2.3 Why Pakistani women?
Globally, there is considerable commonality in women’s experiences of domestic violence and its link to structural oppression, the key features of which are discussed below. Moreover, discourse on maintaining a global perspective on women’s experiences of gender relations provides a platform for reiterating these commonalities (Mojab, 1998, p.19). However, women’s experiences in particular cultural and political contexts raise very specific concerns. In addition, ‘country-specific’ violence, such as honour-related violence, or female genital mutilation is perceived to significantly affect particular women.
South Asian women are often seen to be victims of a static patriarchal culture, a perception usually perpetuated by the media as well as service providers. The perception of women as ‘victims’ is often regarded, at least at the level of international development work, as a sufficient basis for intervention and advocacy to improve South Asian women’s status (Visweswaran, 2004). Intervention in South Asian women’s asylum cases however is more complex and one which historically has paid little heed to any form of discourse on patriarchies, structural forces and oppressive practices, whether feminist or otherwise. Whilst patriarchal cultural practices do enhance the racialised pathologisation of South Asian women, an understanding of the intersection between culture and political systems in South Asia would enable a more effective consideration of gender based asylum claims emanating from South Asian countries (Visweswaran, 2004). This is particularly so in women’s asylum cases which allege domestic violence (Chantler, 2007). How, then, might this identify Pakistani women as a ‘special’ cause for concern?
With particular reference to Pakistani women’s domestic violence claims, it is necessary to consider the conflation of notions of morality, sexuality, nation and religion with law in Pakistan (Khan, 2003), as this creates the structural conditions in which domestic violence takes place and is accepted. Khan’s emphasis on the need to move away from traditional ‘culturalist’ explanations for domestic violence and instead to stress the role this conflation plays in subjugating Pakistani women has particular relevance for this study. This point is amplified by an examination of how the Zina Ordinances in Pakistan came into being is discussed in further detail in Chapter four. Khan’s thesis, that General Zia’s military regime promulgated the Ordinances as a component of the new moral order in Pakistan in 1979, essentially to bolster its own political base through alliances with right wing religious parties (Khan, 2003, p.89), is particularly significant in demonstrating the state’s role in regulating women’s morality.
This analysis has particular significance for Pakistani women. Their unique status, attributable to cultural, societal and state level discrimination and abuse, is endorsed in the landmark asylum case ‘Shah and Islam’. The case developed the definition of ‘Membership of a Particular Social Group’ and its applicability to Pakistani women in accordance with the terms and spirit of the Refugee Convention (see Chapter three). The significance and specificity of ‘Shah and Islam’ itself in relation to Pakistani women justifiably warrants further examination of the situation for women in Pakistan in the period since this ruling.
Furthermore, initial analysis of SMLC’s casework involving Pakistani women draws attention to the specific nature of the discrimination Pakistani women experience and of the Pakistani state’s continuing role and interference in maintaining legislative and other structures by which Pakistani women are denied basic rights. This demands more in-depth engagement with and enquiry of the issues.
In a similar way, the process by which the government, structural violence and familial abuse coincide in the UK, with particular reference to women from minority groups, has been examined in other studies (Batsleer et al, 2002, Burman et al, 2005). Such work helps to illustrate further the particular vulnerability of Pakistani women caught in the system of asylum and immigration controls. These recent studies have examined the nature and scope of service provision in the UK for women from minority groups who seek domestic violence service support. Reinforced by the current climate of increasing scrutiny of Pakistan, its citizens, and Muslims generally and which may be contributing to Muslim women’s increasing withdrawal from requesting mainstream service provision (Batsleer, 2002), the studies usefully provide a context for the particular hurdles Pakistani women are facing.
Representational challenges and the dilemmas associated with examining a specific group of women in this way are a necessary consideration and are explored further in section 2.7 of this report.
2.4 Global context of violence against women
In this section we consider the broad, interlinked global perspectives on violence against women. These bring together disparate issues and discourses, such as the extent and severity of violence, its consequences, its impact on children and ‘globalisation’ as a backdrop to new forms of violence.
2.4.1 The pandemic nature of violence against women
“Worldwide, men’s violence against women causes more deaths and disabilities among women
aged 15-44 than cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war” (Murray and Lopez 1996, p.94).
This quote continues to have resonance in 2007. Globally, there is growing recognition of the extent and severity of violence against women, as demonstrated by events such as the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995 and subsequent United Nations (UN) initiatives which have attempted to incorporate an understanding of gender based violence into mainstream policy and development agendas.
