Engendering Compensation:
Making Refugee Women Count!
Prepared for the Expert and Advisory Services
Fund International Development Research Centre
by Nahla Abdo
March 2000 - Ottawa
Executive
Summary
Engendering the compensation process,
the focus of this paper, is an attempt not only to
reduce existing gender inequalities among Palestinian
refugees, but also to ensure a more visible role for
Palestinian women in the compensation process. Scenarios
for compensation built around property and material
conditions alone overlook the Palestinian women refugees’
experience. Engendering refugee compensation negotiations
entails, among other things, the delineation of gender
aspects of refugee conditions, experiences and expectations,
which in turn can result in a more integrative and
inclusive study of refugees.
The concept of gender, this paper argues, must be
treated as integral to any approach to refugees, as
it penetrates and defines the life experiences, expectations
and aspirations of all refugee communities. A gender
approach in research and policy decision- making on
refugees is needed in order to unmask the differential
experiences of women and men. We need gender-based
analysis in order to assess the experiences of women’s
and men’s different social realities, life expectations
and economic circumstances, and to ensure the integration
of these differences in accounting for compensation.
Gender-based analysis must be seen as a tool for
understanding social processes and for responding
with informed and equitable options to the group targeted
for compensation. To achieve this, a strategy of mainstreaming
gender is adopted with the aim of integrating gender
equality concerns into the analyses and formulations
of all policies, programs and projects designed for
compensating refugees. The paper also calls for the
adoption of initiatives to enable men as well as women
to formulate and express their views and participate
in decision-making processes.
In seeking to establish a gender perspective as a
fundamental element for an inclusive approach to discussing
refugee compensation, the first part of this paper
examines three broad areas:
- The significance of gender in comprehending Palestinian
refugees;
- Gender and compensation from an international
perspective;
- Engendering the compensation process of the Israeli/Palestinian
negotiations.
The paper contends that the current contextualization
of compensation is concerned with one major issue,
namely the recognition of compensation as just one
part of a comprehensive solution to the Palestinian
refugee problem and the way in which gender is relevant
and necessary in such contextualization. Compensation
in this paper is viewed as complementary to and not
in lieu of other solutions to the refugee problem,
such as repatriation and the right of return.
Compensation negotiations have been viewed as part
of a comprehensive resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and as a means of peace-building in the
region. Viewed in this broader context, compensation
becomes a two-fold process that entails, on the one
hand, an understanding and deconstruction of the structures
of injustices, violence and inequalities caused during
conflict, and on the other, the reconstruction of
structures of justice and equality, through material
and other forms of redress. It also enables a more
comprehensive approach to dealing with refugee issues
and opens up the space for gender considerations.
The second part of the paper is concerned with engendering
the process of refugee negotiations. Following the
recommendations of the Beijing Platform of Action,
and as an essential requirement for the maintenance
of peace and security and ensuring equitable compensation,
the process of negotiation needs to consider an alternative
mechanism for its operation; one which ensures equal
access and full participation of women in the negotiation
process. Women must be encouraged and supported to
join the negotiation process at all levels.
Women participants can be entrusted with bringing
gender perspectives into the negotiation table as
well as implementing them. Women participants can
play specific roles such as: information resources;
gathering information on the gender-differentiated
roles of refugees; gender consultants and overall
observers. Employing these different mechanisms are
likely to affect existing data, particularly if gender
or sex-disaggregated data is to be employed in the
various areas of compensation; including calculating
individual claims for loss of landed property, education,
labour and other forms of entitlements.
Finally, the paper approaches the question of Palestinian
women’s compensation, by engendering the compensation
modalities espoused within the 1999 PRRN/IDRC report
based on the Ottawa Workshop on Compensation.
The paper argues that all ‘modalities’
presented at the PRRN/IDRC Workshop focused on one
form of compensation: compensation for material loss
of private property, most notably land. All scenarios
for compensation (e.g., claimants, formula, mechanism
and process) were built around material considerations
only. Yet, as will be discussed in this paper, Palestinian
women’s refugee experiences include the ‘feminization
of poverty’, the loss of educational and labour
opportunities. Such experiences cannot be approached
or measured in a quantitative manner alone. Special
approaches to these experiences will be considered
here.
For a more inclusive approach to compensation, this
paper elaborates on three different categories of
entitlements, reconstructs them from a gender-based
approach, and proposes specific recommendations for
the compensation for each of these categories.
The key findings of this paper include:
Category 1: Compensation for individual
material loss, which includes loss of labour and educational
opportunities
- Palestinian women have experienced refugee status
differently than their male counterparts at all
levels of the public sphere, by being discriminated
against and marginalized in the labour force, in
education, in political representation, as well
as in the private sphere.
- A formula of direct payment to claimants is better
able to address gender issues.
- A more reasonable and just formula of just compensation
would be to compensate all 1948 Palestinian refugees
and their descendants, through a flat per-capita
rate payable to individuals. This formula addresses
both the gender and class inequalities of Palestinian
refugees.
- For loss of landed and other forms of movable
and immovable property, cash payment is a preferred
mechanism, rather than payments in kind or in services.
This mechanism is particularly important for single
women, single-mother families or families dependent
on female members for their survival.
- The integration of third party members having
a gender orientation in the process of dispensation
of compensation ensures that alternative approaches
of qualitative and quantitative data be collected,
allowing for the use of gender-disaggregated data,
the re-definition of the terms productive and reproductive
labour, the inclusion of reproductive labour (domestic
and other informal forms of labour), and the issue
of gender-based labour exploitation.
Category 2: Compensation for individual
moral loss, comprising mental suffering from dispersion,
the division of families and the consequent impoverishment
of women, torture, ill-treatment, imprisonment and
detention of males and females
- This category can be partly compensated in monetary
forms in cases, for example, when time spent in
prison is seen as loss in educational and labour
opportunities. If this mechanism is chosen as a
form of redress, claimants must include women. A
gendered claims-based system is to be followed,
and the process must be managed through a third
party (not Israel or Palestine).
- By a gendered-based process of distribution or
dispensation of compensation we mean the inclusion
of women serving as gender experts, resource people,
gender consultants and as overall observers to guarantee
a gender equitable approach to the process of compensation.
- Other (non-monetary) forms of compensation, involving
services and investment in community development,
may prove equally beneficial. Special educational
and re-skilling centers along with the development
of existing programs dealing with mental health
problems, can be encouraged and supported. Women’s
sufferings can also be addressed through the development
of existing women’s centers or through the
establishment of new women’s organizations
dealing with mental and psychological problems.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance
of Reem Mashal and Kim Elliott in the preparation
of this report.The author would also like to thank
Rosemary Sayigh and Rex Brynen for their useful comments
on an earlier draft.
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