Injustice in a World of Uncertainty

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Stream 5: Indigenous People and Ethnic minorities at the Margins of Safety and Security (Continued) (Papers 1-4) & Gender and Sexuality in a Heteronormative Time of War (Papers 5-8)

(A hybrid stream of in-person, online and pre-recorded presentations) 

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#1: Claiming Indigenous Land Justice in Response to Extractive and Legal Violence in Sápmi: Insights From the Gállok Case

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Author(s): Camille Parguel, Doctoral Student in Peace and Development Research, School of Global Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

 

Abstract: Across the globe, the accelerated exploitation of natural resources on indigenous lands has given rise to growing resistance from indigenous communities, for example through the mobilisation of international law (Eide 2009, 245). Disputes over land and natural resources in Fennoscandia are often characterised by ‘extractive violence’ – ‘a form of direct violence against nature, and/or people and animals, caused by extractivism, which predominantly affects peoples closely connected to land’ (Sehlin MacNeil 2017, 39). Based on an analysis of a controversial iron ore mine project in Gállok in northern Sweden (SBS News 2022), I assume extractive violence is inseparable from ‘legal violence’ – the legal aspect of colonial structural violence (Murdocca 2010) – contained in Swedish law on land use and mining activities. Although both extractive (Preston 2017) and legal violence (Ward et. al. 2021) have been described as having racial components, it seems fruitful to appraise their combined impact on discrimination related to indigenous land issues in Sápmi. Building on Fraser (2009, 15) and Altman and Markham (2015, 140), I also explore claims for indigenous land justice as a non-violent reaction to colonial practices (Cormier 2017, 48), which are extractive and legal here. Concretely, I assess the extent to which recent legal actions taken by the Jåhkågaska tjiellde Sami village and the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation address each of the three dimensions of land justice: (1) economic redistribution through land ownership rights, (2) cultural recognition of an identity linked to land and (3) political representation in formal land management processes. By doing so, I aim to demonstrate that indigenous land justice is not only a response to extractive violence (Nachet, Beckett, and Sehlin MacNeil 2021), but also to legal violence.

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#2: Prevbarco in the Amazon: A Comparative Study of the Impacts of Social Security Services in the Rio Guaporé/Mamoré and Rio Madeira Regions

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Author(s): Saulo Macedo, Master student of Administration, Fundação Getúlio, Vargas, Brazil

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Abstract: The scope of this study focuses on the social security coverage and social assistance to indigenous and traditional peoples of the Amazon region, whether in the condition of workers and special insured (rural and urban). In a comparative study of two Amazonian regions, the problematic exposed herein hints at the need to point out the differences in the impact and the importance of the public social security assistance made available in the form of boat to the riverside communities of the affluent rivers of the Amazon basin, in view of the capillarity of water access and the unavailability of access by land routes to the residents of that region. If social security has in its corollaries the equal treatment for urban and rural workers, one must consider that rural workers have more difficulties regarding formalisation, realisation and proof of their activities. With the indigenous community, mainly the urban indigenous, the difficulties may be greater as to the recognition of the social security right. Therefore, this study is necessary in order to measure the impact of assistance to indigenous communities for these populations, considering that Prevbarco is Social Welfare for those workers who are not able to go to a unit in the city. From an ethnographic analysis, this exploratory study aims to identify the differences of the realities studied (Rio Guaporé/Mamoré and Rio Madeira Regions), pointing out the possible benefits of this public policy in the light of Amartya Sen’s theory of the development of human capabilities.