Whilst violence against women has been understood as a reflection of women’s generally subordinate status, (for example, by UNIFEM10), there is also a perception that women’s increasing status and empowerment can also elicit further abuse from husbands and families as a form of resistance to this. The implication of this, certainly in UN discourse, is that violence against women has to be understood as linked to broader issues of national welfare and development, that is, ‘what is good for the nation’, as well as integrated into policies on ‘what is good for women’, namely education, employment and good health11.
2.4.2 The Beijing declaration and platform for action: domestic violence and women’s human rights
The 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (PFA) raised at the Fourth World Conference on Women12, formulated a consolidated global perspective on violence against women. It underlined the
10 UNIFEM is the United Nation’s Development Fund for Women. It provides financial and technical assistance to programmes
which foster women’s empowerment and gender equality and advocates for women’s issues at the United Nations. 11 Division for the Advancement of Women, ‘Review and Appraisal of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome Document of the Third Special Session on the General Assembly’, 2005 at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/ Review/english/background.htm
12 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing – September 1995, Platform for Action strategic objective D.
fundamental connection between violence against women in a broad range of forms, and violations of women’s human rights. As a result it enabled the problem of violence against women to be defined through women’s experiences. Consequently, it offered a broad perspective on the global and structural nature of the problem, as opposed to framing women’s experiences of violence within the gender-neutral paradigms of crime control and of ‘victimology’ (Radford and Stanko, 1996).
Whilst not legally binding, the PFA is nonetheless useful. Significantly, it developed a baseline for addressing violence in its many forms experienced by refugee women. Key passages of the PFA which place the issue within the framework of human rights and which provide a working definition of violence against women are highlighted below. Much of the definition draws from the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.
2.4.3 More recent international attention
In 2006 the General Assembly of the United Nations launched the Secretary-General’s ‘In-depth study on all forms of violence against women’13. This long overdue document endorses the arguments of many women’s rights activists that “violence against women was not the result of random, individual acts of misconduct, but was deeply rooted in structural relationships of inequality between women and men”14 and recognised that the United Nations’ leadership was critical in the global effort to combat violence against women.
2.4.4 Definition of domestic violence
Whilst there is ongoing debate and lack of agreement about defining the basic features of domestic violence (Gill, 2004), for the purposes of this study the PFA working definition is useful in identifying the forms of violence that take place within the domestic or private domain. It provides this study with an appropriate starting point, from which we can ascertain the diverse profiles of perpetrators, whether they are male spouses, family members, states or their agents.
The PFA provides its’ working definition, the substance of which draws from the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women as stated above. It is helpful for this study as it is explicit in its reference to migrant women, refugee women and the role of states in their endorsement of violence against women. It includes:
“…any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or
psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary
deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.”15A more detailed list includes:
“…physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering…dowryrelated violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation; physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution; physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs. Other acts of violence against women include violation of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict, in particular murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy. Acts of violence against women also include forced sterilization and forced abortion, coercive/forced use of contraceptives, female infanticide and prenatal sex selection”16
The PFA also identifies particular groups of women, notably women of a particular socio-economic status who might constitute the most vulnerable and most at risk. These include:
13 United Nations General Assembly, In-depth study on all forms of violence against women, Report of the Secretary-General, 6
July 2006, A/61/122/Add.1.
14 United Nations General Assembly, In-depth study on all forms of violence against women, Report of the Secretary-General, 6
July 2006, A/61/122/Add.1, p.13. 15 UN Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing – September 1995, Platform for Action, section 113
16 UN Fourth World Conference on Women. Ibid. section 113-114“…women belonging to minority groups, indigenous women, refugee women, women migrants,
including women migrant workers, women in poverty living in rural or remote communities,
destitute women, women in institutions or in detention, female children, women with disabilities,
elderly women, displaced women, repatriated women, and women living in poverty…” 17
This approach, as suggested at the beginning of this section, enabled us to work with a developing definition to address women’s experiences of domestic violence within a human rights framework.
2.4.5 Consequences of domestic violence
“Violence against women is an obstacle to the achievement of the objectives of equality,
development and peace. Violence against women both violates and impairs or nullifies the
enjoyment by women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms…” 18
The report of the Secretary-General referred to above expands on the PFA’s statement, and highlights at Section IV19 the impediments to women’s rights to live as independent and free citizens, such as physical and mental ill-health resulting from violence, the impact on their ability to become educationally and economically active, and to participate in public life, whilst recognising the far-reaching consequences of violence against women for their children and society as a whole.
Whilst the human cost of violence is alarming, the report comments on the under-reporting of the cost to society of the intergenerational transmission of violence and of the resource implications for protecting and empowering victims/survivors of violence. Beyond this, the ways that fear of violence inhibits and limits women’s lives, including their economic contribution to national development, is integral to the consideration of the consequences of violence (Khalid, 2007).
