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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Addressing Beijing Platform for Actions’ (BPfA) Area of Concerns Experienced by Women and Girls: Assessing the Indonesian, Kosovar and German Repatriation Policies
Monash Gender Peace and Security Centre, Monash University
Correspondence*
- Monash Gender Peace and Security Centre, Monash University
- Email: [email protected]
Abstract
The demise of ISIS in 2017 brought about dilemmatic situations for some governments in dealing with the issues of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), especially women and children currently living at Northern Syrian camps. Women and children experience poverty, lacking access to education, minimal access to healthcare, violence against women, violation of women’s human rights, media stereotyping of women and girls’ vulnerabilities, which have been identified as parts of the 12 critical areas of concern addressed within the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), an international framework to protect the rights of women in armed conflicts. Employing Feminist Security Studies as the framework for analysis, this paper analyses how the areas of concern of BPfA experienced by women and girls in the camps have been responded by the government’s repatriation policies. This paper is a qualitative study by employing semi-structured interviews for the primary data collection complemented with relevant policy documents and secondary data from scholarly articles and media reporting. This paper discusses some areas of concern addressed in BPfA experienced by women in ex-ISIS camps and investigate countries responses to these concerns by looking at the Indonesian, Kosovar and German governments’ experience. The results of this study show that policies taken by most governments in dealing with repatriation issues have not considered the Beijing Platform for Actions’ strategic objectives resulting in further deprivation and human rights violation dealt by women and girls in the camps.
Keywords: Beijing Platform for Actions (BPfA); foreign terrorist fighters (FTF); ISIS; women and girls; returnees; repatriation.
INTRODUCTION
The demise of ISIS in 2017, the eventual death of Abu Bakr Al Bagdadi on 29 October 2019 and the destruction of Baghouz village as the last stronghold of ISIS's defense, brought relief and dilemmatic situation for the global community. The end of ISIS’s reign has not only marked the collapse of a global terrorist organization but also led to issues of Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF) prisoners currently detained in SDF’s prisons and Female Foreign Fighters and their families including children who are now living in camps around Iraq and Syria.
Several Southeast Asian and European countries are dealing with the dilemmas of FTFs’ repatriation. In July 2018, the number of women in ISIS territory was 4,761 with children accounted for 4,640. In 2019, the global estimate of all foreign persons who joined the Islamic State territory was 44,279-52,808, with women reaches between 6,797-6,902 and minors 6,173-6,577 1. The greatest proportion of them were coming from Southeast Asia reaching 33 percent of those who travelled to, or were born within, the Islamic State; and the Western Europe with a total percentage of 28-29 percent 1. After the downfall of ISIS in late 2019, about 12,000 women and children live at the refugee camps (Al Hol, Al Roj and Ain Issa camps) and 1000 male men are detained at Syrian Democratic Forces prisons 2. Their fates depend on the political decision of their origin states to repatriate them back to their countries.
National and international media coverage portrayed these women’s appeals for repatriation. Media reports described that the livelihood inside the camps is even worse than their original stances back in their countries. Few countries were keen to take their citizens back, but more states remain adamant. As of 2019, countries such as US, Russia, France, Norway, Morocco, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kosovo, and Belgium, have repatriated their citizens from the camps, mostly children (Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, 2019). In 2019, Germany also repatriated 4 citizens consists of a mother and her three children based on a court decision, which gave order to the German government to grant consular protection, issue travel documents and repatriate them to Germany 3. After some controversies since the last repatriation of 18 citizens in 2017, in 2020 the government of Indonesia decided not to repatriate its 699 citizens and pledge to only process the entry of children under 10 years old back to Indonesia 4. These countries’ reluctance to evacuate their citizens has been caused by some issues related to legal mechanisms (such as locus delicti and evidence gathering) as well as the lack of effective strategies in conducting the prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration (PRR) of the returnees 5. But the most fundamental reason is the assumption that these people are highly radicalized that they left their countries to join the Caliphate in the first place.