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#3:  The Role of Administrative Burden and Changes in Social Security Policies and the Inclusion of Indigenous Citizens´ Participation in the Amazon, Brazil

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Author(s): Vanessa Fraga, National Institute of Social Security, Brazil and Silvia M. Mendes University of Minho, Portugal

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Abstract: Considering the inclusion of indigenous and tribal persons, the ILO Convention 169 states that governments must consult the citizens and their representative institutions, concerned with respect to the formulation, application, and evaluation of national and regional development plans and programs that are likely to affect them directly are in the making. However, the sparse existing literature tells us that this does not occur in Brazil. In this paper, we seek to perform a quasi-experimental study with the replication of a consultation in a deliberative intervention, in discussion groups and the participation of citizens and public servants (Fraga and Mendes 2020) with respect to indigenous peoples and ethnic minorities in the Amazon. These may be at the margins of effective social security inclusion, marginalised, outcasts without means of support, and socioeconomic conditions to avoid marginalisation. In this sense, New Public Governance (NPG), in a Digital Age Governance (DEG) approach, associated with the theoretical support of the Ethics of the CordialReason provide a new meaning to the issues related to stakeholders in the strategic decision-making process.

 

Research evidence indicates that compliance costs, learning costs, and psychological costs associated with administrative burden end up generating a lower demand for benefits, either because of the digital gap, the absence of knowledge of their rights, the prospect of not knowing how to deal with new requirements, and the possibility of embarrassing face-to-face interviews, among other costs.

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#4: Are They Born Criminals? Experiences of Denotified Communities from Central India

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Author(s): Dr Usha Rana, Department of Sociology and Social Work and Dr Harisingh Gour Vishwavidyalaya, A Central University, Sagar, India

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Abstract: 

This century started with the goal of providing equal opportunities to all despite their gender, caste, or community. On the contrary, developing countries are encountering challenges in ensuring equal rights for their citizens. Still, in a country like India, several communities are victimised by systemic discrimination as they are stigmatised as denotified communities. Historically, 200 of them were marked as criminals by the British Colonial Government under the Criminal Tribes Act imposed in 1871, which labelled them as hereditary criminals. Their present situation is no different from the past, and still, their acceptability in society is far-fetched due to social stigma. In this direction, this study aims to explore the historical understanding of colonial intervention against such communities and their recent experiences. To this end, the empirical data related to these communities is collected from colonial archives and the present governmental outlook. Notably, we have focused on three communities, including Bedia, Banchhada, and Kanjar, from the Sagar, Bhopal, and Ratlam districts of Madhya Pradesh state in central India, respectively. In total, 36 in-depth unstructured interviews are conducted, including 3 case studies, to examine the current status of these communities.

 

The results reveal that they are completely or partially socially excluded from the mainstream of development. They are labelled by socially constructed identities, due to which their new generations are also struggling with the hurdles such as no good education and no job opportunities. Continuous ignorance and non-acceptance by the government and society have created structural vulnerability, which creates hindrances in the process of change.

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#5: Safety Networks of Nepalese Women during Maoist Insurgency: Representation in Nepali Cinema

 

Author(s): Sushila Sharma, McMaster University, Canada

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Abstract: This paper examines the situations of women during Maoist insurgency as represented in the Nepalese Cinema. During Maoist movement, the insurgent groups were fighting for access and control over the state structures. They claimed that they were fighting for the people. However, many innocent people were killed and terrified. Women, children, differently abled, and elderly people were victimised during this war time; women became one of the major sufferers.  In the patriarchal social structure of Nepal, women were always subordinate, and whether the war has contributed to their subordination becomes a major concern. In this background, this paper examines the following research questions: How had war left women insecure in this period?  How has Nepalese cinema captured the situation of women in that war period? It assumes that women were victimised in two ways: 1) they had to run the household and family as the head of the family went to war, and 2) Women were sexually abused and were targeted to take revenge for enemies. The cinema could not take any agentive role for women as they maintained the same pattern of patriarchal subordination. They were indifference toward women’s plight.  I will use movie analysis as a method to examine the research question.

