith (1987:
74) remarks, ‘the knower turns out after all not to be an “abstract knower”
perching on an Archimedean point, but a member of a definite social cate-
gory occupying definite positions in society’. Thus positivism, in victimology,
identified as a ‘search for factors that contribute to a non-random pattern
of victimisation’ (Miers, 1989: 3) reflects a search for male knowledge. But
more than this in the context of this discussion, this knowledge also became
equated with what kinds of questions can be asked and how it might be
possible to ask them. These factors taken together have contributed to the
powerful influence of the criminal victimisation survey and its extension to
the ICVS. These deep-rooted assumptions become the domain assumptions
bounding what can be asked, how it can be asked, and what sense might be
made of the data.
As I have already indicated, assumptions such as these do not necessar-
ily make the findings of the ICVS and associated surveys worthless. They
do provide quite detailed information on reported trends in victimisation,
and people’s levels of satisfaction with the various criminal justice agencies
with whom they have contact. They can and do offer an understanding of
the patterning of criminal victimisation: albeit a patterning that is subject
to ‘standardisation’ to use an ICVS term. So what does this standardisation
make visible and render invisible and how does it connect to the deep-
rooted assumptions of what can be asked, referred to above? At this junc-
ture, and as an example, it will be useful to re-visit one of the key concepts
that underpins the generation of the criminal victimisation survey and the
questions it asks: that concept is lifestyle.
The concept of lifestyle in its original formulation is largely associated
with the work of Hindelang et al (1978). Their understanding of this con-
cept is largely derived from a highly functionalist view of the world in which
individuals adapt to their structural location. Individuals do this according
to the characteristics they possess, such as age, race, sex and social class
and their adaptations then become reflected in the individual’s routine
life. In this way lifestyle can be articulated and can be measured, that is,

3 See Walklate (2000; 2003).

 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 207

standardised. Thus questions can be asked about individual experiences of

criminal victimisation and patterns can be generated over time. But take a
different imagery of lifestyle. The following one is worth quoting at length:

Becoming interested in what appeared to be examples of ‘victim-proneness’ in one

geographical area, I visited one particular block on a council estate over a number
of months, tape-recorded interviews with several families, their neighbours and
friends, and eventually moved in for a short period with the woman who had
suffered the greatest number of victimisations in our survey. The views which I
formed after this period of intensive observation have a substantial bearing not
simply on the experiences of multiple victims but on the limitations of victim
surveys as they are currently designed… What also became apparent was the fact
that events reported to us in the survey were not regarded as particularly remark-
able. They were just part of life. (Genn, 1988: 92–93)

What might this imagery of lifestyle lead us to think about in relation to

criminal victimisation that might offer a different (better?) picture and
understanding of the nature and extent of criminal victimisation and
people’s experiences of the criminal justice system? Genn’s comment relates
to one woman’s experience of criminal victimisation, some of which
she probably identified as criminal victimisation and others she did not.
However, for the purposes of the argument to be developed here the key
phrase is: ‘They were just part of life’. This encourages us to think about
lifestyle not as a series of discreet, measurable incidents, but as a process.
Lifestyle as process cannot be captured by survey methodology, as the quote
from Genn clearly implies. It demands a different way of thinking about
and exploring what ‘just part of life’ means for people. It is the case, of
course, that much feminist inspired work has always been committed to
different ways of thinking about the routine nature of women’s lives and
has always been committed to challenging accepted knowledge. However,
the impact of the feminist challenge is not only pertinent to the exploration
of women’s lives, it encourages ways of thinking critically about how things
get done, including criminal victimisation research, in arenas that are valu-
able for understanding the knowledge production process in general. These
are the questions that the phrase ‘just part of life’ connects us to. These are
questions that thinking about methodology raises. However, before devel-
oping this comment further it is useful to unpick some other issues associ-
ated with the ICVS use of the concept of lifestyle and its associated concern
with the process of data standardisation.
The implicit use of the lifestyle concept as deployed by the ICVS reflects
an understanding of lifestyle as a feature of an individual’s adaptation
to their structural location. This is not only a static interpretation of the
concept, it is also a highly functionalist one. Functionalism is rooted in a
highly consensual and democratic view of society reflecting a particular
understanding of power relations. Put simply, Hindelang et al (1978)
208 Sandra Walklate

