Surge in global domestic violence during lockdown – the shadow pandemic

In Argentina, the number of women killed has reached a 10-year high under coronavirus lockdown, with more than 50 femicides in less than two months, according to La Casa del Encuentro, a Buenos Aires-based feminist group.  Not only the numbers, but the severity of the violence, is hugely concerning, they said.

In Spain, two women have been killed by their partners since the country’ strict lockdown came into force on 14 March. 

Last month, the UK charity Refuge reported a 50 per cent increase in calls to its National Domestic Abuse Helpline and a 400 per cent spike in visits to its website since the lockdown began.

Across Europe, the lockdown stress and anxiety has led to a sharp spike in the number of women reporting incidents of domestic abuse, according to the World Health Organization.

The data in Argentina and other countries follow a worldwide trend of rising gender-based violence under lockdown that has left women trapped at home with their abusers and unable to seek help while tensions due to COVID-19 escalate.

Social isolation under the current crisis not only increases the risk of domestic abuse, but also hinders access to assistance and protection services.
Dr Hans Kluge, director of WHO’s European region, told a recent press briefing that across the continent the number of women making emergency calls had risen 60 per cent in April, compared to the same month in 2019.

Last month the United Nations Population Fund warned of the "calamitous" impact of a prolonged lockdown, saying it that if it lasted for six months there would be an additional 31 million cases of gender-based violence globally.

Some countries have introduced innovative measures to address the issue – Greenland has limited sales of alcohol, for example, and Spain and France have introduced a system where pharmacists can be alerted to cases of domestic abuse with a code word. Other countries have announced measures including having 24-hour phone helplines, increasing funding,  providing refuge for victims in hotel rooms or having police check on households with previous cases of domestic violence.

CIVICUS (the global alliance of civil society organisations)’ Diversity & Inclusion Group for Networking & Action (DIGNA), recently held a domestic violence webinar with speakers from Botswana, Uganda, Fiji, India and Brazil in order to get some insights into the situation and solutions in their countries.  Here is a quick summary:

UGANDA - Lucky Kobugabe, GBV Prevention Network Uganda
•    Public spaces are becoming even more gendered during the pandemic. The streets are quieter due to lockdown, so women are more likely to be violated by strangers they don't know.

BRAZIL – Ana Addobbati, Social Good Brasil
•    In Rio De Janeiro, police reports can be filed online, and there has been around a 50% increase in cases. Technology is being utilised to adapt to the situation, including the use of apps to report cases.
•    There has been an increase in sexual abuse cases of children and adolescents.

INDIA – Uttanshi Agarwal, One Future Collective
•    In India, only 38% women of have access to technology - COVID-19 has exposed the need for digital literacy, which is now more urgent than ever.
•    Police can help reduce domestic violence during curfew hours by increasing patrols in different areas.
•    They are implementing a follow-up system for officers to call individuals who have reported a case in the last 6-8months, this makes the community feel supported.

FIJI – Roshika Deo, One Billion Rising
•    Curfews are making it harder to access police and restraining orders – abusers are using this to their advantage and targeting women during lockdown hours. Moreover, there has been a rise in verbal and physical abuse during curfew hours.
•    Why isn’t the government using empty hotels to house survivors of domestic violence? Tourism is a major industry in Fiji and there are now many rooms available.
•    Fiji has good legislation relating to domestic violence but it is not being enforced. For example, a police officer can apply for a restraining order via the telephone.

BOTSWANA – Dumiso Gatsha, Success Capital
•    In countries with a high cellphone penetration, such as Botswana, civil society organisations can provide airtime and data.
•    Increased risk for those who are marginalized:  there is a higher risk for LGBT+ persons being ‘outed’ by family members – families are using the lockdown period as a means to control.

 
Experts stressed that the end of lockdowns will bring additional challenges for women who are victims of an abusive relationship.  Financial uncertainty linked to income and job losses, psychological stress and the generalised feeling of loss of control are among the causes of increased domestic violence.

Additionally, the Covid-19 health crisis also has other effects in the long run, such as not talking to anyone about the violence suffered, unwanted pregnancies and facing difficulties accessing the voluntary termination of pregnancy services.