The links with physical and mental health of women have been documented, specifically the relationship between women’s experiences of domestic violence and suicide or self-harm (Batsleer et al 2002, Chantler et al 2001) including an exploration of the ways in which suicide and self-harm among South Asian women have often been used to ‘cover-up’ the domestic violence underpinning these acts (Chantler et al, 2002). This has had serious consequences for the development of appropriate counselling and other support services and on women’s capacity to seek such support.
2.4.6 Children
The study presented us with a range of scenarios of domestic violence in which it was necessary to consider whether the interests of women and children were the same or related. Some of these scenarios concerned women without children, women with children, children deemed to be women, and women who were treated as children. Whilst detailed examination of these inter-relations was not within the remit of the research, current discourse on the need to reconfigure relations between women and children in contexts where the impact of domestic violence presents contesting needs (Burman, 2007) enabled us to highlight several key issues.
This study primarily focuses on adult women, yet the research was in part prompted by forms of domestic violence which target underage girls, for example, child marriages. Globally, there are culturally distinct manifestations of the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Such treatment of female children is understood to be the result of structures which are embedded in cultural, socioeconomic and political power relations and which are designed to subjugate females from a very early age (Schuler, 1992). Such structures are in effect reminders of the responsibilities of all states to protect children from violence irrespective of a child’s proximity to adulthood, as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child20. It is however necessary to bear in mind that the UK (and other UN member signatories to the Convention) have entered reservations to the Convention
17 UN Fourth World Conference on Women. Ibid. section 116.
18 UN Fourth World Conference on Women. Ibid. section 112.
19 Report of the Secretary-General, ibid. p.36.
20 A treaty raised in record time and with the largest ever number of signatories made up of all but two countries, the USA and Somalia.
with regard to protecting their rights to legislate on immigration and asylum control, a fact which is confirmed in the UK’s latest report to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child21.
Although this study made reference to children mainly in their capacity as dependents of women, it highlighted the complex interplay between domestic violence and women’s action/inaction where children’s needs also had to be considered, as well as differential state treatment on the basis of child protection, support provision for children and custody matters. Many of the interviews conducted for this study exposed the dilemmas women with children are commonly presented with, such as, whether they should stay in the familial environment because of the threat of harm to their children, or conversely, whether they should leave because of it (Chantler, 2006). The interviews also exposed how male spouses, fathers and families actively use children in order to control women. This is compounded by other structural factors, such as societal/cultural norms which maintain that children’s interests are best served in a two parent (heterosexual) environment, irrespective of marital or familial ‘difficulties’ (Burman et al, 2004).
This interplay is further complicated by the needs and rights of children that exist separately rather than in isolation from, women in domestic violence situations. In addition, the presence of children has, as our interview material demonstrated in later Chapters, impacted on asylum decision-making, if not by the Home Office, then by immigration judges on appeal. The central challenge for both women’s and children’s rights advocates is to continue to find appropriate ways of connecting and addressing these linked issues, recognising the ‘indivisible and interconnected character of rights’ (Burman, 2007) whilst maintaining a clear vision of the particular needs of women and the particular needs of children. Case studies referred to in this study amplified these issues.
2.4.7 Globalisation and violence
A closer examination of the PFA definition of violence indicates that the Beijing Conference participants recognised to some degree that a consequence of globalisation would be an increase in women’s migration, not their empowerment and that, contrary to popular views on the effects of globalisation, more sophisticated forms of violence are emerging. Much of this discourse is developed in the Secretary-General’s 2006 report22.
Furthermore, as Walters23 highlights in his analysis of the Home Office’s 2002 White Paper ‘Secure Borders, Safe Haven’, globalisation ‘means that issues previously considered “domestic” are now increasingly international’. Women’s migration ensuing from violence is an issue which, in the context of globalisation and global responsibility24, will continue to raise concerns about the provision and location of protection. It is important to note however that the common perception is that many migrating women seeking protection against violence still migrate within the boundaries of their nations in their endeavours to secure intra-country protection.