talk of age, race, sex, not ageism, racism, sexism. Ageism, racism, sexism
etc are ideological constructs reflecting power relationships in particular
socio-economic settings that functionalism cannot capture. Thus the ques-
tion is again raised whether or not the ICVS, in its desire for standardisa-
tion, for working with a concept that can be measured repeatedly using
tried and tested questions, can capture the differences in power relation-
ships that the answers to the questions it poses may be eliciting. In other
words, there is little sense in the implied image of society adopted by the
ICVS and how that imagery is operationalised, of the way in which the
law contributes to the social construction of the victim, the processes of
criminal victimisation or the unforeseen processes of social change. The
assumptions outlined here then cannot facilitate an understanding of the
data, above and beyond the surface production of statistical differences,
of what underpins those differences. What are the causal mechanisms at
play underpinning criminal victimisation in the different countries under
investigation, and for the different social categories of people participating
in the investigation?
To summarise: a consideration of the question of methodology, informed
by feminist thinking, encourages a much more detailed examination of the
relationship between theory, concepts and method and how these are linked
to produce knowledge that is to be taken account of. The discussion here
has argued that the implicit acceptance of a particular way of doing things
and a particular way of thinking about things, largely informed by the con-
ventional victimological work by the ICVS, reflects an acceptance of a view
of knowledge deeply attached to positivism, masculinity and functionalism.
Moreover, given the history and development of the ICVS there is also a
deep-rooted occidentalism to be found here. All of these taken together pro-
duce the surface manifestation of standardisation and its associated statistics
but in so doing deny an understanding of difference and local knowledge.
So questions of local culture, the role of the state, the relative relationships
of different social groups are all lost as a consequence. Sameness is made
visible. Difference is rendered invisible. The question remains, how might
we think differently about the nature of criminal victimisation: what might
a different methodology look like?

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE, LOCAL UNDERSTANDING

I want to explore an answer to the question raised above by reference to

two empirical studies. These are Zero Tolerance or Community Tolerance:
Managing Crime in High Crime Areas by Walklate and Evans (1999) and
Caldeira’s City of Walls: Crime Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paolo
(2000). I shall discuss each of them briefly in turn before offering what I
think are the key lessons to be taken collectively from them.
 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 209

The study by Walklate and Evans (1999) began life as a fairly conventional
study of the fear of crime in two high crime areas in the north of England.
Moreover, one of its main investigative tools was the crime victimisation sur-
vey. This criminal victimisation survey had within it many of the same ques-
tions that can be found in the ICVS. Indeed, the ICVS 2000 tells about how
safe people feel when they are walking in their areas after dark—Catalonia,
Australia and Poland had the most anxious people in this respect—and how
safe people felt at home (6 per cent overall feeling unsafe with the Poles at
15 per cent feeling the most insecure). Of course, this way of approaching
and understanding levels of personal safety has been subjected to much
criticism from the feminist movement.4 It is nevertheless still used by both
national and international criminal victimisation surveys to provide some
sense of the relationship between ‘fear of’ and ‘risk from’ crime.5 In our own
use of the criminal victimisation survey, we were made sensitive very early
on by our respondents (not only women) to the fact that our questions did
not fit their answers. Indeed it was listening to these responses that radically
changed the nature of our analysis of our findings.
Put simply, it became clear that questions relating to the fear of crime
had little resonance in one of our research areas, but questions relating to
trust did. Moreover, as the investigation went on we became increasingly
committed to the view that questions of trust, mediated as they were by
the relative organisation of crime in a locality, the relative organisation of
the community, the mechanisms of sociability available and the role of the
state, all played their part in whom people trusted and when and fed into
the feelings of ‘ontological (in)security’, (Giddens, 1991) that people pos-
sessed.6 As Evans et al have argued about one of our research areas from
which the state has largely withdrawn:

your place in relation to crime places you in a community of belonging and

exclusion … It is consequently important to recognise who is seen to be protect-
ing you and how: for many people it is not the police or the council but local
families and/or the Salford Firm. Moreover it is the absence of confidence in the
formal agencies which creates the space for those other forces to come into play.
(1996: 379)

The different ways in which questions of whom you trust, how much you
trust, when you trust, permeated our empirical findings in the two areas
under investigation and manifested themselves in the different relationships
people had with each other dependent on where they as individuals were
located within their own community structures. We eventually characterised
one of our communities as a ‘defended’ community in the psychoanalytical