Some research on the ISIS sympathisers' repatriation have been conducted previously such as research by Malet and Hayes (2020) that suggests the time span of possible attacks by returnees upon their arrival by using a new data set of Lags in Attack Times of Extremist Returnees (LATER) obtained from the examination of 230 jihadists returning to their countries in the Western context. In addition, a study on repatriation investigates the ethical dilemmas which should be addressed by the Western countries prior to deciding upon the repatriation of their citizens from Syria and Iraq (Govier & Boutland, 2020). Both studies were gender-neutral in nature and did not distinguish the role of women and the different impacts of conflict experienced by female returnees. A study using a gender lens emphasizes the role of women in the aftermath of the Islamic State and how their activism supports the caliphate's rise despite various limitations, their strong reliance on male leadership and the masculinist norms they maintain in the camps (Vale, 2019). Accordingly, this study attempts to fill in the gap of the previous research by linking the countries' repatriation policies with the international women's human rights norms i.e. the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) as an effort to render women’s concerns during the conflict situations visible and how policies should address these concerns. The use of feminist methodology in analysing the repatriation policies has also contributed to the study of gender and terrorism since it has never been done before, particularly from a non-Western perspective.
This paper is guided with the question: to what extent have the areas of concern experienced by women and girls in ex-ISIS camps been responded by the governments’ policies? In so doing, this paper examines the experience of women in dealing with areas of concern addressed by BPfA in the first part of the analysis. Then, it moves on to investigate how the origin countries respond to the problems by looking at the Indonesian, Kosovar and German experience. Following the introduction and methodology, this paper explains the overview of women and girls after the demise of ISIS and security threats that they are dealing with in the camps. The next part investigates the various area of concerns addressed in BPfA and the countries’ (non)repatriation policies. Subsequently, the discussion highlights the repatriation policies of Indonesia, Kosovo and Germany and how have these policies responded to the BPfA’s area of concerns. Lastly, this paper suggests the future actions to address returnees’ issues based on relevant strategic objective in the Platform.
Conceptual Framework
The impacts of conflict and governments’ non repatriation policies have caused displaced women and girls to experience the critical areas of concern addressed at the BPfA especially poverty, lack access to education, minimal access to healthcare, violence against women, caught in armed conflict, violation of women’s human rights, and media stereotyping of women. The recognition that women deal with 12 diverse critical areas of concerns in BPfA is particularly relevant to the feminist approach emphasizing that the dynamics of security issues are multidimensional and complex. A feminist approach to conflict situation highlights the need to defy the stereotype that women are naturally passive while men are always represented as aggressive and violent. From the feminist approach, it is important to note that women do have agency and play key roles to support conflicts as well as to solve and prevent them (Asante & Shepherd, 2020). This branch of feminist approach is known as Feminist Security Study which aims to look at women's roles in security fields and reformulate the masculinist views traditionally applied to women in conflict situations.
This research employs the Feminist Security Study framework as it is relevant to analyse the issues of ISIS women supporters currently living at Northern Syrian camps. Feminist Security studies emerges as a field that seeks to focus on how gender identity and gender politics shape experiences of security and insecurity 6. It is because gender is not only a tool for the maintenance of power, but also intersects with other identities that enable structural violence – for example, class, religion and race 7. Feminist Security Studies aims to describe patterns of sexual violence during war, to make sense of women committing violence and to explore the reproduction of gender in post-war peacebuilding efforts 8. Empirical researches in Feminist Security Studies have proven to make gender visible in security practices by avoiding the association of women with peace and victimhood, understanding gender as productive of security practices, linking the practices with patriarchal nature outside of war and interpreting security politics as politics of gender 8.Furthermore, Feminist Security Studies researches are intersecting with other researches concerned with environmental, health, humanitarian and other expanding sectors of security 6. The application of a gender lens in analysing global politics and security issues help to reveal the gender politics at work and helps to filter an issue or context to bring into focus gendered identities, politics and relationships 6.
METHODOLOGY
This study is a qualitative approach as it aims to explore, describe, or explain social phenomenon by unpacking the events, activities, situations, and experience especially those of women in the camps vis a vis the international frameworks and national policies taken by governments in responding to the phenomenon (Leavy, 2014). Since Indonesia has already conducted repatriation in 2017, the Indonesian government representatives have been familiar with the repatriation policies therefore this study gives an in-depth focus on the Indonesian experience as seen from the use of primary data collected through semi-structures interviews with nine representatives (n=9, Male=5, Female=4) from relevant government agencies in Indonesia during the period of August–November 2019 (see Table 1). The participants were selected based on their roles in the policy formulation as well as their direct involvement in the repatriation process. Based on a feminist approach, the selection of sources had been based on the gender balance representations of every state institution that participated in this research. However, given the limited number of female sources who hold strategic positions as national security policymakers in the Indonesian bureaucracy, the number of male sources is higher than that of female sources.