Services must continue to support vulnerable women and children and people should be on the alert for signs of abuse in the community. 

Kosovar women fight patriarchy - 20 years after the war

The art installation Thinking Of You, by the Kosovan-born, London-based artist Alketa Mrripa-Xhafa, in Pristina, Kosova – 2015. Photograph: Hazir Reka/Reuters

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This month, 20 years ago, the 1988-89 Kosovo war ended. It was a particularly brutal conflict that led to allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity, and the controversial involvement and bombings from NATO. During that war, 90 per cent of the population was displaced and some 20,000 women and girls were systematically raped - a crime that was used as a weapon of "ethnic cleansing."

In this predominantly traditional ethnic Albanian country, the rape’s stigma is so strong that many women have never talked about what happened to them during the war and never sought help. Some of their husbands have left them, unable to endure the shame.

Two decades later and despite years of international supervision that was supposed to bring gender equality, rates of sexual assault and domestic violence remain worryingly high. In a 2015 survey, 68% of women reported that they had suffered from domestic violence at one point in their lives.

In Europe’s newest country (which declared independence from Serbia in 2008), women struggle every day for social and economic equality in a rigid patriarchal society where men have the final say in all family matters and women are left with very limited access to education, health, property, protection and job opportunities. More than three quarters of women don’t have jobs - Kosovar women have the lowest employment rates and education levels in all Europe. Many have been widowed during the war and placed in the role of primary provider for their families, but without access to skills and resources, they are unable to make ends meet.

But many are fighting back.  Some have formed associations that give women the tools and resources they need to rebuild their lives and their communities, while others have run for office.  Others yet have launched small business, like Zarie Malsiu, from Kacanik municipality, a mother of five who married young and dropped out of school, like many young women at that time. After the war, she enrolled in a training for social and economic empowerment run by local NGO Kosova – Women for Women. She has formed her own agriculture association, collecting and selling medicinal and aromatic herbs and forest fruits. Her organization now counts 100 women. Kosova – Women for Women, a local independent organization affiliated to Women for Women International, has trained over 33,000 women in over 30 communities across the country, in life and vocational skills and rights awareness.

Women have also fought for justice and campaigned for women’s rights.

Among them is the amazing Dr Feride Rushiti, a physician who is the executive director of the Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims in Pristina. Through almost two decades of research and advocacy, she has secured access to healthcare and justice for civilian victims of war. In 2017, her campaigning work led to a landmark government decision to fund pensions for Kosovo’s victims of wartime sexual violence. And now, after many years of silence, hundreds of survivors have started to come forward.

Kosovar women’s braided stories show the enormous challenges women still face in the country, but also how they have managed to become self sufficient and obtain recognition and reparation - and the impact it has on themselves, their families, communities and the next generations.

I wanted to report this story with Arben Llapashtica, a brilliant photographer based in Pristina, as well as a cameraman and documentary filmmaker, but sadly we couldn’t get a commission. If you know a publication that might be interested, please let us know.

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Thousands of Migrants Have Died in ‘Watery Graveyard’ despite Libya Deal

Personal clothing and items left behind by migrants who travelled by boat from Libya to Sicily.  Credit: Alessandro Rota/Oxfam

Two years on from Italy’s EU-backed migration deal with Libya, more than 5,300 people have drowned in the Mediterranean and thousands more still are suffering in Libyan detention camps – and EU governments are complicit in this tragedy.

 “EU countries are making the Mediterranean a watery graveyard as a matter of deliberate policy,” said Oxfam’s EU migration policy advisor, Raphael Shilhav. “They must allow search and rescue ships to dock in their ports, disembark rescued people, and return to sea to save people’s lives, in line with international law. All attempts to prevent their work will inevitably lead to more deaths and run counter to Europe’s humanitarian values.”

In an open letter to EU governments, more than 50 organisations including Oxfam said EU governments have become complicit in the tragedy unfolding before their eyes in the Mediterranean. People are now in even more danger at sea and are being returned by the Libyan coastguard to face sexual abuse, slavery and other human rights abuses in Libya. 

The Libya deal, signed on 2 February 2017, provides money and technical support from Italy and the EU to the Libyan coastguard, in return for the coastguard preventing people from leaving Libya for Europe.