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#6: The Risk of Revictimisation for the Young Victims of Crimes 

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Author(s): Dr. Delia Magherescu, Gorji Bar Association, Romania

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Abstract: Serious crimes are currently committed in several forms by using diversified modus operandi. The perpetrators are looking for finding more efficient illegal means and ways of enhancing their proceeds of crimes. Usually, trafficking in human beings, having young people as victims, in purpose to be exploited sexually or through forced labour is commonly committed. In this context, the victims need a special protection from the law enforcement agencies; in some cases, they suffer because of the revictimisation. For this reason, the legislator must take into account their vulnerable status during the criminal proceedings in order to prevent any form of revictimisation. The current article presents the situation existed in both legal and judicial system on the young victims of serious crimes associated with the phenomenon of revictimisation. The research is also aiming at finding appropriate legal measures and instruments of fighting serious crimes including trafficking in children and young women, as vulnerable victims, and enhancing the stateʼs policy of reducing revictimization. In purpose to achieve the proposed aims, the article is designed through a qualitative research methodology, particular attention being paid on the serious risk factors to generate the revictimisation, which exist in practice. 

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#7: Indigenous women weaving alternative security systems to tackle violence amidst armed conflict in Cauca

 

Author(s): Luisa Isidro Herrero, York University, Canada

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Abstract: Despite the official end of Colombia’s lengthy armed conflict, Indigenous women in Cauca, Colombia suffer ongoing violations of their individual and collective human rights, experiencing injuries not only to their persons, but also to their relationships with their land. In response, these women have developed nonviolent practices of territorial safeguarding such as those engaged in by the Indigenous Guard to preserve norms and practices of buen vivir (good living), while thereby defending their human rights, territorial relationships, and political autonomy against the impacts of both armed conflict and post-conflict violence by fulfilling responsibilities of territorial control.

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Working respectfully in engagement with Indigenous communities, my ethnographic research will analyse the alternative forms of security created and developed by women who undertake these duties in the face of family and community experiences of death, abuse, and displacement during the armed conflict and so-called post-conflict era. Drawing on scholarship on feminist geopolitics and research into grassroots practices of grounded protections, (or alter geopolitics), I explore how Indigenous women from the Association of Indigenous Cabildos del Norte del Cauca (AICNC) meet, seek, generate, and implement non-violent collective resistance to address everyday violence while weaving cross-national solidarity with similar organisations to shape spaces of safety. My research brings Gender Based Analysis (GBA+) to understand buen vivir practices and examine how violence delves into spaces and practices that traverse public/ private domains. This study speaks to SSHRC research priorities by 1) describing new types of violence that Indigenous women suffer in terms of how they relate to their territories, and 2) understanding how women establish nonviolent practices for reasserting these territorial relationships amidst and in the wake of armed conflict.

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#8: Women as Combatants: The Peacekeepers and the Gender Structures Within the Military

 

Author(s): Fernanda de Abreu Appolinário, Postgraduate student, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro’s (UERJ), Brazil

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Abstract: 20 years after the implementation of Resolution 1325 by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) - which introduced the institution’s Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda - it is important to address certain points surrounding women and war. The above mentioned Resolution promotes the protection of women during conflict and post-conflict times, while also encouraging women to join the UN’s peacekeeping forces, as a measure to provide gender balance within the institution. However, a critical feminist approach is needed in order to analyse the obstacles and consequences of including women in militarised environments, especially regarding the gender hierarchies within the military and its lack of space for femininities, considering masculinities and war could be co-dependent.

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Therefore, this research intends on exposing the gendered structures of militarisation, as well as its reverberations on combatant women, specifically peacekeepers. In order to develop that study, and considering this research is conducted under a critical feminist point of view, the methodology is based on analysing discourses, gestures and practices either macro or embodied on the everyday of combatant women. As a result, exposing women’s obstacles within the military while considering gender hierarchies could provide insight on the reproduction of military masculinities and its relation to war, the possible adoption and bending of women peacekeepers to military and hegemonic masculinities and, finally, questioning whether women’s needs are fully addressed - or at least considered - within UN’s military peacekeeping forces.

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