Table 1.TABLE 1 Research Participants from Relevant Government Agencies
Unpublished data from relevant ministries such as meeting records, presentation and talking points are also used to complement the interview data, subjects to the relevant ministries’ approvals. This paper also uses secondary data source from the previous research, data, reports, mainstream news articles, and other relevant information on this issue.
While the analysis on Indonesian repatriation policies have mostly been based on primary data from interviews and official documents, the analysis on Kosovar and German repatriation have been based on desk studies of relevant secondary data. The analysis of the repatriation policies conducted by Kosovo and Germany have been conducted in this study as an effort to present possible repatriation policy options that have been taken by other countries compared to the Indonesian non-repatriation approach. The analysis of these two countries, nevertheless, have been brief and required further comprehensive follow-ups in the future research on repatriation issues.
Feminist Security Study framework emphasizes the importance of feminist methodology in analysing the data to push for a more thorough understanding of gender and how it impacts security and security measures taken by various security actors (White, 2020). In doing so, Feminist Security Study employs gender analysis to analyse data by focusing on gender as a power relation, the everyday experiences of women as women and the consequences of their unequal social position (Steans, 1998 cf from Gentry and Sjoberg, 2015). I am conducting a gender analysis in this study to show how women and girls in North-eastern Syrian camps experience the conflicts differently than men especially in terms of mobility, access to assistance and education for girls, protection from violence (committed by both women and men in the camps) and massive media stereotyping. A gender analysis reveals how the intersectional nature of gender have affected all living aspects of a refugee’s life 9. This is because conflict and displacement can generate traumatic, intense and difficult experience that are shaped by gender 9. Therefore, analysing data through a gender lens under the framework of Feminist Security Study helps me uncover the invisibility of women and girls in the conflict situation and to understand the gendered impacts of this conflict experienced by women and girls in the camps.
RESULT
Beijing Platform for Action and The New Security Challenges
The first international legal framework that provides protection and advocacy for women's rights is embodied in The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) adopted on 18 December 1979 by the United Nations General Assembly and has been ratified by 189 countries in the world. CEDAW is a comprehensive international legal document because it aims to include women in human rights concerns, encourage gender equality and ensure that women enjoy their rights by eliminating all discrimination experienced by women (UN Human Rights, 1979). The international community's efforts to realize the achievement of women's human rights and gender equality listed in the CEDAW were reaffirmed at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995 with the goal to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women, everywhere (UN Women, 2020). At the end of this conference, all countries representatives have agreed on the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) to be the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights.
Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA) is a monumental document as it emphasizes the rights of women in situations of armed conflicts and an international point of reference for the governments to defend women’s rights by implementing the necessary legislation. This document identified 12 critical areas of concern considered as representing the major obstacles to women’s advancement and some strategic objectives to be implemented in order to remove these problems for women 10. During 25 years of its implementation, BPfA has shown a remarkable progress in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment. In 2020, governments from 189 countries have committed to remove obstacles to women’s equal and active participation in all spheres of public and private life 11. Countries are capable to report progress in addressing areas such as violence against women, in increasing access to sexual and reproductive health services, and in widening career opportunities through improved education 11.
However, this progress is overshadowed by the new global security threats such as the increasing global inequalities and social unrest, the climate crisis, global pandemics, geopolitical tensions, national security issues and the rise of violent extremism. The inability to contain these security threats lead to conflict and the new kind of wars affecting women and men differently. New war refers to “conflict currently taking place in different parts of the world” whose characteristics are distinct from twentieth-century “old wars” in Europe in term of “type of actors, the goals, the tactics and the forms of finance”12. The security situation in Syria and Iraq starting with the Assad regime's violence against protesters demanding democracy during the 2011 Arab Springs movement has led to a civil war between the Syrian government and anti-government factions. Ultimately it ended with the emergence of a self-proclaimed Islamic Caliphate fought by the Western alliance forces. The interaction and impacts of these conflicts have placed Syrian women and women from across the world who came to join ISIS in a vortex of violence and facing the so-called "new war". This “new war” represents the combination of all factors that contribute to the construction of extreme gender inequality in conflicts i.e. “the predominance of male participation, the constructed links between national and gender identity, the differential forms of violence against men and women, and the predatory social relationships that tend to affect women more than men” 12.