The open letter says that some EU member states have deliberately forced the organisations conducting search and rescue operations to stop their life-saving work. It also accuses governments of making unfounded allegations against ships operating in the Mediterranean and preventing them from leaving their ports. This time last year there were five organisations conducting search and rescue operations – now there is only one.

Since the Libya deal was struck, more than 5,300 people have drowned in the Mediterranean including over 4,000 people on the central route closest to Libya, making it the deadliest sea in the world. 

In 2018, the Libyan coastguard intercepted more than 15,000 people and returned them to Libya. Currently, 6,400 people are known to be held in official detention sites in Libya, with many more in other centres, some of which are run by armed groups. According to the UN, even “official” centres can be run by people smugglers and traffickers, despite the EU’s commitment to combat human trafficking.  

Numerous accounts collected by Oxfam and its partners in recent years show that people in Libya are often crammed into detention centres in abandoned buildings or pitch black tunnels, without enough food. Many are mistreated before being sold to armed groups or as slaves. 

Yonas (not his real name), a 28-year-old man from Eritrea, said he was detained by various gangs in Libya: “Altogether, I lived a year and a half in two prisons, where we were all living in terrible conditions, with many people getting sick and not receiving care. Many died and were buried like animals. The women were raped in front of us. We were beaten every day by prison guards selected from the group of migrants … They beat us and made us call our family to ask them to send us money.”

Ibrahim (also an alias), a 26-year-old man from Guinea, said he was kidnapped by a gang in Tripoli. He described how the gang members would deceive UN personnel who came to the detention centre where he was held: “On the days when UN staff came they treated us well, cleaned everything, cooked good food, brought us clothes, brought us to a doctor for check-ups. As soon as the UN staff had left, things changed immediately. They took everything they had given us: food, clothes, soap.”

Oxfam and the other signatories to the open letter are calling on EU governments to stop sending people rescued at sea back to Libya. The organisations say that EU member states need to be prepared to suspend cooperation with the Libyan coastguard if issues like arbitrary detention are not dealt with. EU governments should also support search and rescue operations and ensure that people rescued at sea can arrive safely and without delay to Europe. 

The kindness of strangers: exhibition celebrating solidarity towards refugees

Museum With A Home at the School Life and Education Museum in Athens

I’ve been working with Oxfam on a story celebrating the kindness and solidarity of ordinary people towards the men, women and children who are seeking peace and sanctuary in Europe.

It’s a story of the Museum Without A Home, a touring exhibition showcasing every-day objects that ordinary people have donated to refugees to make them feel more welcome. 

I loved this project: it’s such a creative and beautiful way to remind people that refugees are people like us, to celebrate those who are trying to make them feel a bit more at home in their host countries – and to encourage other people and governments to follow suit and support dignity and safety for all.

After touring in various cities across Europe, including Leicester and Cambridge, the exhibition was supposed to come to London and be displayed at City Hall and Parliament, then move on to Oxford and Cardiff. But because of the sex scandal which engulfed Oxfam, the plans had to be cancelled. Oxfam was hoping for lots of media coverage and support from MPs, NGOs and members of the public. It was not to be. But Positive News still agreed to run a short piece on it and I wanted to tell a bit about the Museum here too:

A cooking pot, a pair of running shoes, coloured crayons, a skipping rope. These are some of the everyday objects that have been ‘exhibited’ in the Museum Without A Home. The touring exhibition, which can be viewed online here, celebrates acts of kindness by ordinary people towards the men, women and children who are seeking peace and sanctuary in Europe. 

The museum was originally created by the Greek section of Amnesty International and Oxfam to acknowledge the solidarity of the Greek people towards refugees. Organisers also hope to call on people – including political leaders – worldwide to support dignity and safety for all.

In autumn of 2016, the entire city of Athens was transformed into a  “museum” showcasing real objects that residents donated to refugees to make them feel welcome. Each object was accompanied by personal testimonies of the people who donated the objects and the people who received them.

Next to the photo of a board game reads the caption: “Stelios lives in Piraeus. When his school teacher proposed to the class to collect toys for the kids in the port of Piraeus, Stelios offered one of his favourite board games. He then found out that the game had reached the hands of Ishmael, a boy his age.”

