Violence. The impact of forced evictions on women in Palestine, India and Nigeria

FORCED EVICTION INVOLVES the forceful removal of people from their homes, often by the military, armed police and/or hired thugs, and with the explicit or implicit sanction of the state. Whilst it is generally recognized by those working on the issue of forced evictions that women are disproportionately and adversely affected by the practice, surprisingly little exists in the literature in terms of developing a more thorough analysis of what this actually means.

This research study has been commissioned by the Women and Housing Rights Programme of The Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), to address this research gap and understand what the role of women in the forced eviction process entails and what toll it exacts upon them.

COHRE commissioned the research from NGOs in three countries where forced eviction is a way of life: Palestine, India and Nigeria. The participating NGOs were the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA, Israel), Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA, India) and the Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC, Nigeria). Whilst the context of forced eviction varies from place to place, the central research question, based on the common premise that women experience violence during evictions, was: “What types of violence do women experience during the eviction process?”

Following a brief introduction to the issue of women and forced eviction, Section II summarizes international human rights law and principles to define and situate the practice of forced eviction. This section references where, in international human rights law, protection against forced eviction can be found. It also highlights instances in international human rights law where women’s experiences of forced eviction have been documented, and suggests the need for more detailed analyses. Section III provides an overview of the research design and methodology used in the project. The following three sections make up the heart of the report and present the three studies from Palestine, India and Nigeria, respectively. Each of the studies provides background information on the particular communities that were documented, an overview and an analysis of the findings, and recommendations for future action. Section VII, entitled Synthesis and Analysis, looks at the three research studies as a whole, and assesses and compares women’s experiences of forced evictions within three broad forms of violence types: physical violence, psychological/ emotional violence and structural/ socioeconomic violence. Some final conclusions, recognizing that forced eviction is gender-specific, with effects that highlight the interdependence of human rights for women, are used to inform the final section of the study, which provides recommendations for future activities aimed at a variety of actors, from governments to NGOs operating at different levels, from local to international.