Issues of Power and Empowerment in Refugee Studies: Rwandan Women's Adaptive Behaviour at Benaco Refugee Camp

Abstract

This paper addresses human rights violations in the context of gender power relationships and calls attention to the need to examine thes tandardsfor human rightsassessments in the context of refugee situations. This research is based on fieldwork carried out with Rwandan Hutu refugees during an 18-month assignment as Project Directorfor CARE International in Ngara, Tanzania. Par-ticipant obseruations, interviews, surveys, and focus group discussions yielded a wealth of data concerning the coping strategies of men and women. Women's coping strategies made them vulnerable:women without partners we the least protected and took thegreatest risks in their eflorts to survive and feed their children. Their adaptive behaviour increased their risks of rape, sexual abuse, and exposure to Hl Vand other sexually transmitted diseases. These serious prob-lems were overshadowed by the chaotic business of running a refugee camp. In the rush to accommodate the influx of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the non-governmental organizations and UN agencies established a relief infra-structure that-perversely-gave the perpetrators of crimes, positions of power within the camp, which enabled thegen-der violations to persist.