Accompanying an image of a kettle reads the caption: “Vasso lives and works in Konitsa. Mafida from Syria is being hosted in the same region. When the two women met, Vasso offered a water kettle to Mafida so that she can easily heat water to wash her baby.”

Since 2016, the exhibition has travelled to Belfast, New York, Belgrade and Canada, as well as Leicester and Cambridge. Since it came to the UK, organisers displayed alongside the Greek objects several items that have been donated by the British public. Among them were a cooking pot and a quilt sewn by people from Witney, Oxfordshire, who hope to sponsor a family from Syria.

“This is a celebration of small acts of welcome and generosity, that make all the difference to refugees as they rebuild their lives in the UK,” said Sally Copley, Oxfam’s head of policy, programmes and campaigns. “We are calling on the government to extend its own hand of welcome by allowing refugees to reunite with their families in the UK.”

How to tell the refugee story?

Khalid's story/PositiveNegatives

Migration and the refugee story are one of the most important issues of our age and will be there for a long time. Migration, the movement of people, has always existed. “The current crisis isn’t about people being refugees and migrants, the crisis is that we think of such movement of people as a crisis,” said Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist in this issue (June 2017) of New Internationalist. He is right.

  

The way the media reports on migration and the refugee story has a huge impact on how people react to them and on public policies. So, as a journalist, I keep asking myself how to best report migration. How to produce fair and balanced pieces that counter the stereotypes and misinformation, but also how to keep telling these stories in ways that are engaging and innovative.

These are so many stories about refugees and migrants out there that people become numb and turn away from them.  Yet, it is our job as journalists to keep telling those stories again and again, and to keep telling them in ways that cut through the compassion fatigue and reach our readers.

Over the past months, I’ve been looking at examples of various creative ways  to do that - some are journalism, others not.

Here are just a few, illustrating or responding to three different issues in reporting migration:

• Most refugee stories have been told in Europe in two ways: one that instills fear with unfactual or biased reporting; the other that shakes the public awake through sorrow and shock. But there is a middle ground: stories that put a face on the numbers, that humanize the immigration statistics, that show that refugees are just people like us, thrown into exceptional circumstances. And the best stories are those told by refugees themselves.

- My favourite is “A Perilous Journey: Stories of Migration” an exhibition of literary comics based on testimonies from refugees. They were created by PositiveNegatives, a wonderful non-profit, which produces literary comics, animations and podcasts about contemporary social and human rights issues, including conflict, racism, migration, trafficking and asylum.  Concentrating on contemporary real-life stories from Syria and Iraq, we follow two men and two women on their long difficult journeys fleeing conflict and persecution.  Nadia’s Story, for example, tells of a pregnant Yazidi mother, fleeing ISIS controlled Iraq with her two young children. The last panel of each story is a real photograph of the refugee, reminding us that these are real people and real stories. It is very effective and moving.  The exhibition is at SOAS’ Brunei Gallery Room: 1st Floor Gallery until June 24. Really worth a visit!

Hasko'story/PositiveNegatives

- Then there is the series of short radio episodes produced by BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, following a Syrian family from the Jordan refugee camp where they had lived for two years to Greece, then across Europe to Germany. Reporter Manveen Rana documented the twists and turns of their journey in a series of short reports – showing the good and the bad, the hopes and the challenges.  Her reports are honest, fascinating, moving, though provoking and surprising.

- Last summer, short hand-written messages were left in public places - inside coffee shops, in between the pages of books in libraries, on benches in parks and tied to lampposts and railings - or written on white boards in tube stations. They were messages of hope for a better life, written by refugees from Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries - part of a campaign by humanitarian aid agency Mercy Corps, aimed at changing the attitudes and perspectives of people around Syrian refugees and the migrant crisis in general. The campaign was particularly effective with young people, who shared the messages on Instagram and Twitter. 

 

“Sometimes it is really hard to put yourselves in the shoes of these people because it seems so distant but when I read the note it really made it sink in that this girl was not any different from me,” said Rebecca Alexander, a 21-year-old student, who saw the note of a 15-year-old Syrian refugee, hanging from a tree in London's Regent’s Park.

• People are tired of refugee stories because stories of suffering are exhausting. Stories of empathy are empowering. As are those who show refugees not just as “victims”.