4 Eg Stanko (1990).
5 For a critique of this debate see Walklate (2000: ch 3).
6 Giddens (1991). See also Nelken (1994).
210 Sandra Walklate

sense. The other was identified as a ‘frightened’ community in the much

more conventional criminological understanding of the fear of crime.
The implications of this study for the focus of this paper are arguably
threefold. First, there is the importance of locale. This study took a detailed
look at two communities less than two miles apart and while the question
of trust was important in each, how trust and trust relationships were
mediated looked quite different in each community. Secondly, there is the
importance of local networks and where an individual might be placed in
those networks. How people were connected to each other (mechanisms
for sociability), how well criminality was organised in their locality and
how well organised the community response to this was. Thirdly, there is
the importance of thinking about the relationship between theory, method
and data. Without listening to our respondents we would have missed, and
misunderstood, some important features of their routine daily lives. And
without this listening, we might also have assumed that gender, as a vari-
able, played itself in and out of these communities in ways that would not
have been fair or accurate in relation to our data.
The second study I want to refer to here comes from Brazil. The investi-
gation of Sao Paolo by Caldeira (2000) makes impactive reading. She calls
it an anthropological study with ‘an accent’ as she moved between North
and South America over a ten-year period, concerning herself with crime,
the fear of crime and the urban response to it. Whatever methodological
label is applied to this study it is certainly a thought provoking analysis of
violent crime, its place in democracy and the policing and public response
to it. In this work she presents a convincing argument for understanding
the extent to which violence is ‘constitutive of the social order’ in Sao
Paolo where ‘routine abuse [including torture] is the modus operandi of
the police’ (2000: 142–45). In this social order, the rich can buy torture
from the police for their suspected offenders in much the same way that
they can buy private security. Indeed, it is this social acceptance of torture
that Caldeira connects to the cultural belief that with pain comes knowl-
edge and thereby truth—a belief she connects with other social beliefs to
do with carnival and the unbounded body she associates with Brazilian
culture. She argues that the propensity of Brazilians to engage in invasive
surgery from Caesarean sections to cosmetic surgery is linked to the social
acceptance of torture and both are a manifestation of different attitudes to
the body. It is these cultural values she argues that need to be understood
before one might begin to intervene on questions of human rights, or indeed
civil rights. Compare this analysis with the UNICJRI findings on corruption
reported by del Frate. She comments:

In the third sweep of the ICVS, the highest levels of bribery are exhibited in Latin
America, Asia, Africa, and countries in transition, all of which are far beyond the
10% threshold… While possible explanations cover a range of factors, including
specific cultural ones, these findings do indicate that it is most likely that street level
 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 211

corruption by public officials has to do with standards of public administration, on

the one hand, and with the overall position of citizens on the other. (1998: 46)

I leave readers to draw their own conclusions.

Once again, this study of crime and, by implication, criminal victimisa-
tion, puts to the fore for us the importance of locale—in this case, not only
the importance of developments in Sao Paolo itself, but the wider cultural
context of attitudes and values in Brazil. Secondly, once again we see the
importance of local networks. In this study the importance of being rich in
securing a convictable defendant for your crime. Moreover, we have a study
in which the analysis offered takes us beyond the boundaries of criminology
and victimology in order to make sense of its findings, in this case reaching
out to the sociology of the body.
Both of these studies were endeavouring to address the problem of crime
and criminal victimisation and both in their different ways challenge con-
ventionally informed criminological and victimological work. It is necessary
now to pose that challenge in a little more detail.

THE CHALLENGE TO CRIMINOLOGY AND VICTIMOLOGY

From the discussion so far, it is self evident that what I have called the drive
for standardisation that has been associated here with the ICVS carries with
it a number of significant inherent difficulties. Those difficulties inhibit an
understanding of what the statistics produced by the ICVS actually mean
in particular socio-economic settings. How do we understand the ICVS
statistics, what are the causal mechanisms that produce them and what can
or should we do (if anything) on the basis of them? The studies referred to
above offer us quite different answers to these questions. The question is
why do they? The answer to this is also threefold.
Maureen Cain has called for a transgressive criminology which would
be especially attentive to the question of gender and which would be
comprised of three strategies: reflexivity, deconstruction and reconstruction
(Cain, 1990). The extent to which criminology (or victimology) has listened
to this call is a moot point, but arguably, what is significant about the two
studies presented here is their reflexive methodology. In other words, there
is a real effort on the part of the researchers to interact with, listen to and
have an open relationship with their data. What they have produced on
the basis of that relationship is obviously subject to public scrutiny and
critique but arguably as a result of that reflexive approach they are studies
that offer us a deeper analysis of the causal mechanisms that might under-
pin their findings. As a consequence, they are also studies that transgress
criminological and victimological disciplinary boundaries. These studies
offer us very different pictures of the problem of crime and criminal victi-
misation from those proffered by criminal victimisation survey work alone.
212 Sandra Walklate

This is because of their methodological reflexivity and also their theoreti-

cal reflexivity which is informed by notions of trust or theories about the
sociology of the body. The analyses presented by these studies enable us to
ask different questions as a result. The third reason that these studies offer
us different answers to the questions posed above is their commitment to a
critical analysis, one that is not only self reflective, but alert to the role of
the state, either at the local or the national level, in contributing to both the
criminal victimisation we see and that that we do not see.
In summary, studies such as these, and others like them, demonstrate the
empirical and theoretical paucity of much conventional criminal victimisa-
tion work and clearly show that there are alternative ways to make sense
of what routine everyday life might look like for people. This is important
since it carries with it political possibilities. It is within the gap between
what people know about their lives and how the structural condition in
which they live impacts on them that political possibility of social change
lies. Two questions remain: what of globalisation and what of women’s
diverse lives referred to in the title of this paper?

