Female Refugees Research Paper

On Female Refugees and Motherhood

When discussing refugees, most people typically picture individuals fleeing from a country due to either a political or environmental crisis/ disaster and that eventually they will find a safer place to reside. Scholarly literature and the western media often only show the issues that men face as refugees and not what women, mothers, or even young girls face. Not only is it essential to include the plight that many women face when fleeing conflict from war-torn countries or natural disasters but it is important to continue to keep them in the narrative of refugee crises all over the world in order to possibly find alternative solutions to these problems. Additionally, adding women to the narrative of the plight

of a refugee would alter the perception of those in the western world who initially knew little of these populations, and would spread awareness on the affected women, mothers, and children of these groups. Furthermore, as a supplement to my research on female refugees, serving as an English-at-Home Volunteer for a refugee woman in Clarkston, GA has been a highly beneficial experience in learning more on what refugee women face in their daily lives.
Foremost, seeking refugee status in America is a very difficult and meticulous process in which not everyone is accepted even if their reasons for seeking refuge in another country are honest, reasonable, and credible.

Before a refugee can be allowed entrance into another country, they must first be considered individuals who are of special resettlement concern to the United States and meet the criteria of a refugee. The criteria of a refugee refers to an individual, fleeing their home country based on a well-founded fear of persecution, for the reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group (UN Refugees.org). Additionally they must complete pre and post-screening interviews under the cooperative agreement with the US Department of State and a USCIS officer. Furthermore, multiple security checks must be completed as well before a final decision is made, and if granted resettlement, upon arrival, refugee applicants must undergo a medical exam. After all of this, individuals who have completed the entire application process are then assigned to a resettlement agency which assists them with housing, finding employment, and other services when they arrive to the new

country.
In the US alone for the year of 2016, there were 84,989 refugees admitted into the country, which was significantly higher than previous years (DHS Office of Immigration Statistics 3). However in terms of the application process, it can take up to 7 years for a refugee to become successfully resettled in another country. Along with this, for the same year there were about 65.3 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced individuals all around the world (Domonsoke, NPR 2016). Furthermore fifty-percent of these individuals included women and girls, which also included those who are stateless, unaccompanied, pregnant, heads of households, disabled, or elderly (UNHCR.org). Therefore, since women take up this large amount of refugee-identifying groups throughout the world, then why are their stories of fleeing countries and dealing with female-specific issues such as reproductive issues, or violence not being discussed? When it comes to looking over on the cases of resettlement, in the UNHCR EXCOM Conclusion 105, it was found that, “only 5.7 per cent of all resettlement cases submitted to UNHCR in 2005 were women-at-risk” (Qasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, Sigona 405). This statistic alone demonstrates the extreme disparity in terms of the attention that female and male refugee cases receive when they reach the UNHCR.
Cases of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV) in refugee camps, a situation which happens frequently among refugee women and girls in camps and unfortunately tends to go unreported. According to Quasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, and Sigona editors of the Oxford Handbook of Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, since the 1980s the 1951 Geneva Convention has frequently been criticized by feminist activists that, “[b]y portraying as universal that which is in fact a male paradigm...women refugees face rejection of their claims because their experiences of persecution go unrecognized” (Qasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, Sigona 398). The purpose of feminist critiques of the refugee resettlement process of the UNHCR, is to address the fact that the views and perceptions of refugee situations has always been male-based and relies more on their experiences. As a result, the UNHCR has introduced more programs and ways to combat this problem, as well as implementing gender-sensitive protection tools for refugees. These gender-sensitive tools features, the original and revised Heightened Risk Identification Tool”, a document and guide which maintains its focus on ‘exceptional’ refugees, other than interrogating the foundations of mainstream assumptions which led to women and children refugees and asylum-seekers being excluded in the first place, as well as those belonging to the LGBTI community (Qasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, Sigona 405). According to the Oxford Handbook of Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, “UNHCR’s Age, Gender and Diversity Mainstreaming (AGDM, now AGD) strategy has prompted a shift away from UNHCR’s earlier reliance on essentialist categorizations of ‘pre-identified groups of ‘vulnerable’ or ‘extremely vulnerable persons’, towards ‘the broader concepts of age, gender and diversity’ Rather than ‘simply label[ling] individuals as ‘vulnerable’, UNHCR staff and partners are now encouraged ‘to analyze the protection context of persons of concern and identify the different vulnerabilities and capacities of all age and gender groups” (Qasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, Sigona 402). As a result, more diverse policies have been introduced to identify the risk factors, which would decrease the situations of SGBV in refugee camps (Qasmiyeh, Loescher, Long, Sigona 402).
As a part of my research, I served as a English-At-Home Volunteer with New American Pathways, where I would routinely meet with a refugee woman in her home at Clarkston, GA, to teach her English.

New American Pathways, a refugee resettlement agency created on October 1, 2014 through the merger of the Refugee Resettlement and Immigration Services of Atlanta (RRISA) and Refugee Family Services (RFS), serves as one of the largest refugee resettlement agencies in the southeast region of the United States (NewAmericanPathways.org). Each year, New American Pathways routinely assists 5,000 refugees in gaining the necessary resources to be successfully resettled in Georgia, and particularly in Clarkston, GA. Two weeks before I was assigned to a refugee woman to teach english, as a requirement of the volunteer program, I attended a volunteer orientation. During the volunteer orientation, I learned that the majority of their clients were resettled in Clarkston, GA, since it is an affordable area to live as well as not being too far away from the New American Pathways office in Atlanta,

GA.
The initial step that newly arrived refugee families undergo as clients of New American Pathways, is that they secure safe housing, gain basic needs, access to healthcare, learn english, and enroll their children in school. Second, the agency allows them to gain self sufficiency in terms of obtaining a household budget, starting a job, paying their own bills, navigating their way through the community, having the parents being involved with their children’s education and applying for a green card. After this step, refugee families or individual refugees, are given the opportunity to enroll in training or college for their future career, reunite with family members already in the US, grow in a career and eventually become a citizen (New American Pathways.org). The final step includes service, which entails that former clients give back to their communities, participate in civic life, and vote. All of the steps mentioned before are integral for the successful resettlement of refugees being integrated into a new country and culture, as well as having a reliable guide into a new life. Additionally, New American Pathways offers, the Young Women’s Leadership Program (YWL), “which engages 20 young [refugee] high school girls each year to develop the skills and knowledge they need to build healthy relationships, make safe and responsible decisions”, as well as “prepare [them] for high school graduation and long-term economic self-sufficiency” (New American Pathways.org). This program, allows for young women to have positive emotional support within the grades of 9-12 and adjust to life in the US as they confront, linguistic isolation, separation from family during resettlement, and conflicting cultural expectations challenges” (New American Pathways.org).
The refugee woman who I tutored English on Saturday mornings in Clarkston, during the semester, is still making her way through the initial stages of 1 and 2 of the New American Pathways framework for successful resettlement. However, due to the fact that I am serving as a volunteer of New American Pathways, I am not allowed to disclose her real name, therefore for the purposes of this paper I will refer to her as Susan. Susan, a young married mother of 2 young children, arrived to the US from the Republic of Congo. During my three meetings with her I witnessed how she was able to learn and perceive the English language.