All those factors and the blurring lines between combatants and civilians in new wars create massive human rights violations and disproportionate impacts on women and girls now are left to stay in the ex-ISIS camps. They are now living in poverty, lack access to education, minimal access to healthcare, violence against women, caught in armed conflict, violation of women’s human rights, and media stereotyping of women. Aside from that, women are also dealing with intimidation inside the camps for expressing a desire to return home, forceful enforcement of ISIS rules, and experience further radicalisation 13. These women are uprooted from their home countries (although some were voluntarily leaving to join the caliphate), experiencing uncertainties in a foreign country, having limited source of livelihood, and even traumatized by the violence and cruelty of conflict. The stresses, fear and frustration arising from these situations, coupled with the ISIS persisting ideology in the camps have put women at risk of being radicalized to channel their disappointment and feelings of injustice that keep growing with time in the camps.
Nevertheless, pandemic COVID-19 has also brought more devastating effects on people living in the camps. These women and children have been living in inhumane conditions in north-eastern Syria camps even since before the outbreak have to deal with the devastating impacts of pandemics due to poor access to sanitation, clean water and food, medical services and limited COVID-19 test kits. Women migrants, refugees and their children are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases due to their limited access to clean food, water and healthcare and in post-conflict countries with high risk situations, pandemic can potentially increase the epidemics of sexual violence 14. With governments' resources globally being directed to stop the pandemics, there will be no repatriation until the pandemic is over, leading to even more risks for those most vulnerable 15. With limited movement during the pandemic, women in camps will be more at risk of experiencing not only physical threats such as transmission of the virus but also deeper internalization of extremist ideologies. Therefore, the state interventions of these women’s countries of origins are vital to prevent both security risks.
The Countries’ (Non) Repatriation Policies
The objective of the BPfA is the empowerment of all women by creating strategies and actions in order to achieve the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women 16. Thereby, it is the primary responsibility of states to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms that will lead to women empowerment and equality. However, regarding repatriation issue, states are dealing with a dilemma that led to their inactions to response the atrocities dealt by women and girls in ex-ISIS camps. The dilemma is related to the maintenance of national security vs the government’s obligation to protect its citizens. The 1961 UN Convention stipulates the prevention of statelessness and reduce it over time. It establishes an international framework to ensure the right of every person to a nationality and sets out very limited situations in which states can deprive a person of his or her nationality, even if this would leave them stateless. In this case, some countries took the option of “the limited situations” stipulated in the 1961 UN Convention to strip nationalities of their citizens involved in ISIS such as UK and US 17. This policy had become an alternative for the lack of countries’ capability and willingness to establish the repatriation, reintegration, rehabilitation, and prosecution programs prior to the repatriation of women and girls from the camps. Some countries’ policies regarding the repatriation problem can be seen from Table 1.
TABLE 2 Countries Repatriation Policies
| No | Country | Policy | Note |
| US | Repatriated 23 of its citizens as of December 2019. | Supporting the repatriation of all FTFs, including male and females and children. Male and Female FTFs will be detained Guantanamo. | |
| Russia | Repatriated dozens of its citizens mostly comes from Caucasus area in 2019 | ||
| France | Repatriated 17 children as of 10 June 2019 | France refuses to repatriate adults | |
| Norway | Repatriated 5 children as of 29 March 2019 | ||
| Germany | Repatriated 1 woman and her 3 children on November 2019 (based on a court order) | Germany refuses to repatriate adults | |
| Morocco | Repatriate adults and children on May 2019 (number unknown) | ||
| Sudan | Repatriated 5 children as of May 2019 | ||
| Kazakhstan | Repatriated 231 adults and children as of February 2019 | ||
| Uzbekistan | Repatriated 148 adults and children as of May 2019 | SDF handed over these individuals to Uzbekistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs Representative in Qamashli | |
| Belgium | Pledged to repatriate children under 10 years old as of February 2019 | Belgium refuses to repatriate adults | |
| Kosovo | Repatriated 110 adults including men, women and children in 2019 | ||
| Indonesia | Repatriated 18 adults in 2017 | Declared not to repatriate adults in early 2020 and pledged to repatriate children under 10 years old. | |
| Netherlands | Accepted request to repatriate 2 orphans as of November 2019 (follow up unknown) | Government has not responded to Rotterdam Court order to extradited female FTFs | |
| Australia | Repatriated 9 adults and children (prior to the 2019 “temporary exclusion order” policy for citizens travelled abroad and associated with terrorist organizations) | Stripped the citizenships of two citizens (Zehra Duman and Zaynab Sharrouf) |
*Data compiled by the author based on interviews with the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs staffs and National Agency for Counter Terrorism (Interview 02, Interview 03 and Interview 04).