CONCLUSION

The answers to the two questions posed above are interconnected. At a

fundamental level, it is my contention that none of the questions I raise
here would have been possible without the input of feminist-inspired
ideas and concepts. In other words, without the claims made by feminism
for an appreciation of standpoint and all that that has to say to us about
knowledge and knowledge construction, the arguments presented here
might have remained at the level of the technical. However, those claims
made by standpoint feminism have and still do offer a way of challenging
much of what stands as accepted ways of doing things. It is a challenge
that is not solely the preserve of the feminist movement, but those debates
notwithstanding, it is only by and through such challenges that it is pos-
sible to think differently about all sorts of problems including social ones.
Accepting this view does not mean that gender has to matter all of the time.
There will be circumstances in which gender is the salient variable and oth-
ers when it is not.7 However, what we need are methods and methodologies
that allow us to make the distinction about how and under what circum-
stances gender matters. By implication, this means embracing power as an
important concept. Power is a feature of everyday life permeating all of our
relationships, and at all levels—at the personal, the interpersonal, the famil-
ial, the community, national and global level. The argument here is for a

7 This point is well made by Hagan and McCarthy (1997; 2000), Messerschmidt (1997)

and Walklate (2000).

 Local Contexts and Globalised Knowledge 213

victimology that brings power back in, in all of its manifestations, including
gender but not solely. It is only in this way that we shall be able to appreci-
ate the impact of crime and criminal victimisation in all its diversity.
So while I have not really put to the fore the diversity of women’s lives
per se here, the questions I raise would not have been possible without hav-
ing taken the view that such diversity exists, and that we have something
to learn from it. In this particular setting, that learning takes the form of
appreciating the importance of local relationships of power and how those
relationships are mediated, whether that be via local community dynamics
or more widespread cultural processes. Such nuanced understandings are
only made possible by thinking outside conventional disciplinary boundar-
ies both conceptually and methodologically. Arguably, it is the fundamental
methodological occidentalism implicit in the use of ICVS that denies the
possibility of understanding the dynamics of such diversity. It is only by
speaking more loudly about criminology’s poor—and victimology’s even
poorer—understanding of themselves as gendered disciplines that this occi-
dental balance might be reset. Methods may travel. Methodologies do not.
This is the real lesson of the diversity of women’s lives.

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Caldeira, T (2000) City of Walls: Segregation and Citizenship in Sao Paolo
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Eagle-Russett, C (1989) Sexual Science: the Victorian Construction of Motherhood
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press).
Evans, K, Fraser, P and Walklate, S (1996) ‘Whom do you Trust? The Politics
of Grassing on an Inner City Housing Estate’ (August) Sociological Review
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del Frate, A (1998) Victims of Crime in the Developing World (Rome, UNICRI
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Genn, H (1988) ‘Multiple Victimisation’ in M Maguire and J Pointing (eds), Victims
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Giddens, A (1991) Modernity and Self Identity (Oxford, Polity).
Hagan, J and McCarthy, J (1997) Mean Streets: Youth Crime and Homelessness
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press).
—— (2000) ‘The Meaning of Criminology’ 4 Theoretical Criminology 232–42.
Hindelang, MJ, Gottfredson, MR and Garofalo, J (1978) Victims of personal crime:
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Massachusetts, Ballinger).
Mawby, R, Gorgenyi, I, Ostrihanska, Z, Walklate, S and Wojcik, D (1999),
‘Victims’ Needs and the Availability of Services’ 9 International Criminal Justice
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Messerschmidt, J (1997) Crime as Structured Action (London, Sage Publications).

