^{​​19 June 2018}

^{Esther Mühlethaler, Academic Intern, SDC GPMD, Bern}

Displaced people face many challenges and difficulties. Forced to leave their home, they lose stability and security, experience uncertainties and are often inadequately protected from violence and exploitation. Women and girls are particularly affected, as the risk of sexual violence and gender-specific exploitation increases in humanitarian emergencies in refugee situations. The same applies in other fragile migration contexts marked by upheaval.

This topic was given special focus on 8 March 2018 in the context of the exhibition "Displaced" at the historical museum of Bern. After two welcoming speeches by the Canadian Ambassador Susan Bincoletto and the Swiss Ambassador for Development, Forced Displacement and Migration, Pietro Mona, a panel of three experts representing civil society, SDC humanitarian aid unit and academia discussed the protection of women in displacement and migration contexts.

In her intervention, Gina Bylang, specialist of the Swiss Humanitarian Aid Unit for child protection and sexual and gender-based violence, addressed the different types of vulnerabilities faced by women in migration contexts. The increased violence specific to women is not only due to the loss of the usual legal and family protection, but is often also connected with the migration and coping strategies adopted by women and their families, such as child marriage or prostitution. François Crépeau, law professor and director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, further explained that the intrinsic female vulnerability of many migrant women due to their differential in physical strength as compared to men is often compounded by a socially constructed precariousness. The lives of many migrants are too often marked by the absence of a right to self-determine their future, uncertain residence status, precarious working conditions, various forms of exploitation, as well as the constant fear of authorities. From this point of view, female vulnerability is part of intersectional discrimination, i.e. an overlapping of different forms of discrimination in one person. On this, the third panellist, Yvonne-Apiyo Brändle-Amolo, who migrated from Kenya to Switzerland, could report from her own experience. As intercultural mediator and founder of the NGO PAWA she emphasized the difficulty of the combination of being a woman, being a black woman and being a migrant woman.

It was repeatedly stated in the panel discussion that although gender-specific violence against migrant women deserves special attention, it cannot be considered separately from the general problem of precarious migration. According to Crépeau, it is essential to understand that many migrants are put in precarious situations because international human rights do not afford a general right of entering a foreign state, nor a general local right of vote and be elected. Although there are comprehensive international legal frameworks and agreements that should also protect migrants, many migrants were not in a position to demand corresponding fundamental rights due to lack of civil rights and fear of losing their rights of residence.

Crépeau described this fear as a "fear-factor": “Citizens are empowered to go to the police if there is a problem. But many migrants fear the police. Migrants who are not sure whether they can stay in the country or not, will not call the police. Even if there is violence. Because maybe the police will ask questions on their status and they end up somewhere in a detention centre which would be the end of the migration project in which they have invested so much”. As Crépeau added, this fear factor makes the big difference between the struggle for migrant rights and the struggle for women's rights, as it has been taking place for several decades: “Migration laws are made by non-migrants for an audience of non-migrants. Migrants very often do not participate in the making of migration laws in most countries. Like committees of men were making laws for women not long ago”.

The appeal of the panel participants was unanimous: Migrants must be given an active voice, the fear factor should be reduced and migration policy frameworks at all levels should be defined with more involvement of those affected, be coherent and take into account the linkages between different sectors. According to Bylang, this is also related to the perception of migrants as experts on their own situation: It is crucial that we listen to the affected people. When we see them as the experts of their own lives and their situation as migrants this enables us to create safe and accessible services for all migrants including vulnerable groups and to take this intersectionality of gender and other vulnerabilities into account in our work”.