- For example, millions of people shared the image of Syrian refugee Alex Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin, but very few might have read his story in a newspaper.  

When Assali, 38, woke up in his small Berlin flat one autumn morning two years ago, and checked his email, 1,000 messages waiting for him. The day before, a friend had uploaded a photograph to Facebook of Assali feeding homeless people on the streets of Berlin. The caption below read: “Acts of kindness: A Syrian refugee mans a food stand for the homeless, to ‘give something back to the German people’.”   The image went viral - it was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and nearly three million times on Imgur. Al Jazeera produced this interactive story, giving Assali’s backstory, and that story got no trolls, according to Yasir Khan, senior editor of digital video at Al Jazeera English.

- Then there was the “Iam a refugee" campaign, launched last summer to celebrate the contribution refugees have made, and continue to make, to life in the UK. Plaques, inspired by the English Heritage blue plaques, were placed on buildings across the UK, where selected refugees have worked or studied. The idea was to show the diversity of the refugee population and the experiences they have had, as well as the creativity, skills and knowledge that they bring to the UK.

• Stories on refugees should try to portray a range of backgrounds and experiences, even contradictory, to help the audience get a fuller picture. And it's a good idea to let refugees tell their own stories.

For this year’s Refugee Week 2017, the Higgins Bedford Art Gallery and Museum is launching ‘Voices - Different Pasts, Shared Future’, an exhibition featuring oral histories from refugees, asylum seekers and other migrants from Syria, Iraq, Rwanda and Palestine. Some of the stories are from women who are detained at Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre. The exhibition also includes a wonderful tapestry of objects which people have brought from their countries of origin. The objects are printed, then partly stitched by volunteers from the community and women from Yarl’s Wood. “These Voices transform personal memories into collective memories impossible to ignore,” says Josepa Munoz, the artist behind the project. 

There are too many interesting and innovative projects and ways to report on the refugee story to feature here, but feel free to add those you like…

“I have refugenes” – celebrities share their refugee origins

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What do singers Rita Ora and Jamie Cullum, architect Richard Rogers and author and actor Ben Elton have in common?  They all have “refugenes” – they are either refugees themselves or have family members who were forced to leave their countries.

They took part of Refugenes, a short film launched today by the charity Help Refugees as part of a campaign to raise awareness of the number of people in Britain who are from refugee backgrounds and to highlight how they contribute to modern society and culture.

In the video, Ora, Cullum, Rogers and Elton join other prominent popular culture figures, such as Bella and Esther Freud, Noisettes’ frontwoman Shingai Shoniwa, singer Yasmin Kadi and model and blogger Naomi Shimada in discussing their own refugee origins and how these roots helped shape who they are today.

These people have all risen to the top of their fields, but each has a personal story or family history involving displacement from lands that were no longer safe due to war or tyranny – a fate shared by some 8.6 million people worldwide in 2015 alone.

The campaign is also encouraging the public to share their own #Refugenes  stories in order to paint a fuller picture of who are Britain’s refugees and how they  have contributed to the society we live in today.

Refugenes sets these stories against the backdrop of the current refugee crisis, which reached cataclysmic proportions in 2015 with the escalation of the Syrian civil war and unrest in the Middle East and Africa caused by the rise of ISIS. Since then over one million people have sought refuge in Europe.

The charity Help Refugees was created in the autumn 2015 in response to the needs of refugees in the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais. It has now grown into one of the leading humanitarian organisations dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe, having helped nearly half a million people with both basic amenities and quests for resettlement. 

Women refugees face assault, exploitation and sexual harassment journeying through Europe

These women and girls have fled war in Syria and Iraq, walked for days across  hostile terrains, put their lives in the hands of ruthless traffickers, crossed seas on flimsy dinghies and finally made it to Europe.  Safe at last? No, these women and girls who have fled some of the world’s most dangerous areas, faced assault, exploitation and sexual harassment at every stage of their entire journey, including on European soil, according to a new report by Amnesty International released this week.