Miers, D (1989) ‘Positive Victimology: a Critique’ 1 International Review of
Victimology 3–22.
Nelken, D (1994) ‘Whom Can You Trust? The Future of Comparative Criminology’
in D Nelken (ed), The Futures of Criminology (London, Sage Publications)
20–44.
Smith, D (1987) The Everyday World as Problematic (Milton Keynes, Open
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Sparks, R and Newburn, T (2002) ‘How Does Crime Policy Travel?’ 2 Criminal
Justice 107–09.
Stanko, B (1990) Everyday Violence (London, Virago).
Stanley, L and Wise, S (1987) Georgie, Porgie: Sexual Harassment in Everyday Life
(London, Macmillan).
Sydie, R (1989) Natural Women; Cultured Men (Milton Keynes, Open University
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van Kesteren, J, Mayhew, P and Nieubeerta, P (2002) International Criminal
Victimisation Survey 2000 (Ministry of Justice, Holland).
Walklate, S (2000) Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice (Devon, Willan Publishing).
—— (2003) ‘Can There be a Feminist Victimology?’ in P Davies, P Frances and
V Jupp (eds), Victimisation: Theory, Research and Policy (Basingstoke, Palgrave
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 Index
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander CAFRA (Caribbean Association for Feminist
Commission see ATSIC Research and Action), 179, 184, 187–90,
Aboriginal communities, 11, 137, 141, 146, 194
148–52, 154–5 Canada, 13, 32, 49, 98, 102, 192
Aboriginal culture, 11, 141, 152, 154 capitalism, 58–60
Aboriginal customary law, 137–55 Caribbean, 13, 28–9, 31, 179–80, 185–9, 194
Aboriginal people, 11, 71, 137–55 crime, 21–7
Aboriginal women, 11, 137–55 and globalisation, 21–7
activism, 51, 183–4, 190–1, 198 harms, 21–7
activists, 14, 65, 180, 183–5, 187, 195, 198 Caribbean Association for Feminist
see also feminists Research and Action see CAFRA
Afghan Girl, The, 85–8 CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of
Afghanistan, 57, 64, 70, 80, 85–8, 104, 173 Discrimination Against Women), 5, 43–4,
Africa, 9, 58, 102, 124, 126–9, 131–2, 134–5 53, 129–30, 182–3, 198
Agamben, G, 70, 73–4, 76 children, 8, 77–83, 89–90, 100–1, 124–5,
Alvarez, S, 181–2 169–70, 173–4
anti-trafficking initiatives, 97, 99, 105 civil and political rights, 5, 59, 123, 129–31,
armed conflicts, 10, 132–4, 195 134, 169
and violence against women, 124–6 Clarke, R, 188–9, 191
and vulnerability to HIV/AIDS, 126–7 collective rights, 11, 138, 140, 145, 154
asylum, 42, 44, 49, 53, 78, 100–2 colonialism/colonisation, 50–1, 59, 61, 88,
criminalisation, 96–7 101, 138, 142–4
policies, 96–8 conferences, 30, 32, 113, 182, 192
asylum seekers, 38, 70–1, 73–4, 76–82, conflict, 10, 27, 72, 124–7, 134, 145, 147
95–101, 104–6 Convention for the Elimination of
boats, 75, 77–80, 85, 100, 153 Discrimination Against Women see
ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander CEDAW
Commission), 139, 146–7 corruption, 16, 25, 130–1, 210–11
Australia, 70–1, 74–8, 80–5, 97–100, and natural disasters, 165, 167–8,
137–54 174–5
Australian legal system, 8, 11, 77 counter-geographies of globalisation, 71–3
and Aboriginal women, 137–54 crime rates, 24–5
authoritarian states, 103, 170 crimes, 2–6
authoritarianism, 169–70 Caribbean, 21–7
global, 103, 105, 135
Barbados, 190, 194, 196, 201 honour, 41–2, 44, 102
Basry, Amal, 89–90 property, 24–5
battered women, 38, 48, 52, 183 state see state crime
Bauman, Z, 1, 6, 38–9 Trinidad and Tobago, 21–7
Bell, D, 144, 152–3 criminalisation, 12, 30–1, 52, 73, 86, 105, 118
Blair Government, 37, 40–1 of asylum, 96–7