Since the Beijing PFA, UNIFEM25 has been facilitating bi-annual review meetings at various locations, including South Asia, with a view to following up on the implementation of the Beijing PFA. Pakistan jointly hosted the review meeting in 2005 with the South Asia Regional Office of UNIFEM, the tenth anniversary of the Beijing PFA. Hosting such an event is indicative of a nation’s compliance with a UN driven agenda, and initiatives such as these have enabled nations to discuss and strategise, and allowed UNIFEM to continue their attempts at mainstreaming the United Nations global perspective on violence against women. However clearly what matters is action on the ground. It is worth noting that the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has an equivalent remit with regard to the implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of
21 See paragraph 5 of the report, ‘The Consolidated 3rd and 4th Periodic Report to UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’, UK Government, July 2007 at: http://www.unicef.org.uk/aboutus/uncrcukrpt.pdf 22 See fn 13
23 Secure Borders, Safe Haven, Domopolitics, William Walters, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3, September 2004, pp.237-260 24 see ‘Enhancing Women’s Participation in Development through an Enabling Environment for Achieving Gender Equality and the Advancement of Women’, Report of the Expert Group Meeting, Bangkok, Thailand, 8-11 November 2005, Division for the Advancement of Women, page 8
25 UNIFEM is the United Nation’s development fund for women. It provides financial and technical assistance to programmes which foster women’s empowerment and gender equality and advocates for women’s issues at the United Nations.
All Forms of Discrimination against Women (see the section on the ‘International Legal Context’) and its response in 2005 to the report submitted by Pakistan raises many issues of serious concern in this regard26.
2.4.8 Culture and country-specific issues
The UN has also attempted to highlight particular types of violence deemed to be ‘culture’ and country specific. In United Nations parlance, these are referred to as ‘harmful traditional practices’ and include threats of and actual dowry murders, early marriages, and, significantly in the context of Pakistan, crimes against women committed in the name of ‘honour’, the most extreme of which resulting in ‘honour killings’. The 2005 CEDAW report is a consolidation of country-specific material on such practices. It examines a report submitted by the Pakistani government in 2004, which claims that between 1998 and 2003, 4,000 honour killings took place in Pakistan27. UNIFEM’s 200728 briefing on violence against women refers to the same data, however, it is difficult to assess the reliability of such figures.
In 1998 the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) identified 286 reports of honour killings of women in the Punjab alone29. Amnesty International (Canada) reported in 1999 that, in relation to all forms of human rights violations against women, initiatives to improve awareness had led to more reports being filed. It is widely acknowledged that the vast numbers of cases are not reported and therefore go unrecorded30. Thus key questions for this study included examining the ways in which the Pakistani authorities are collating material and addressing these harmful violent practices. Furthermore, the study grappled with the difficult question of the extent to which the Pakistani government is complicit in legitimising such practices through its Hudood Ordinances, such as the Zina laws31.
2.5 The impact of 9/11 and 7/7
The above global context is undoubtedly complicated by the events of 9/11 (the attack by ‘Al-Qaida’ on the World Trade Centre) and 7/7 (bombings in London carried out by British-born Islamic terrorists) and the ensuing ‘war on terror’. Debate on asylum and immigration in the UK, which remains firmly at the top of the media’s agenda, is now inextricable from anxieties about terrorism (Chantler, 2007).
2.5.1 Pakistan and Pakistanis under scrutiny
Pakistan and Pakistanis are more commonly portrayed in the public arena as objects of suspicion in the wake of the ‘war on terror’, and Pakistan’s official religion, Islam, has become a target for considerable scrutiny. The argument that Pakistan has “systematically used religion to legitimise its existence” (Ali, 2000, p.41) appears to have specifically contributed to the subjection of the nation to enhanced international surveillance for terrorist exports, compounded further by its strategic links to Middle Eastern and central Asian countries.
2.5.2 Pakistani women: changing perceptions, new identities and increasing surveillance
A consequence of the current political landscape is the remodelling and monitoring of Pakistani women’s identity. Within western discourse constructions of Pakistani women are often contradictory. Such discourse at times constructs Pakistani women as ‘subjugated victims’ of a male dominated
26 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: Consideration of reports submitted by State parties under
article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Combined initial, second and
third periodic reports of State parties: Pakistan, 3 August 2005, CEDAW/C/Pak/1-3.27 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. ibid.
28 United Nations Development Fund for Women/UNIFEM Facts and Figures on Violence Against Women http://www.unifem.org 14/8/07 which refers to para 529 of the combined initial, second and third reports of Pakistan submitted under Article 18 of the
Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women.
29 Report on Trend Analysis of Human Rights Violations 2005 and 2006, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, http://www.hrcp-web.org/report-trendAnalysis.cfm. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan is an independent, not-for-profit voluntary
watchdog organisation, linked to the legal aid cell AGHS.
30 Amnesty International, Canada News and Reports, Pakistan: Honour Killing of Girls and Women, 22/9/99.
31 See Chapter four, section 5.1 for a discussion of the Hudood Ordinances. gendered culture which is seen to be steeped in tradition and religion, or they have been portrayed as symbolic ‘markers’ signifying sexual purity and holding the honour of their families and communities (Yuval-Davis, 1997). Yet, since 9/11 and 7/7 Pakistani women have been drawn into discourses around the ‘war on terror’ and are increasingly perceived as complicit in, or supportive of, a terrorism which is associated with ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. This new construction of Islamic women is revealed in negative populist responses to the increase in women’s uptake of Islamic headdress.