Amnesty interviewed 40 refugee women and girls in Germany and Norway last month. They had travelled from Turkey to Greece and then across the Balkans. All the women, who had endured the horror of war in their countries, said they felt threatened and unsafe during the journey. Many reported that in almost all of the countries they passed through, they experienced physical abuse and financial exploitation, being groped or pressured to have sex by smugglers, security staff or other refugees. 

“Nobody should have to take these dangerous routes in the first place. The best way to avoid abuses and exploitation by smugglers is for European governments to allow safe and legal routes from the outset. For those who have no other choice, it is completely unacceptable that their passage across Europe exposes them to further humiliation, uncertainty and insecurity, says Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director Tirana Hassan said:

Women and girls travelling alone and those accompanied only by their children felt particularly under threat in transit areas and camps in Hungary, Croatia and Greece, where they were forced to sleep alongside hundreds of refugee men, according to the report. In some instances women left the designated areas to sleep in the open on the beach because they felt safer there. 

Women also reported having to use the same bathroom and shower facilities as men. One woman told Amnesty that in a reception center in Germany, some refugee men would watch women as they went to the bathroom. Some women took extreme measures such as not eating or drinking to avoid having to go to the toilet where they felt unsafe. 

It is shameful that governments and aid agencies cannot give basic protection to these women and girls who have risked everything to find safety in Europe. It seems extraordinary that they cannot provide at the very least single-sex toilets and safe sleeping areas.  

Mediterranean Migrant Crisis: Don't Let Them Drown

Amnesty International picture

 This month, more than 1,000 women, men and children drowned in one week as several overcrowded boats sank in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.
It is the equivalent of five passenger planes full of people.  If they had been holiday makers, instead of migrants, imagine the response. 

And that might be just a start. In previous years, the warmer weather has marked the start of ‘boat season’ – when thousands of desperate people embark on the treacherous journey to Europe. Even before the tragic events this month, 50 times as many people died since the beginning of 2015, compared to the same period last year. And even more people are expected to attempt this dangerous trip this summer, particularly as the violence persists in Libya, to where many Syrians escaping the conflict have fled.
 
Women, men and children leave their homes, risking death, exploitation and starvation along the way, to board over-crowded, unseaworthy and often crewless boats, having paid all they have or can borrow to people smugglers.
Many die. Many lose their loved ones or become separated from them.

 

Here is Kate Allen, 
Amnesty International UK director's account of her visit to Lampedusa: 

"I’ve just returned from meeting with shipwreck survivors, coastguards and officials in Lampedusa – the Italian island on the frontline of the crisis in the Mediterranean Sea.

It was incredibly harrowing but, as always, I was truly touched by the bravery of those I met.

People like the 19-year-old woman who told me that her mother was killed while they were trying to escape Boko Haram.

She then met a man who took her to Libya and prostituted her. She told me how she had to run for her life to get away from him, and about the discrimination and violence directed at black Africans in Libya.

I spent one morning with the head of the local hospital, who told me that he and his small team examine all arrivals, dead and alive. He talked about his experiences, from joyful reunions between mothers and their children, to examining a young girl in a body bag to find she was actually still alive and managing to resuscitate her. She now lives in Sweden.

He had many, many heart-wrenching stories and I struggled not to cry.

On the ground, amongst the people who are actually helping, I didn’t hear a bad word directed at the migrants and refugees. Their resentment is against the international community.

Speaking to the mayor of Lampedusa, she told me: ‘We can’t condemn people to die because they are black. We don’t let people drown.’

The number of people making this journey really isn’t huge – as long as the rest of Europe would only play its part."

At the recent emergency summit in Brussels, EU leaders pledged to triple funding for rescue operations in the Mediterranean. The EU will also look at ways to capture and destroy smugglers' boats and deploy immigration officers to non-EU countries, officials said. But Amnesty International says  they have not gone far enough and urge the UK government and its European Union partners to strengthen search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas through a joint effort involving all EU countries here. You can sign their petition here. 

But even if naval operations manage to rescue the vast majority, there are bitter disputes about how to deal with the tens of thousands who make it to safety. Britain, for example, has said it will provide significant naval support, but it won't accept more asylum seekers. 

Some people in southern Europe say that's not enough. The burden has to be more equitably shared. There should be a common asylum and immigration policy within the EU. But as different countries have very different priorities, it  will take years to get the balance right and achieve a common policy.