boats, asylum seeker, 75, 77–80, 85, 100, 153 criminogenesis, 20–31, 33
borderpanic, 8, 69–90 culpability, 5, 10, 12, 133, 164
borders, 8–9, 78–9, 85–6, 88–9, 107 of states, 161–2
see also borderpanic cultural rights, 44, 59, 123, 129–31, 134
deaths at, 98–9 culture, aboriginal, 11, 141, 152, 154
locating, 88–9 customary law, 11, 180
militarised, 99–100 aboriginal, 137–55
Britain see UK distorted, 147–50
British Crime Survey, 41 see also bullshit law
brothels, 112, 114–17 customs, 11, 16, 43, 138, 141, 144–5
216 Index
D’Cunha, J, 114–15, 174 floods, 163–4, 166
decriminalisation of prostitution, 109, 111, forced marriages, 38, 41–4, 49
113, 116–17 forced prostitution, 52, 101, 104–5, 108
detention, 76, 79–82, 84, 96 Fordham, M, 161, 173
disaster vulnerability, 167, 171–5 foreign direct investment, 131, 165–6
disasters see natural disasters Fothergill, A, 171, 173–4
displaced people, 8, 50, 87, 96, 101, 103, Foundation for Aboriginal Islander Research
124–6 Action (FAIRA), 139
dispossession, 137–8, 145, 152 Fourth World Conference on Women, 108,
DMSC (Durbar Mahila Samanwaya 148, 182, 195
Committee), 109, 111, 117 fundamentalism, 57–9, 65
Dodson, M, 139, 144, 148, 151 economic, 58–9, 61
domestic violence, 9–10, 37–8, 40–4 religious, 58–9, 61–4, 197
see also gender-based violence; VAW
(violence against women) gender-based violence, 41, 43–4, 180, 187,
forums, 40–1 189, 191, 194
global feminist networks against, 179–99 see also VAW (violence against women)
legislation, 47, 49, 52 gender persecution, 42, 49–50
victims of, 11, 37, 42, 183, 189 Geneva Convention of 1951, 9, 17, 27,
Dreze, J, 167, 172 97–8, 102–3, 132
drugs, 9, 27–31, 109 global agencies see global institutions
global deviance, 16–17
Eagle-Russett, C, 205–6 global economic institutions, 32–3
earnings, 114–15, 117 global economic policies, 6, 9, 21, 31
Trinidad and Tobago, 22–3 global feminist networks, 179–99
ECHR (European Court of Human Rights), multiple agenda, 184–90
17, 170 single issue, 190–4
economic growth, 58, 130, 165 global harms, 4–5, 5–6, 15–17
economic insecurity, 62, 172 global institutions, 1–2, 17, 27, 32, 95,
economies: 97, 101
integration of, 59–60 global women’s movement, 65, 179–99
representational, 69, 71–3, 83, 89 globalisation, 198–201
education, 23, 31, 49, 62, 116, 118, 133 and Caribbean, 21–7
employment, 166, 172–3 counter-geographies of, 71–3
England see UK economic, 39, 131, 172
equality, 11, 43, 129, 133, 143, 146, 150 and human rights/women’s rights, 31–3,
ethnicity, 25, 39, 50–1, 165, 174 57–65, 129–35
EU (European Union), 9, 32, 96–9, 101, 104 and India, 107–18
European Court of Human Rights see of international human rights law, 137–55
ECHR of knowledge, 201–3
European Union see EU and sub-Saharan Africa, 127–35
exclusion, 32, 70, 84, 95, 209 and Trinidad and Tobago, 21–7
and ATSIC (Aboriginal and Torres Strait uneven impact, 127–9
Islander Commission), 146–7 and VAW (violence against women),
power of, 70, 84 38–41, 50–1
exploitation, 9, 58, 98, 107–9, 111–12, and vulnerability, 164–8
114, 127 glocalisation, 38
glocality, 101
families, 2–4, 28–9, 33, 42–3, 78–81, Goldberg, DT, 69, 71, 84
89–90, 100 governments, 37, 40–5, 84, 95, 129–33,
Family Court of Australia, 8, 80–2, 143 162–3, 167–8
famine, 103, 163–4, 167, 169, 172 Grewal, I, 52, 73, 88
feminism, 12, 29–30, 37–53, 47, 61, 151–3, Griffith, I, 27–9
179, 180–1, 197–8, Gula, Sharbat, 86–7
feminist movement, 2, 13, 29–30, 38, 44–53, Guyana, 189, 194
115, 180–3, 209
see also global feminist networks; Hagley, L, 28–9
women’s movement harassment, 110, 112, 116
 Index 217

