INT’L WOMEN’S DAY: Tsunami Survivors Need Gender-Sensitive Care – Groups

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Mar 8 2005 (IPS) - Against the backdrop of International Women’s Day, rights activists are calling for more gender-sensitive programmes to help women and girls who survived the Indian Ocean tsunami.

This appeal stems from a growing list of problems female survivors have had to endure in the weeks after rampaging waves, on Dec. 26, devastated coastal communities from Indonesia and Thailand on one end to Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands on the other.

The predicament these women have had to face – including the 150,000 who are pregnant and due to give birth soon – has been ignored because all the tsunami victims have been classified as equally affected, say the activists.

”We need to move from gender blindness to gender sensitivity in helping the tsunami victims,” Lucita Lazo, director of the South-east Asia office of the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM), told a seminar here to mark International Women’s Day, which fell on Tuesday.

Women are more vulnerable in the aftermath of such natural disasters and the relief and reconstruction efforts must meet their specific needs and entitlements, she added.

December’s tsunami has ”sharpened existing inequalities” that prevails in the affected communities, leaving women and girls more marginalised, added Christine Evans-Klock, director of the East Asia office of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Asian non-governmental groups that have chronicled the suffering women are currently facing in the tsunami-hit countries assert that in most devastated communities there have been ”gender-specific aftershocks.”

According to Cholpon Akmatova, resource officer at the Asia-Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), the problems for female survivors varies from country to country.

In the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where over 8,000 people were killed by the tsunami, babies are dying in refugee camps due to the lack of milk, she told the seminar. ”A two year old baby girl died in Vellapallam camp because there was no milk available.”

In Indonesia’s Aceh province, the worst affected area, where close to 200,000 people died due to the tsunami, displaced women in camps do not have bathrooms that are secure and private, she added. ”Lack of closed bathrooms force women to go unwashed for weeks, which affects their reproductive health.”

And in Sri Lanka, where close to 38,000 people were killed by the tsunami, women in makeshift camps have been the victims of physical abuse. ”There have been attempts at molestation by men in charge of camps,” said Akmatova.

A study done by the APWLD, which has a membership of over 110 women’s organisations across Asia and the Pacific, revealed that one of the worst violations of women’s rights occurred in Sri Lanka.

”There have been reports of incidents of rape, gang rape, molestation and physical abuse of women and girls in the course of unsupervised rescue operations and while resident in temporary shelters,” the report adds.

It also made a strong case for a marginalised group among the survivors – pregnant women – to be provided with range of assistance, including maternity and post-natal care.

It is a sentiment that has been echoed by Fatima Burnad of the Tamil Nadu Women’s Forum. ”Women are psychologically affected. Pregnant and lactating women are bearing the pain and need more attention,” she said in a press release.

Women have suffered more after the tsunami because they are the ones ”taking care of everyone else. Many suddenly found themselves the heads of households,” Dr. Chaiyos Kunanusont, an advisor at the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), told the seminar.

But seeking work has not been easy in the changed environment. Many women who had to go to work for the first time realised they lacked the adequate skills and training, said ILO’s Evans- Klock. ”Such lack of skills and work experience creates additional risks. It could lead to trafficking and prostitution.”

The female migrant workers in the tsunami-affected parts of southern Thailand are among the most vulnerable, she added.

The tsunami killed over 220,000 people in 12 countries spanning South-east Asia, South Asia and East Africa, while over 1.6 million people were displaced – of which over 500,000 are women.

Plans to help these survivors will require a shift in thinking, said UNIFEM’s Lazo. ”A human rights based approach is needed, and the women have to be empowered and be asked to participate in the reconstruction effort.”

As part of such a gender-sensitive programme, women have to be guaranteed equal access to resources, a right to security and freedom from violence – coupled with the right to gain access to land, the ownership of which is often in the husband’s name.

”Officials of both state and non-state agencies working with the displaced must recognise and address gender specific and special needs of women,” added Akmatova, the activist. ”Since gender neutral relief and rehabilitation policies reinforce the patriarchal social order, women are inherently disadvantaged.”