This development has reinvigorated the longstanding conflicts in the ‘race relations’ debate, and begs the question: is this response an empowering assertion of religious-cultural identity or a protest against escalating racism and ill treatment? Furthermore, whilst questions remain as to whether women are independently aligning themselves to a ‘movement’ by manifesting outward physical signs of identification and affiliation, or whether they are acquiescing to coercive religious elements to assume prescribed roles, this development has added to ongoing examination of Muslim women’s ambivalent identity (Dwyer, 2003; Mojab,1998), as Pakistanis and as asylum seekers. As later sections demonstrate, in particular the sections that analyse the interview material, this has raised concerns about the impact of these perceptions on the ‘objectivity’ of assessment of asylum claims.
2.5.3 Fear of racism and its impact on disclosure of violence
The ‘war on terror’ has also heightened public debates around Islamophobia and racism and caused concerns within Pakistani and other Muslim communities about the possibility of increasing racism and racist attacks. Invariably, these concerns are greatest for those who are perceived to be vulnerable in any community, for example, women and children. There is growing concern that these fears are a contributory factor in the decreasing levels of disclosure of domestic violence amongst Muslim women, including Pakistani women. For example, there is evidence to demonstrate that since 9/11 calls to domestic violence help lines in the North West of England from Muslim women have decreased dramatically (Batsleer, 2002, p.67).
Women’s fear of disclosing violence may well be connected to their fears of exposing Muslim men to potential racist treatment. Their fears may also reflect their anxieties about drawing further attention, or recrimination, either to themselves or to their communities. Furthermore, their fears may be underpinned by anxieties and attitudes emanating from service providers in the current reactive climate. Whatever the reasons, there clearly is an urgent need for both UK Muslim community groups and service providers to refocus on domestic violence, and its effects, as the primary issue.
2.6 The international legal context
The section above has highlighted how global understanding of violence against women in all its forms, and awareness of violence against women as a human rights issue, are relatively recent and incomplete developments. However, key legal instruments place legal, political and/or moral obligations from a human rights perspective on the UK and Pakistan, as member states of the United Nations, to address issues impacting on women. These obligations, including the need to address violence, have, as outlined above, been circulating in international discourse for some considerable time. These instruments have been developed by the United Nations either very broadly in the context of defining and protecting human rights or specifically to address women’s human rights. Collectively, they create a system of minimum international human rights standards.
The in-depth study of the Secretary-General of the United Nations identifies the essential international instruments of law, policy and practice on violence against women,32 which impact on all member states33. Recent critiques of some of these instruments should be borne in mind; a notable example is the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women, criticised as “toothless”, for its failure to adequately contextualise women’s experiences of discrimination (Mayer, 2000).
It is useful at this point to identify the essential treaties and resolutions which place at the very least ‘moral’ obligations on each of these states to address domestic violence issues as human rights issues:
32 United Nations General Assembly, In-depth study on all forms of violence against women, Report of the Secretary-General, 6
July 2006, A/61/122/Add.1 33 United Nations General Assembly, In-depth study on all forms of violence against women, Report of the Secretary-General, 6 July 2006, A/61/122/Add.1, p25.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), 1948. Through the passage of time, the
Declaration has been elevated to the status of ‘customary international law’ and is therefore
deemed to be binding. Convention on the Political Rights of Women (CPRW), 1952. The Convention is the first instrument of international law that recognised, protected and promoted the political rights of women everywhere. Its purpose is to ensure equality between men and women in the enjoyment of the right to participate in public life.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1976. This instrument is now a
cornerstone of international human rights law. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, (CEDAW) 1979. The first legally binding instrument prohibiting discrimination against women and placing obligations on member states to take appropriate steps to advance the equality of women. It places an obligation on member states to protect women from sexual and other forms of gender-based violence perpetrated by state agents and private actors. At the time of writing, Pakistan was reporting to 38th Session of the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW – the Committee responsible for implementing the Convention), based on country information compiled and produced by the Pakistani government on 3rd August 2005.
Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, 1984. Whilst the ICCPR identifies torture as human rights issue, this instrument was created to more explicitly address the need to abolish torture and ill treatment worldwide.
Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (DEVW), 1993. This was the UN’s first attempt at providing a definition of gender-based violence and devising a framework for action. The Declaration is non-binding but it establishes an international standard.

A number of these instruments have contributed to the development of domestic violence issues in refugee law. This is discussed in more detail below. The Convention on the Rights of the Child, as already indicated above provides the framework for a global children’s bill of rights.
