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Thematic review on the coverage of women in Country of Origin Information (COI) reports Prepared for the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information (IAGCI)n Country of Origin Information (COI)
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Country of Origin Information (COI) is an integral part of asylum decision-making in the UK and is used at all stages of the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process to assess applications for refugee status or other forms of international protection. It informs decision makers and legal advisers about the political, social, cultural, economic, and human rights situation of a particular country as well as humanitarian situations. COI can enable decision makers to assess if an individual‘s subjective fear is based on objectively adverse circumstances, and therefore whether an asylum claim is well founded. It can also be used to assess the risk for individuals on return to their country of origin. There is, however, some concern that COI reports do not always provide sufficient information on issues affecting women. This is partly because of a lack of information on the situation and experiences of women in many of the countries from which asylum seekers originate. Evidence to support gender-related claims – for example statistical data or information on the incidence of sexual violence - might not be as readily available as for other refugee claims. Perhaps more fundamentally, a lack of information on the situation and experiences of women may reflect a lack of awareness and understanding of the ways in which gender identities, roles and relations – particularly in contexts where gender has become highly politicised - can shape the refugee experience. This paper, commissioned by the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information (IAGCI), examines the ways in which issues affecting women are addressed in COI reports for the top 20 countries from which asylum applications are made. The report includes comments (in blue) made by the Home Office COI Unit in response to the evaluation.
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Two decades of conflict in northern Uganda have had a devastating impact on the lives of thousands of civilians. Like so many of today's ‘dirty wars,’ gender-related crimes have been pervasive. While numerous disciplines over the past century have developed sophisticated theories for understanding the nature and agency surrounding sexual offences, the nascent field of transitional justice is only just beginning to grapple with these issues or design appropriate measures of redress. This paper is based on research undertaken to look at issues of gender-based violence (GBV) in four camps for the internally displaced in northern Uganda in order to provide insight into the nature and prevalence of GBV within a specific context. The findings show that specific GBV dynamics need to be scrutinised within zones of conflict and taken into consideration in the policies adopted post-conflict. The paper both illuminates the nature of such abuses within the Ugandan context and points to the need for concerted attention to be paid to the pervasive gender dimensions of violence when designing transitional justice mechanisms.
To investigate the factors associated with attitudes towards wife beating among women in partnerships in Zimbabwe in order to assist public health practitioners in preventing intimate partner violence (IPV).
A nationally representative survey of 5907 women of reproductive age (15-49 years) was conducted in Zimbabwe. Women were asked about their attitudes towards wife beating in five situations. The survey included sociodemographic characteristics, partnership characteristics, and household decision-making.
Over half of all women in Zimbabwe (53%) believed that wife beating was justified in at least one of the five situations. Respondents were most likely to find wife beating justified if a wife argued with her spouse (36%), neglected her children (33%), or went out without telling her spouse (30%). Among women in partnerships (n=3077), younger age, living in rural areas, lower household wealth, schooling at a lower level than secondary, and lower occupational status were associated with women reporting that wife beating is justified. Women who reported that they make household decisions jointly with their partners were less likely to say that wife beating is justified.
Zimbabwe has a long way to go in preventing IPV, particularly because the younger generation of women is significantly more likely to believe that wife beating is justified compared with older women. Given the current social and political climate in Zimbabwe, finding means to negotiate rather than settle conflict through violence is essential from the household level to the national level.
Female Genital Cutting practices (also known as FGM) are of several types- clitoridectomy, excision, infibulation, and reinfibulation-affecting women and girls in several African countries and other parts of the world. In Sudan, the most damaging of the forms of the practice has been common and has numerous harmful effects. The main reasons it continues are based on complex ideas about religion, morality, family honor, virginity, and marriageability of daughters. Long-term ethnographic research has demonstrated that it has begun to change as midwives and parents are influenced by religious rethinking, health education, and human rights approaches that are increasingly conveyed in creative ways utilizing outreach, the arts, and media. Harm reduction is expected to lead to greater abandonment.
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors, not necessarily those of the Home Office (nor do they reflect Government policy).