harms, 2–7, 9–13, 15–17, 21, 25, 57, 123–4 insecurity, 62–3, 118, 130
Caribbean, 21–7 economic, 62, 172
global, 4, 103, 105 international community, 59, 108, 123–6,
social see social harms 128–31
state-induced, 17 International Convention on the Elimination
Trinidad and Tobago, 21–7 of Racial Discrimination 1965 see ICERD
Harriott, A, 25, 28–9, 31 International Covenant on Civil and
Headley, B, 25, 28 Political Rights see ICCPR
health, 16, 30–1, 43, 62, 105, 118, 172–3 International Criminal Victimisation Survey
Hewitt, K, 164, 173–4 see ICVS
Hindelang, MJ, 206–7 International Decade for Natural Disaster
HIV/AIDS, 10, 111, 118, 124, 132, 134 Reduction 1990–2000, 171
and armed conflicts, 126–7 international financial institutions, 5, 10,
and poverty, 126–9 16, 131–2, 135
homeland, 69–70, 77, 85 international law, 9–10, 96–8, 135, 139–46,
honour crimes, 41–2, 44, 102 150, 153
housing, 12, 82, 105, 142, 162, 164, 173 International Monetary Fund see IMF
dangerous, 168–70, 173 International Organization for Migration
illegal, 168 see IOM
Huggins, J, 152–3 IOM (International Organization for
human rights, 42–4, 57–9, 64–6, 123–7 Migration), 103–5
and Aboriginal customary law, 140–1 Iraq, 64–5, 70, 85, 87, 90, 153
abuses, 58, 102, 124 ISIS International, 184–7
basic, 116, 196
conventions/treaties, 15, 43, 129–31 Jamaica, 22–5, 28–9, 33–5, 184, 189
framework, 10, 132–4, 153, 191
international, 124, 130 Kelly, L, 41, 43
and globalisation, 31–3 Kolkata, 109, 111
law, 133–4, 138, 151, 154
international, 45, 137–55, 191 Le, Thi Hang, 84–5
limits, 10–11, 123–55 loans, 21–3, 25, 133
possibilities, 10–11, 123–55
sub-Saharan Africa, 123–35 macroeconomic policies of structural
violations, 10, 108, 124–6, 130, 161–2, adjustment, 62–3
167, 191–2 marginalisation, 38, 51–2, 115, 143–5, 153
way forward, 133–4 markets, 7, 9, 28, 58, 61, 103, 127–8
human security, 57–9, 61, 63–5 marriage, forced, 38, 41–4, 49
methodology, 2, 190, 202, 204–8, 212–13
ICCPR (International Covenant on Civil and migrant women, 8–9, 51, 53
Political Rights), 5, 129–30 see also immigrant women
ICERD (International Convention on the migrants, 7, 38–9, 46, 50, 71, 74–5, 96
Elimination of Racial Discrimination see also immigrant women
1965), 140 migration, 9, 41, 50, 52, 80, 104, 113
ICVS (International Criminal Victimisation see also immigration
Survey), 201–13 militarised borders, 99–100
IMF (International Monetary Fund), 1–2, 5, Moghadam, V, 181–2
16, 21, 26–7, 133, 181 Mohanty, CT, 45–7, 49–50
immigrant women, 40, 46, 48, 72 money, 25, 31, 111, 115, 131
see also migrant women Monshipouri, M, 126, 128, 131–3
immigration, 42, 45–6, 50–1, 53, 73, 76, Moreton-Robinson, A, 152–3
80–1 Morrison, J, 97–8
detention, 70, 81–2, 88 mortality rates, 173–4
India, 9, 165, 173, 195 mothers, 22, 29–30, 79–80, 90, 152
prostitution, 107–18
indigenous peoples, 11, 137–55 narcotics see drugs
indigenous women, 16, 142–6, 149, 151–2 nation states, 4–6, 10, 16–17, 21, 39, 47–9,
see also Aboriginal women 127–8
Indonesia, 77–8, 90, 100 see also governments
218 Index
national security, 64, 79, 101, 130 Sao Paolo, 210–11
natural disasters, 12, 100, 161–75 SAPs (structural adjustment programmes),
networks, global see global feminist 22, 25–6, 60–2, 133
networks Sassen, S, 38, 45, 51, 53, 71
non-state actors, power of, 132 SBS (Southall Black Sisters), 38–9, 42,
44–5, 51
OECD (Organisation for Economic security, 57, 59–60, 73–4, 79–81, 83, 85–7
Co-operation and Development), 129 circuits of, 69–70
Organisation for Economic Co-operation human see human security
and Development (OECD), 129, 135 national, 64, 79, 101, 130
organised crime, 9, 30, 97 power of, 74, 88
of women, 7
police/policing, 7, 9, 29–30, 102, 114–16, sex industry/trade/work see prostitution
189–90, 209–10 sex work see prostitution:
political rights, 59, 123–4, 130–1, voluntary see voluntary prostitution
134, 169 sex workers, 8–9, 71–2, 82, 84, 108–19
poverty, 10, 60–1, 63–4, 132–5, 172–5 see also prostitution
and HIV/AIDS, 126–9 voluntary, 108
and vulnerability to disaster, 165–7 sexual violence, 45, 49–50, 84, 98, 101–2,
power, 39, 51–2, 59–60, 73–4, 87–8, 112, 124–5
212–13 Sharbat Gula, 86–7
of exclusion, 70, 84 Shohat, E, 47, 50
inequalities of, 48 SIEV 10, 79, 85
of law, 49, 84 SIEV X, 77–9, 85, 89–90, 100
of non-state actors, 132 Simaplee, Puongtong, 82–5
of security, 74, 88 Sirleaf, E, 125, 127
state, 27, 39, 70, 84, 128 Sivanandan, A, 95, 103
of whiteness, 152 slavery, 95, 101–2
of women, 7, 15, 53 smugglers, 72, 83, 97–9
profits, 58, 76, 109, 111 see also traffickers
prostitution, 9, 44, 82–3, 126–7 smuggling, 9, 71, 83
arrests of, 114–5 and trafficking, 97–8
debate, 109–14 social harms, 1–4, 10, 15–17, 123,
decriminalisation of, 109, 111, 113–8 126–7, 133
forced, 52, 101, 104–5, 108 in a global context, 11–14
India, 107–18 sovereignty, 60, 71, 73–5, 143
voluntary, 108, 117 state crime, 5, 12
punishment, 43, 76, 148, 150 definition, 162–3
Puongtong Simaplee, 82–5 and natural disasters, 161–75
state power, 27, 39, 45, 70, 84, 111, 128
race, 46, 71, 74, 80, 88, 96, 152 structural adjustment, 5–6, 21–2, 26, 31,
racialised women, 47, 51, 142 33–6
racism, 50, 95, 142, 144, 151, 192, 208 policies, 6, 23, 32, 40, 60–3
rape, 9–10, 15–16, 40–1, 102, 124–5, programmes see SAPs
148–9, 153–4 sub-Saharan Africa, 10, 16, 123–35
refugee women, 7, 53, 98, 100, 104–5 surveys of criminal victimisation, 201–13
refugees, 8–9, 12, 17, 44, 73–6, 85–5, Sutherland, EH, 3–4, 6, 15
95–105
Rehn, E, 125, 127 Taliban, 57, 80, 86, 88
religious fundamentalism, 58–9, 61–4, 197 Temporary Protection, 8, 75–6, 78,
repatriations, 104, 139 80, 100
representational economies, 69, 71–3, Thi Hang Le, 84–5
83, 89 Third World Conference on Women,
rights: 13, 192
collective, 11, 138, 140, 145, 154 traditional law see customary law
cultural, 44, 59, 123, 129–31, 134 trafficked women, 82–5
human see human rights traffickers, 72, 82–5, 97–9
women’s, 7, 45, 57, 59, 65, 130–1, 190–1 see also smugglers
 Index 219