2.7 WASP research project – values and beliefs
The importance of recognising the heterogeneity and individual characteristics of Pakistani women (and all women asylum seekers) cannot be overstated, and indeed, these were key substantive issues addressed within the design of this study. However, terms such as ‘Pakistani women’ and ‘women asylum-seekers’, and our focus on intra/trans-national trajectories raised a number of fundamental representational dilemmas, which demanded closer examination within the report.
2.7.1 Confronting and negotiating the dilemmas
The research team had to resolve several key dilemmas which were presented by the study. Firstly, the team needed to determine whether to portray Pakistani women as ‘victims’, ‘survivors’ or to try and convey a more complex experience of domestic violence as it was communicated in the individual life trajectories of the women who took part.
The research also had to address the problematic nature of particular ‘monolithic’ terminology such as ‘culture’. The notion of culture is often used as a simplistic explanatory mechanism which can reinforce stereotypes and which fails to attend to difference in experience, and heterogeneity within communities. In addition, it was important that the study described the widespread nature of domestic violence in Pakistan whilst remaining aware of the trap of homogenising Pakistani women and their experiences. The challenge for the research was to avoid pathologising Pakistanis, and Pakistan itself, whilst attending to facets of customary practice and traditions which continue to subjugate women and undermine their rights. Furthermore, the research needed to attend to commonalities and differences across regional variations and cultures within Pakistan; and yet to keep in focus cross-cultural comparisons with UK practices which in themselves are often caught up in pathologised, racialised and racist depictions and distortions of Pakistan, Pakistanis and Pakistani women.
In addressing these dilemmas the researchers also needed to be continuously attentive to the transnational nature of the study and to integrate awareness of these issues into the research design. By way of a summary, in the UK, this study was principally concerned with examining the ways in which the Border and Immigration Agency (BIA)34, the immigration judiciary and other relevant service providers address the legal, welfare and other support needs of Pakistani women as asylum seekers. This examination drew attention to the interplay between racialisation and racism as structural defects impacting on Pakistani women’s access to safety against domestic violence. In Pakistan, the project’s focus was to examine the nature and extent of domestic violence and of service provision to protect women across all sectors, and to document women’s experiences of attempting to access such services including their attempts to relocate intra-country. It was this focus which drew our attention to the nature of gendered relations in Pakistan (Burman et al, 2006).
Furthermore, navigating the trajectory of Pakistani women’s experiences, particularly when their journey culminated in negotiating the asylum system in the UK, is without doubt inextricable from historical and political tensions between the two nations. It is also inseparable from the UK’s asylum system itself and its unsavoury historical associations with the exclusion of ‘alien’ people who were deemed to be undesirable (Cohen, 2006). Finally, the UK government’s current domestic and overseas activities to curtail the movement of those people perceived, by virtue of their national origins, to have capabilities to ‘terrorise’ its citizens, appear now to intersect with all of these issues.
2.7.2 Pakistani women and the ‘culturalist’ trap
Narratives of Pakistani women’s experiences run a risk of portraying them as victims, both of cultures and men, notions which ”often serve to further stereotype third-world peoples…” (Khan, 2001, p.77). This view of Pakistani women is compounded by the tendency in the west to represent all south Asian women ‘in ambivalent moral terms’ (Mahalingham and Leu, 2005) for example as chaste, feminine, family-orientated, passive, obedient, and therefore inevitably oppressed. Furthermore, a study of this type was, in itself, in danger of fixing women’s identities and their experiences within the particular single framework of domestic violence. The process of trying to formulate a robust legal position for Pakistani women’s asylum claims does place considerable pressure on legal practitioners to engage with representations of women as abject, powerless and deserving of sympathy (Burman, 2007;Palmary,2006;Cohen, 2006) (representations which in themselves give legitimacy to the notions that ‘compassion’ or ‘fairness’ are, or can be, integral to immigration and asylum control), thus distorting and excluding the relevance of the bigger picture. At any rate, such culturalist homogenisations run the risk of compromising the ‘case by case’ and ‘individual’ treatment of specific cases (see Chapter three).
The need to shift from culturalist explanations of women’s experiences and how their lives are shaped and instead to look at other global and local forces in operation becomes apparent (Khan, 2001). Many organisations in the UK working to promote the rights and welfare of minoritised women, such as Southall Black Sisters, have continuously campaigned to alter attitudes towards and understandings of domestic violence such as honour killings, to view these as crimes against women rather than as untouchable ‘cultural practices’.