The table above indicates that most countries have already repatriated a limited number of their citizens. This is mostly due to domestic resistance emphasizing that those who had voluntarily left their countries to join a terrorist organization in a foreign country are a security threat to the states thus should not be repatriated. Nevertheless, some governments have different approaches to this issue apart from rejection, such as the full repatriation as shown by the Kosovar government, the limited repatriation conducted by the Indonesian government and the court-order based repatriation based in Germany. While the Indonesian experience is described in an in-depth focus, the other two will be briefly described in the next part of this section.
The Indonesian Non-Repatriation Policy
As of 2020, more than 600 Indonesian women are now living in refugee camps in Iraq and Syria, waiting for government decision of their repatriation. The relevant ministry assigned in the policy formulation regarding this issue is The Coordinating Ministry for Political, Legal and Security Affairs. This ministry’s main task is assisting the President in synchronizing and coordinating, planning, drafting and implementing policies in the political, legal and security issues. As with all security-related policy formulation process, the policies regarding repatriation of former FTFs (men and women) and children who have migrated to ISIS territory falls within the area of this coordinating ministry’s authority.
Hence, it has been assigned to be a policy coordinator for the issue, whose main role has been stocktaking problems dealt by relevant agencies in the efforts of repatriation process. However, albeit successfully held meetings to gain insights and gather the data from the relevant agencies, the coordinating ministry acknowledged the importance of “political decision” regarding the repatriation and this is what made the final decision of repatriation came under a deadlock.
We are coordinating, finding all the problems and discussing some options. Those problems are, for example, the issue regarding Indonesian citizens protection that should be handled by Ministry for Foreign Affairs; the issues of citizenship and immigration dealt by Ministry of Law and Human Rights; the issue of repatriation procedure here (in Indonesia) and there (in Iraq and Syria camps) faced by National Counter Terrorism Agency; and the rehabilitation issue by Ministry of Social Affairs. Upon completion of the problems stocktaking, we have concluded that a “political decision” is required in determining how to handle with the returnees. (Interview 01)
The absence of political decision for repatriation has also prevented the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to establish a communication with the state and non-state actors in charge in the camps and prisons where the Indonesian ISIS sympathizers are currently detained. This is because establishing communication will likely signal to SDF, Turkish, Iraqi and Syrian that Indonesian government have already decided to take its citizens back.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not opened any communication with the SDF or the state actors. However, if it is asked to prepare for their returns, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could look back at the experience of the 2017 repatriation as a reference for repatriating. (Interview 04).
During the course of 2017 – 2019, The Coordinating Ministry and relevant ministries has set two options of repatriation strategies in 2019 i.e. the three-phase repatriation process known as before border, at the border and after border policy and the “by request” policy (Veronika & Wishanti, 2020). These repatriation strategies were based on the previous Indonesian government’s repatriation of 18 ISIS sympathizers from Al Howl camps in 2017. The first strategy highlights that the phases of repatriation will involve verification and identification before they are repatriated to make sure their citizenship status, then the repatriation process itself at the border and lastly the acceptance after they passed the border to be assessed whether they will have to be prosecuted or be sent to rehabilitation centers (Veronika & Wishanti, 2020). Secondly, the “by request” policy emphasizes that the repatriation will be given to those who ask to return to Indonesia (Interview 01, 2019). This is to prevent the possibility of recidivism of those who do not wish to be repatriated.
Figure 1.PICTURE 1 The Indonesian Repatriation Policy Scheme
*the diagram is created by the author based on the interviews with policymakers in Indonesia
The lack of political certainty and the domestic responses towards repatriation issues had hindered further process for data verification, assessments, and collaboration with those who have access to the camps. These have been caused by the differing views of key agencies especially related to the ‘generalization’ that all women returnees are FTFs. Meanwhile, women can both be victims as well as actors. In the case of Indonesian returnees, most of them were disillusioned by ISIS’ promises and had become the victims of ISIS propaganda thereby they would have been helpful to support government’s agenda on Preventing/Countering Violent Extremism in the future. However, the Indonesian government finally reached a decision of non-repatriation policy on adults after dealing with domestic resistance against repatriation of FTFs in early 2020.