Girls—both willingly and unwillingly—participate in terrorist acts within the context of contemporary wars. These acts range from targeting civilians for torture and killing to destroying community infrastructures so that people's physical and psychological health and survival are affected. Girls witness or participate in acts such as mutilation, human sacrifice, forced cannibalism, drug use, and physical and psychological deprivation. This article focuses upon girls in two fighting forces: the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Northern Uganda and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and their roles as combatants whose primary strategy is perpetrating terrorist acts against civilians. In analyses of gender and terrorism, girls are typically subsumed under the larger category of female, which marginalizes their experiences and fails to recognize that they possess agency and power.
In 2006 two pieces of Zimbabwean political ephemera began circulating, caricaturing senior political and military officials. The anonymously produced objects – a Guide to Dangerous Snakes in Zimbabwe and a deck of playing cards – present criticisms of an authoritarian regime within a curtailed public sphere. They capture and represent context-specific power relations, politics and resistance in post-colonial Zimbabwe. Critical engagement with these ephemera highlights challenges to the process of democracy, contests over power and resistance within Zimbabwe, and engagement with international dimensions to these concerns. The paper also extends recent critical geopolitical work on political satire in Africa.
Sexuality is part and parcel of students' experiences of schooling manifested in personal friendships, relations and social interaction. These encounters constitute sites within which sexual identities are developed, practiced and actively produced through processes of negotiation. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in 14 selected secondary schools in Central and Western Uganda, the study illuminates gendered sexual vulnerability within patterns of social interaction and young girls gendered experiences and negotiation of their sexuality. The study reveals that through social and discursive practices, students construct complex gendered relations of domination and subordination that position boys and girls differently, often creating gender inequalities and sexual vulnerability for those gendered as girls. Girls' vulnerability is characterised by confusing and traumatic experiences fraught with double standards and silences. Typical of these experiences are complex tensions and contradictions surrounding constructions of sexuality that are predicated upon unequal power and gender relations characterised by homophobia, misogyny, control of female sexuality and sexual abuse and exploitation, all which work against girls' expression of sexuality. Gender sensitive sexuality education is identified as a valuable site of intervention to address such vulnerabilities and promote gender equality and equity in society.
Prevention with positives (PWP) is a fundamental component of HIV prevention in industrialized countries. Despite the estimated 22.4 million HIV-infected adults in Africa (UNAIDS, 200626.
UNAIDS . 2006 . 2006 Report on the global AIDS epidemic, May, Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) 2006 View all references), culturally appropriate PWP guidelines have not been developed for this region. In order to inform these guidelines, we conducted 37 interviews (17 women, 20 men, no couples) from October 2003 to May 2004 with purposefully selected HIV-infected individuals in care in Uganda. Participants reported increased condom use and reduced intercourse frequency and numbers of partners after testing HIV-positive. Motivations for behavior change included concerns for personal health and the health of others, and decreased libido. Gender-power inequities (sometimes manifesting in forced sex), pain experienced by women while using condoms, decreased pleasure for men while using condoms, lack of social support, and desire for children appear to have resulted in increased risk for uninfected partners. Interventions addressing domestic violence, partner negotiation, use of lubricants and alternative sexual activities could increase condom use and/or decrease sexual activity and/or numbers of partners, thereby reducing HIV transmission risk.
To assess whether the extent of female genital mutilation (FGM) influences the risk of acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Hospital-based case-control study.
Two obstetric/gynaecological outpatient clinics in Khartoum, Sudan, 2003-2004.
A total of 222 women aged 17-35 years coming to antenatal and gynaecological clinics.
Women recruited for the study were divided into cases with seropositivity for Neisseria gonorrhoeae (gonococcal antibody test), Chlamydia trachomatis (enzyme immunoassay) or Treponema pallidum (Treponema pallidum haemagglutination assay) (n= 26) and controls without antibodies to these species (n= 196). Socio-demographic data were obtained and physical examination including genital examination was performed in order to classify the form of FGM. Cases and controls were compared using logistic regression to adjust for covariates.
Extent of FGM and seropositivity for C. trachomatis, N. gonorrhoeae or T. pallidum.
Of the cases, 85% had undergone the most severe form of FGM involving labia majora compared with 78% of controls (n.s.). Thus, there was no association between serological evidence of STIs and extent of FGM. The only factor that differed significantly between the groups was the education level, cases with STIs having significantly shorter education (P= 0.03) than controls.
There is a little difference between cases and controls in regard to FGM. Having in mind the relatively small sample size, the results still indicate that FGM seems neither to be a risk factor for nor protective against acquiring STIs. This is important as argument against traditional beliefs that FGM protects against pre/extramarital sex.