Gedalof (2007) extends these arguments as she unpicks current governmental and media discourse on the particular ‘problem’ that is the ‘immigrant woman’, defined “…by her entanglement in the ‘backward practices’ of arranged marriage and gender subordination” (Gedalof, 2007, p.90) which are clearly of direct application to perceptions of Pakistani women in the UK. This discourse is perceived to be a continuum of the gendered and ethnic coding which keeps ‘immigrant women’ firmly sited as symbols of unchanging cultural traditions and does nothing to identify them as individual citizens. Pakistani women, then, following this line of analysis, never cease to be victims, and their claims to particular experiences of victimisation perpetually remain obscured by these general perceptions. It becomes easier, then, to see how through this classification and stereotyping of Pakistani women the actuality and specificity of male and familial violence is lost.
2.7.3 Avoiding the culturalist trap: intersection of state, culture and violence
Being mindful of the need to maintain a critical perspective and to dig beneath traditional discourse on ‘culture’, a necessary consideration in shaping the design of the research was the role of specific
34 Upon commencement of this study the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home office had responsibility for immigration and asylum matters. These have now been taken over by the BIA.
socio-political factors, including the politics and actions of governments (the UK and Pakistan, for the purposes of our study) in creating the conditions which enable violence against women to take place (Burman, 2007, p.4).
In relation to state level activity in Pakistan, Chapters four - seven examine the extent to which the state’s transparent intersection with other structural ‘norms’ has led to the development and use of laws to create moral and ethical codes of behaviour. For example, the report draws attention to the questionable relationship between Pakistani legislators, Islamic clerics, corrupt state institutions, and a state which is perceived to be morally bankrupt. What could be termed ‘state and structural violence’ becomes more alarming when it intersects, or colludes, with familial violence against women. The gender-specific nature of persecution of Pakistani women becomes much more apparent and potentially devastating.
Similarly in the UK, the threat of activating immigration legislation to remove a woman from the UK is often the only coercion needed to force a woman to remain living in violent circumstances (Chantler et al, 2006). This often arises, for example, when a woman on a spouse visa attempts to leave a violent marriage but the perpetrators threaten to report her to the Home Office for her violation of the conditions attached to her visa, namely the condition that she should remain living with her spouse. Whether or not the Home Office regularly acts on its powers derived from legislation to remove, its purposeful creation of laws which enable it to remove women in these circumstances, and its power to create the very structural conditions which threaten a woman’s safety, highlight the nature of the UK state’s collusion with familial violence and its role in the harassment and abuse of women.
2.7.4 A trans-national study
Although this study was not a comparative exercise, or cross-cultural evaluation, parallels at state level, as described in the preceding section, could not be overlooked. In a sense, the study concerned two fields of investigation, in the UK and Pakistan, but it focused on different but linked elements of systems and practices. The study maintained an equal, and equally critical, focus on both contexts and this even-handed scrutiny gave rise to some surprising, even alarming, ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ parallels. Criticism of Pakistan can appear to reflect or feed a common view of the country as ‘barbaric’, yet the fact that similar themes (of for example, corruption and neglect on the part of state agencies and service providers) emerged as themes within the UK material gave pause for thought. In terms of the critical views of practices in Pakistan presented here, it should be noted that these challenges reflect current scholarly, political and practitioner-led debates and criticisms circulating as much, if not more, within Pakistan as outside it35. Indeed a key contribution of this study can be regarded as having identified and synthesised these critiques alongside equivalent UK analyses.
2.7.5 Connecting trans-national audiences
The task of targeting audiences located within a diverse range of sectors in both Pakistan and the UK is a challenge for any trans-national study. While we hope this study will be read widely in both Pakistan and the UK it was not the aim of this study to structure the material by relevance to each country specific audience; on the contrary, the report deliberately aims to connect issues pertaining to domestic violence arising within Pakistan and across its regions, and to highlight the structural, political and cultural interconnectedness of practice between Pakistan and the UK. Furthermore, it draws attention to perceptions of the UK’s asylum system in Pakistan, with particular reference to how the concept of ‘asylum’ itself, as a form of protection against domestic violence, was an unfamiliar concept to many women.
2.7.6 Connecting journeys women make to seek protection
Constructing these trans-national connections enabled us to make more visible some of the challenges and hardships Pakistani women are required to confront when in ‘flight’. The study was designed to
35 For example, for a recent State level critique of the position and treatment of women in Pakistan see ‘Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: Consideration of reports submitted by State parties under article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Combined initial, second and third periodic reports of State parties: Pakistan, 3 August 2005, CEDAW/C/Pak/1-3’ for a recent State level critique of the position and treatment of women in Pakistan.
focus specifically on the point at women embark on physical journeys within Pakistan in their attempts to seek intra-country safety, and, in some cases, towards the UK’s asylum system. Indeed, in the latter case, the study was designed to intersect with women’s experiences of entanglement with the asylum system and with wider service provision. These approaches to the study are described further in Chapter one.