The Repatriation Policy by Kosovo
In April 2019, the government of Kosovo repatriated 110 citizens (four men, 32 women, and 74 children) who were being held in Kurdish detention camps in Syria 18. The government has set up a detention facility and asylum centre prior to the prosecution process. In addition, the repatriated women and children have received supports such as educational assistances for children and training as well as livelihoods supports for women from the Division for Prevention and Reintegration. This agency is specifically created by the government of Kosovo to address the repatriation process. It consists of officials from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Health, and Ministry of Education, social workers, psychologists, local level representatives, community police, religious experts, and others 18. Upon their return to Kosovo in 2019, four male FTFs were sent to the high-security prison Podujeve while 74 women and 32 children were taken to Vranidol arrival centre to receive medical and psychological examination (von Hein, Felden, & Cani, 2019). It is evident that the government of Kosovo perceived woman as victims of ISIS propaganda as they have sent women to undergo a psychological examination and have not detained them in prisons for trial purposes just as has been applied to the male FTFs. However, the Kosovar government kept monitoring women and children as a preventive measure for the potential threats coming from those who stayed in Syria for longer periods of time 18. Kosovo, in this case, shows an example of a country who has set a repatriation policy for its returnees and has been willing to implement the policy in order to address the issue of displaced women and children in the camps.
Germany’s Repatriation Based on The Court Order
As of November 2019, German authorities believed that around 80 German citizens are still in Syrian camps or prisons. Similar to other countries in Europe, Germany has only agreed to prepare for the repatriation of children without their parents fearing that they will pose as an imminent security threat for the domestic community at the absence of effective mechanism and approaches of handling these returnees 19. On November 2019, a court in Berlin ruled that, due to the dire conditions in the camp, the German government had to repatriate a woman and three children since the traumatised children is only possible if the mother would also be repatriated 20. This was also due to the inability of German government to prove that the woman poses tangible and concrete threats to national security. Eventually, the repatriation of the mother and three children had led to massive opposition from the German society. However, the German government maintains its position not to repatriate other citizens as there are no diplomatic contacts between the German government with the Syrian government as well as the Kurds government at northern Syrian where the camps are located (von Hein, Felden, & Cani, 2019). Although there has been an action to repatriate women and children from the camps by the German government, this is seen as a “forced” repatriation and a temporary step only as it was conducted to respond to the court order.
DISCUSSION
Addressing BPfA’s Area of Concern Experienced by Girls and Women in the Camps
Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) has provided strategic objectives and action to be taken for the areas of concerns dealt by women and girls as mentioned in the first part of the paper. Specifically, BPfA provides a guidance of actions to be taken relevant to situation dealt by women and girls in ex-ISIS camps i.e. The Strategic Objective E.5 emphasizes the provision of protection, assistance and training to refugee women, other displaced women in need of international protection and internally displaced women 16. Furthermore, the next strategic objective of the Beijing Platform for Action also mentions that governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations should provide basic and support services to women who are displaced from their place of origin as a result of terrorism, violence, drug trafficking or other reasons linked to violence situations 16. This implies that protection of women’s rights especially during a conflict situation is the ultimate responsibility of the states. In this case, most governments’ non-repatriation policies exhibit their reluctance to adhere to this principle. Meanwhile, women and girls in the camps are dealing with several areas of concerns such as poverty, lack of education access, violence against women, media stereotyping and girls-specific vulnerabilities which will be briefly describe in the following subsections.
Poverty
Gender and displacement have shifted the gendered division of labour where women are now taking the roles as the holders of economic responsibilities and providing primary security protection to survive in the camps. Before the demise of the ISIS, women’s migration to ISIS-claimed territory happened due to the belief that in ISIS promises would fully provide them with facilities and salary/allowance to support the Caliphate’s cause. However, now that ISIS has been defeated, women are struggling to maintain their livelihood by working around the camps such as becoming teachers in homemade tent schools and prostitutes for male camp workers 21. A woman from Indonesia sells snacks, food ingredients, drinks and ice cube and earns US $ 3 per day which is barely enough to survive in the camps 22. Being deprived of income, these women were fallen into a situation in which they are vulnerable to sexual exploitation 16. The dire conditions in the camps and the inevitable poverty will lead to bigger problems such as the worsening health situation, malnutrition, sexual exploitation, and violence against women.
Lacking in Educational Access
In early 2020, BBCIndonesia portrayed the story of Nada Fedula whose dream of becoming a doctor was taken away by his fathers’ decision to join ISIS 23. Together with Nada, thousands of girls living in those camps deal with the same situation where the impacts of conflict hinder their access to proper education. With limited access to mobility and security in the camps, lack of educational facilities and no stable source of income for the family, girls are deprived of their basic rights to education. Without proper education, girls will be vulnerable to the hope of ISIS resurgence as a way out of the poverty as living in the camps pose as an incubator for the next generation of extremists 24. Hence, the indoctrination for children to adopt ISIS beliefs are rampant with no education to break the vicious cycle of the extreme ideology among them.
