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  • Title: Gender and representation in refugee communities: the experience of the Ikafe programme.
    Author: Payne L, Adoko J.
    Journal: Links (Oxford); 1997 Jun; ():5-6. PubMed ID: 12320971.
    Abstract:
    The Ikafe camp established in 1994 in Uganda for 45,000 refugees from Sudan was treated as a rural development program by Oxfam UK/1. Refugees and Oxfam staff achieved registration, land allocation, distribution of food, water, sanitation, health care, and livelihood development, and the refugees successfully cleared land for cultivation, established nurseries, and instituted community-managed water and sanitation systems. All programming has been achieved through representative structures linked to Ugandan bodies. Despite Oxfam's attempt to provide women with equal representation and an equal voice in decision-making, only a low participation of women was achieved. Analysis of this situation revealed that women in the Sudan traditionally held positions of responsibility. However, in the refugee settlements women sometimes did not learn about meetings or meetings were held at inconvenient times or women lacked free time for meetings. The men feared that women would appropriate jobs the men considered their rightful positions, and women expressed jealousy of prominent women. The existence of a position entitled "Women's Representative" led the refugees to believe that all the other jobs were for men, and they considered the alien Ugandan structures appropriate only for voicing concerns, not for self-management. Thus, refugee representatives were often the men who could speak English. In response, Oxfam reformed the representative structure to insure sex equality and restructured the committee overseeing discipline on Sudanese lines. Oxfam learned that it is important to establish interim structures that can be adapted later and that it is not enough simply to create democratic election procedures and encourage people to elect women.
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