2.7.7 Commonalities and differences across regions and cultures within Pakistan
As discussed in preceding paragraphs, attention to the cultural and regional diversity of Pakistan underpinned the research design and usefully acted as a constant check on over-homogenisation. The study was designed to attend to caste, tribal, class, economic, educational, faith and language related demographics to allow recognition of the heterogeneous nature of Pakistan and its citizens. At the same time, this approach enabled the project to draw out cultural and regional commonalities that have directly impacted on women’s access to a safe environment. Again, Chapter one describes these approaches in further detail.
2.7.8 Racism and fear of racism
As discussed earlier in this Chapter other research has drawn attention to the ways in which women from minority groups who are subjected to domestic violence, are often made invisible or treated inappropriately by service providers in the UK in ways that are fundamentally racist as well as sexist (Batsleer et al, 2002). In the context of laying down the values and beliefs that have informed this study, it is worth drawing attention to a key connection. Whilst that research explored these issues in the context of informing policy and practice in domestic violence services, it highlighted concerns relating to the quality of service provision which mirror the underlying allegations of racism permeating the UK’s asylum decision-making processes and systems. For a woman who might be considering protection from a violent family situation, her fear of racism from service providers and the immigration and asylum system, therefore, is more likely to limit her disclosure of violence and as already alluded to above, tie her to violent circumstances.
2.7.9 The audience for this report
The complex task of reaching a varied and diverse range of service providers both within the UK and within Pakistan is a significant challenge for any study. What may appear ‘obvious’ or known to one audience is likely to raise new or unknown themes and issues for another. This is particularly so when the audiences derive from different, and at times opposing, cultural frameworks, as is the case for this study. These themes are discussed further in Chapter one and highlight the somewhat ‘fractured’ nature of trans-national discourse on many of the themes in this study.
The Chapter which follows examines the legal position in the UK for Pakistani women as asylum seekers and highlights a number of key shortfalls within UK service provision which impact directly on Pakistan women. It thus provides a UK context to this study.
Fatima’s case
Fatima was born in Afghanistan. Her father sold her to a man on the other side of the border in Pakistan when she was 4 years old. She has no recollection of this, but has been told by the man who bought her that this is what happened. She has no recollection of her family in Afghanistan. She cannot read or write.
The man who bought her is a rug manufacturer. She lived with this man and his family until she was 18 years old. She helped weave rugs and was the family servant. She did not receive any money, but they gave her food and a space on the floor to sleep. They mistreated her throughout the time she was with them.
They sold her to another rug manufacturer when she turned 18. He forced her to marry him. At the time she did not know he already had a wife and children. When he took her to his house he introduced her to his first wife as the new servant. His wife immediately took a dislike to her. She treated Fatima like the family slave. She was also forced to work in the family rug factory. On a number of occasions, she witnessed the man selling arms.
The man raped Fatima whenever his first wife was away from the house. His first wife only found out about his second marriage when Fatima became unwell and it emerged that she was pregnant. The first wife confronted her husband and he eventually told her. They agreed in the end that they would keep Fatima as their servant and sell the child when s/he was about four years old, an age considered to be ‘marketable’. Throughout her pregnancy Fatima was ill-treated by the family.
She gave birth to a daughter. All members of the family physically abused her daughter. On one occasion she was badly burnt with a hot iron which has resulted in permanent scarring.
The man continued to rape Fatima, who eventually became pregnant again. She eventually gave birth to a boy. The family continued to ill-treat and torture her and her children.
She had befriended one woman in the rug factory. She spoke to her about her situation. The woman told her she knew a man who might be able to help her escape but he would need money or even jewellery in exchange. Fatima knew where the jewellery was kept in the house. She stole it and handed it over in exchange for help. The ‘agent’ arranged for her and her children to leave the country.
Fatima claimed asylum on arrival in the UK. The Home Office rejected her claim.
On appeal, the immigration judge held that she was a member of a particular social group but her appeal failed in all other respects. The judge held that she did have the option of seeking Pakistani state protection against the harm being inflicted on her and her daughter, and that, as a “relatively young woman”, internal flight was a viable alternative for her.
Fatima lodged a fresh claim based on asylum and human rights issues with a detailed expert report. The Home Office did not consider or address any of the issues or evidence in her new asylum claim, because under this new ‘administrative’ system, the Home Office granted Fatima and her children indefinite leave to remain. This was not because of the domestic violence issues in her case or her need for protection, but because of the Home Office’s delays in handling asylum cases, they had built up a backlog.