Experiencing Violence Against Women
Displacement due to ISIS’s territorial defeat has also, nevertheless, led to cultural transformation, and reconfigurations of power relations in the camps. As an example, the most loyal and radical female members of ISIS have now assumed leadership of in the camps in the absence of male leadership. These women continue to implement ISIS’ strict regulations on clothing and behaviour deemed “impious”, forbid others to express their appeals to be repatriated, and punish those who tried to engage with aid-workers, lawyers, or journalists 25. These acts show that women’s activism in upholding ISIS’ values and norms also demonstrates their internalisation of the group’s ideals, and continued implementation of IS’ policies in the absence of male leaderships 25. This internalisation of the norms led women in the camps to conduct violence against the most vulnerable women and children, especially those with no supports systems inside and outside the camps. Women and girls are killed, beaten and harassed by radical detainees who wanted to impose the strict clothing rules 24. The gross violation against women in the camps reflected the characteristics of “violence against women” as it results in “physical, sexual, psychological harms, or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life” 16. Women are experiencing gender-based violence that target women specifically because they breached the rules based on the extremist ideology, interacted with outsiders such as journalists and humanitarian personnel as well as publicly expressed their intentions to return to to their home countries.
Media Stereotyping of Women and Girls
The portrayal of women and girls surrounding ISIS resulting in stereotypes that may lead to domestic and international pros and cons on their repatriation to their countries. A study mentions that the image construction built by the media on ISIS female members fits into the hypervisibility of women around ISIS; removing agency from the women victims as lured, brainwashed and manipulated and offering a sense of sensational agency for female combatants that fought against ISIS 26. In addition, media portrayal of women operatives also results in labels that the ISIS female operatives are more “lethal” than men. As an example, a Google-search on the internet using the keywords “ISIS women are more lethal than men” resulting in more than 4,350,000 hits. Media outlets also called the young women who supported ISIS as “ISIS Fan girl” associating them with “infatuated teenagers swooning over teen idols” whose motives of joining is to benefit from the notoriety of joining extremist group 27. Media portrayal of ISIS female followers, thus, leads to gendered and derogatory perceptions for women such as “jihadi brides”, “sexual present for the fighters” 26 and “ISIS women” 28. As these terms are gendered, the associated meanings will likely strengthen the patriarchal nature of security policy making discourse.
Girls-specific vulnerability in armed conflict
ISIS propaganda has attracted women and girls into the area where armed conflicts were inevitable as the Western forces, SDF, Turkish and Syrian authorities tried to contain ISIS’ territorial claims. Women and girls are vulnerable to various forms of insecurity such as murder, rape, including systematic rape, sexual slavery, and force pregnancy. Specifically for girls, there are some unique insecurity threats that may be differ from adults and children, such as direct conflict-related violence (such as physical violence, sexual violence, sexual harassment, emotional and verbal abuse); family violence; sexual violence in camps; threats of violence and street harassment; and early and forced marriage 29. According to UN Women et al (2018), these specific forms of insecurity for girls happened because being young and female has put them in “higher risk for gender-based violence, especially during crisis situations, and a heightened likelihood for rape, early marriage, sexual exploitation, abduction and trafficking”30. The inability of parents as well as the absence of guardians in providing security protection in the displacement situation places young women vulnerable to early marriage, rape, sexual exploitation as well as human trafficking. Teenage girls are forced to marry adult men to survive the rigors of life inside the refuges. Such arranged marriages are conducted because there is still an assumption in such a fundamentalist community that young women are assets (or objects with no agency) that can be “traded” to guarantee the survival of the family in the camps.
Non-Repatriation Policies Fail to Address Beijing Platform’s Area of Concern
Countries’ refusal to repatriate and the stripping of nationalities of women neglect the fundamental human rights of women and children in the displacement and crisis. Without protections from the state and no visible prospects of returning to their home countries, these women and girls are under the threats of inhuman living conditions as well as “by deprivation of property, goods and services and deprivation of their rights to return to their homes of origins as well as by violence and insecurity” 16. For children and girls, the non-repatriation policies will have dire impacts on the full realization of their rights to education, health care and participation in the peace process because living in the camps will expose them to in-depth radicalisation and unrelenting chains of extremist beliefs internalisation.
