Risks For Syrian Women And Girls Increase And So Do The Stereotypes – The Organization for World Peace

The situation in Syria is worse now than ever for women and girls, the United Nations Population Fund (U.N.P.F.) reported in May. This worrisome message has become a refrain over the past few years.

After over a decade of fighting, war has become the face of Syria. What began as a revolution for progress in 2011, similar to other countries participation in the Arab Spring, soon became a whirlwind of never-ending violence. Around 26.5 million people are in need of assistance, and an estimated 11.7 million remain internally displaced or refugees in neighbouring countries.

Beyond casualties and displacements, gender-specific issues are also on the rise, particularly pertaining to insufficient sexual and reproductive health (S.R.H.) services. According to U.N.P.F., there are 1.7 million women in need of S.R.H. services. As the conflict has sent a devastating majority into poverty, the number of children forced into marriages in exchange for money and relative protection has risen exponentially as well.

Overall, the conflict has put women and girls at increasing risk of sexual violence and exploitation: in urban areas, shelters, and refugee camps. In these settlements, women often fall victim to sexual exploitation and, having limited mobility, cannot escape who hurt them, Women of Influence explains in a 2021 article. Sexual violence, W.O.I. says, is a weapon of war, used by parties complicit in the Syrian conflict, [and] serving to demonstrate who holds more power.

[In] a country where the honour of a woman is considered sacred, rape is being used to cause unrest amongst the population, the W.O.I. article says. When a womans honour is violated, entire families experience stigma and social exclusion. Hence, in Syria, women are being killed for allegedly bringing dishonour upon their families.

Syrian womens human rights and basic needs are disproportionately neglected, without a doubt, and they, like all women, should be able to enjoy their rights as stated. What is happening in Syria is a tragedy, and the numbers above are a slap in the face of womens emancipation. However, it is critical to phrase such statements with utmost caution, because another number that has risen is the stereotypical perception of the Middle-Eastern woman that women in the Syrian refugee diaspora bear.

Those who are not present in the conflicted country receive their information from whats scattered through the media. Thus, journalists must take care not to feed such impressions with statistics and headlines that lack a broader context.

Western aid organizations and feminist organizations have a history of addressing humanitarian issues in the third world or developing countries from a narrating approach instead of a collaborating one. These groups often write about situations from a distant, third-party perspective that fits their ideas, as outsiders, of what the situation looks like on the ground, depriving locals of their agency and creating a phantasm that all third-world women suffer from the same oppression which the Western world can save and protect them from.

For example, the W.O.I. article. Although its statements about women being killed for bringing dishonour on their families are not entirely untrue, this phrasing both relies on and reinforces pre-existing stereotypes about Syria being a backwards, conservative, and unemancipated country.

The danger in stating that humanitarian responses to those affected by the war need to be altered to provide Syrian women and girls with better protection lies with the fact that it merely victimizes women. There is no space for active engagement with the women that are supposedly in need of protection.

Advocating for protecting and empowering Syrian women does not deal with the problem at its root. Why is sexual violence happening in Syria, and what are local actors and internal movements doing to take on the problem? Rather than trying to protect Syrian women as outsiders, humanitarian aid groups should ask these questions and provide local groups with the tools to realize their goals.

There is an abundance of articles like this one, and too few about Syrian womens achievements. However, Al Jazeeras 2021 article How Syrian Women are Fighting a War And Patriarchy is an example of the latter, focusing on Syrian women who have taken on active roles in the Revolution the women who Lina Sergie Attar, Syrian-American architect and co-founder of a refugee foundation, calls the invisible warriors of the war and how the fight has affected them. But it also discusses womens lack of voice. [W]ithout their voices being heard, the article asks, how will womens rights be protected in the development of their countrys future?

[The] main problem in Syria is that men are in control of everything, from civil society to humanitarian organizations, said Ghalia Rahal, a 47-year-old who converted her hair salon to a vocational training center for women in 2013.

Despite womens great participation in the Revolution, protests, organizations, and as individual agents of change, they are severely politically underrepresented. Amnesty International stated in 2019 that womens participation in political processes is fundamental for achieving gender equality and human rights for all. The international community, it said, must consult with women and ensure that they are represented effectively in peace talks, negotiations, the drafting of the constitution and other peace-building processes.

Besides the absence of institutionalized mechanisms to ensure the protection of women and vulnerable groups, the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (W.I.L.P.F.) also notes the very limited representation of women in Syrian institutions and media. The W.I.L.P.F., a non-violent movement that works closely with local and involved partners, launched the Feminist Movement for Change together with 24 Syrian organizations in 2017. (The project re-launched in 2021.) They are focused on fitting Syrian womens needs to their beliefs, de-victimizing them, re-defining them from woman- or wife-status, and generally providing an alternative look at a justice process.

Syrian women are individuals, not a monolith, just like women from any other arbitrary country. And not every woman aspires to a Westernized ideal of emancipation. Being the voice that changes a country, filling a government chair, or breaking with traditional gender roles are not the only ways to be empowered. Empowerment is the freedom to choose ones own path regardless of what others believe that path should look like.

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Risks For Syrian Women And Girls Increase And So Do The Stereotypes - The Organization for World Peace