trafficking: victimisation, 13, 98, 101, 133, 165, 204,

and gender, 103–5 206–7
and smuggling, 97–8 victimology, 201–13
war against, 101 violence see domestic violence; gender-
tribunals, 195–6 based violence; VAW (violence against
Trinidad and Tobago, 13–14, 28–9, 183–4, women)
187–9, 194 voluntary prostitution, 9, 107–8, 112,
earnings, 23 114, 117
and globalisation, 21–7 vulnerability, 8, 99, 127, 145, 161–75
Turkey, 13, 162, 168–71, 173
war:
UK, 1, 5–6, 25–6, 37–45, 49–51, 53, 60 crimes, 15, 123, 126, 163, 195
UN (United Nations), 1–2, 7, 27–8, 63–4, against drugs, 27–31
181–3, 198 on terror, 69–71, 73–4, 87–8, 130
and indigenous peoples, 137–40 against trafficking, 101
UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Ward, T, 4–5, 12, 15, 161–2, 165, 167, 174
Trade and Development), 26–7 Washington Consensus, 60–1
undermining of international law, 96–8 white women, 71, 152–3
UNDP (United Nations Development whiteness, power of, 152
Programme), 167, 172 Williams, Sydney, 148
UNHCR (United Nations High Commission WLDI (Women, Law and Development
for Refugees), 100–1, 124 International), 13, 187, 191–2
UNIFEM, 135, 186, 188–9, 191, 194, 196 Womankind Worldwide, 44–5, 49
United Kingdom see UK Women, Law and Development
United Nations see UN International see WLDI
United Nations Conference on Trade and women’s movement, 10, 13–14, 48, 52, 65,
Development see UNCTAD 71, 179–186
United Nations Development Programme women’s organisations, 115, 182, 184, 189,
see UNDP 193, 198
United Nations High Commission for see also global feminist networks;
Refugees see UNHCR women’s movement
United States, 4, 25, 40, 49, 52, 57, 193 women’s rights, 6–7, 38, 45, 49, 57, 59,
130–1, 190–1
VAW (violence against women), 37–53, 194 campaigns, 188–9
see also domestic violence; gender-based World Bank, 2, 5, 16, 21, 26–7, 133, 164
violence world economy, 129, 166–7
and armed conflicts, 124–6 World Trade Organisation see WTO
and global feminist networks, 179–99 WTO (World Trade Organisation), 2, 5, 16,
and globalisation, 38–41 27, 31–2, 63, 139
multicultural feminist movement, 46–51
International Day Against Violence, 194–5 Xeno-racism, 95–105