Most countries with returnees’ problems such as Indonesia and Germany as well as those listed on Table 2 are reluctant to repatriate their citizens due to the assumption that returnees are highly radicalised individuals through their involvement with international terrorist organizations in the first place. Their returns to the home countries are believed to be posing an indefinite threat to domestic security as they may support the rise of domestic terrorism (Malet and Hayes, 2020). Additionally, Govier &d Boutland (2020) summarized several factors behind these countries’ decision not to hastily repatriate their citizens from Syria and Iraq.
The actual and anticipated return of ISIS fighters and supporters is a different matter for several reasons. These include the extraordinarily cruel nature of ISIS actions; the continuation of ISIS forces and ideology in territories outside the war zones of Syria and Iraq; the successful recruitment of non-combatant persons such as medical personnel and aspiring brides; the substantial numbers of foreign fighters and other departees within ISIS forces; globalization; the global potential of social media for recruitment; and the continuation of factors of alienation and isolation that motivated many persons who left western countries to fight or support the ISIS cause (page 94).
Therefore, some countries enacted policies and regulations to strip citizenship of those who join global terrorism networks such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, refused to return their citizens, or even chose to do nothing and maintain the status quo of their displaced citizens.
In addition to various factors contributing countries’ inactions on repatriation above, one underlying reason for these countries to reject the repatriation of women and girls has been caused by the assumption that they are “caught in between” the status as refugees and as security threats for the global communities and national governments. Some countries have not been equipped with gender-responsive mechanism to see whether women are victims or perpetrators. To address this, governments are required to provide careful screening, assessment, and identification mechanisms to measure the level of involvement, agency and level of radicalisation of these women and girls prior to repatriation, during the rehabilitation before they are reintegrated back to the society.
CONCLUSION
The analysis shows that policies taken by most governments in dealing with issues of repatriation are in contrast with the Beijing Platform for Actions’ strategic objectives resulting in further deprivation and human rights violence dealt by women and girls in the camps. Despite the countries’ reports on progress to implement the BPfA’s strategic objectives to address 12 critical areas of concerns dealt by women, the issue of women and girls in the ex-ISIS camps seems to be missing. Indonesia and Germany present as countries with non-repatriation policies thereby overlooking the critical areas of concerns experienced by women in Northern Syrian camps such as poverty, lacking in educational access, violence against women, media stereotyping, and girls’ specific vulnerability. Meanwhile Kosovo’s commitment to repatriate their citizens back from the camps has not been followed suit by other countries dealing with similar returnees’ issues. However, it is important to promote Kosovo’s repatriation policy and programs as an option for countries which have not decided on their repatriation policies.
This paper recommends that governments dealing with returnees’ issues should conduct a case-to-case basis approach to effectively engage and address the problem of agency in violent extremism and victimhood to ISIS propaganda among the returnees. Furthermore, it is important to involve women leaders and CSOs on women’s issues to set up a mechanism and policy actions. Also, there should be efforts to integrate the BPfA into the Women Peace and Security Agenda discourse and the National Action Plans on Countering Violent Extremism to promote women’s equality and protection of women’s rights. The tendency to “silence” the repatriation issue on the national security policymaking will obviously hamper BPfA’s aim to achieve the full realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all women, including women and girls who are now living in Ex-ISIS camps.
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Main Article Content
Abstract
The demise of ISIS in 2017 brought about dilemmatic situations for some governments in dealing with the issues of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), especially women and children currently living at Northern Syrian camps. Women and children experience poverty, lacking access to education, minimal access to healthcare, violence against women, violation of women’s human rights, media stereotyping of women and girls’ vulnerabilities, which have been identified as parts of the 12 critical areas of concern addressed within the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), an international framework to protect the rights of women in armed conflicts. Employing Feminist Security Studies as the framework for analysis, this paper analyses how the areas of concern of BPfA experienced by women and girls in the camps have been responded by the government’s repatriation policies. This paper is a qualitative study by employing semi-structured interviews for the primary data collection complemented with relevant policy documents and secondary data from scholarly articles and media reporting. This paper discusses some areas of concern addressed in BPfA experienced by women in ex-ISIS camps and investigate countries responses to these concerns by looking at the Indonesian, Kosovar and German governments’ experience. The results of this study show that policies taken by most governments in dealing with repatriation issues have not considered the Beijing Platform for Actions’ strategic objectives resulting in further deprivation and human rights violation dealt by women and girls in the camps.
Keywords
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