The particular problems that one group of individuals face at such times seem to be greatly under-reported.

Did you know, for example, that gay men in Haiti were denied food aid after the 2010 earthquake because ration schemes were aimed at women, and no women were registered in their households? Or that transgender people in Pakistan were denied entry to IDP camps after the floods because their ID papers did not match their appearance?

The discrimination doesn’t end there.

Researchers say there’s evidence that lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people are often given lower priority than others during rescue efforts. Their families are excluded from distributions of food and other basic supplies. They face difficulties visiting injured partners and claiming the bodies of loved ones.

A recent paper by the Humanitarian Practice Network suggests these problems are often overlooked by development staff and emergency relief workers because they “cause unease” and there are few guidelines on how to deal with the issue.

For the response to improve, what’s required is a joint effort by the local authorities and aid groups to recognise LGBTI people and meet their needs along with those of others.

Disaster-prone Nepal – which benefits from a vibrant LGBTI rights movement – provides a compelling example of what legal recognition can do for LGBTI people in emergencies, according to a report in the latest issue of Forced Migration Review (FMR).

Home to Mount Everest and the birthplace of the Buddha, Nepal emerged from a decade of conflict in 2006, after which it began to acknowledge the rights of minority communities.

One such community are the metis – males who identify themselves as female. Metis have been characterised as gay men or transgender women, and have in the past suffered widespread violence at the hands of the state.

In 2008, many metis were displaced by flooding in Nepal’s Sunsari and Saptari districts. According to FMR’s report “Gender identity and disaster response in Nepal”, some spoke of discrimination in the relief process – being given only part of the food aid they were entitled to – while others who were relocated far from their homes said they were frightened of the reaction of their new neighbours.

For the full blog, click here

Photo caption: People salvage their belongings in a improvised boat from flood waters in east Nepal August 24, 2008. REUTERS/Nepal Army 11 Brigade/Handout 

Margaret Thatcher is famously on record as saying she didn’t think there’d be a woman prime minister in Britain in her lifetime. She, of course, eclipsed her own expectations and became the country’s first, and so far only, elected female leader.

But a feminist icon she was not – as many commentators have pointed out.

“Her notion of women’s rights – to compete, fight, and succeed on equal terms with men – did not fit the orthodoxies of contemporary feminism,” Paul Vallely said in the Independent.

During her 11-1/2 years in power, Thatcher appointed only one woman to her cabinet – Janet Young, who became leader of the upper chamber, the House of Lords – and Douglas Hurd,  foreign minister and interior minister under Thatcher, was quoted as saying that feminist ideology “left her cold”.

“The battle for women’s rights has been largely won. The days when they were demanded and discussed in strident tones should be gone forever. And I hope they are,” Thatcher said in a lecture on women’s rights in 1982. “I hated those strident tones that you still hear from some women’s libbers.”

Some have defended Thatcher, saying it was not in her interest to promote women in government, but to advance the best people for the job regardless of their sex.

Others, including Amanda Foreman in the Daily Beast, have argued that Thatcher’s refusal to give the feminist movement any credit for her success – and her lack of solidarity with feminists – was understandable.

“She had climbed the treacherous road to political power on her own, without the help of any movement, interest group or fan base,” Foreman said.

Thatcher’s skin was no doubt toughened by the sexism she regularly encountered in her career.

She wrote in her memoirs that as education minister under Prime Minister Edward Heath, she was “the statutory woman” – the one obligatory female member of the government, whose main task was to explain what ‘women’ were likely to think and want on troublesome issues.

In the House of Commons, the popular Labour Party slogan “Ditch the bitch”, often rang out when she took to the floor, while parliamentary colleagues belittled her with comments like Austin Mitchell’s: “It’s been a touching spectacle: the brave little woman getting on with the woman’s work of trying to dominate the world.”

In life, Thatcher was scrutinised by those who couldn’t quite make her out, and in death the same questions are being rehashed.

Why has there been no British female leader since her? Is it because she outmanned the men and set an impossible example for other women? Was she the housewife who had her hair done every morning and cooked for her husband, or the Iron Lady who went to war? Was she feminine or was her handbag a symbol of that “classic” male trait – aggression?

For the full story, click here

Photo caption:  FILE PHOTO – British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher points skyward as
she receives standing ovation at Conservative Party Conference on October 13, 1989. REUTERS/Stringer/UK

There was a moment while watching “Alma: A Tale of Violence” when I wanted to hit the pause button and take a breather.

Only about 40 minutes long, the documentary was, for me, much harder to watch than “Pink Saris”, “Saving Face” or “Banaz – A Love Story” – other films I’ve reviewed for TrustLaw.

The opening frames of the webdoc show a lovely-looking Guatemalan woman with long, dark hair and a warm, wide smile. Then, Alma starts talking, about being 15 and about yearning to belong to her “homies” and their gang in the slum where she lived.

She’s so desperate that, when they ask her, she kills someone. A woman, who some of her homies have been raping – a woman who begs for her life and cries out for her children.

For the next five years, Alma belonged to Guatemala’s most feared maras or gangs, responsible for murders, extortion, rapes and robberies.

In a world where mothers, sisters and daughters are often victims of domestic and sexual violence, Alma repeatedly speaks in the film of her determination to be a “strong woman”, not seen as weak.

She ultimately turns her back on the gang – after being so badly beaten by a boyfriend, another gang member, that she miscarried their baby. But Alma pays a heavy price for escaping. She is shot by her former friends and comrades and left paralysed.

“Alma’s persona is ambivalent. We aren’t sure really if we should admire her, hate her, or love her,” Miquel Dewever-Plana, a photographer and one of the directors of the documentary, told us.

Dewever-Plana spent 15 years documenting Guatemala, taking pictures of the Mayan survivors of the country’s 1960-1996 civil war and the way of life for those who belong to Guatemala City’s notorious maras.

Seeking a woman’s perspective in a man’s world, he met Alma through a psychologist friend working on a programme to help ex-gang members and eventually persuaded Alma to tell her story.

“We see a human with her contradictions, her dark sides, and her desire for a better life,” he said. “Yes, she is a murderer who committed barbaric acts in cold blood. She is also the victim of a system and a heritage, which has from the Spanish colonisation to the armed conflict of the 1980s, led to populations being dominated, excluded and massacred.”

For the full interview, click here

Thousands of miles away in India, it’s the shy, young woman left at the mercy of an agent who finds her a job as a maid but takes her earnings. In Bahrain, it’s the Filippino domestic worker who, abused and exploited by her employer, cannot leave.

Millions of people around the world today are trapped in slavery, like seven-year-old Wisline was in Haiti.

“My sister came to get me at my mother’s house, saying she would put me in school but when I got to her house, she started making me work and cook for her and she began mistreating me,” says Wisline, who now lives in a refuge with other former child slaves outside of Port-au-Prince.

Exactly how many people are enslaved is impossible to know.

Estimates range from 27 million, cited by advocacy group, Free the Slaves, to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) figure of 20.9 million people – of which about 2.2 million are forced labourers of the state, for example, working in prisons.

While women and girls account for the greater share of 21st century slaves, coverage of their plight has been dominated by stories of sex trafficking and lurid tales of being forced to sell their bodies in brothels and on street corners.

Yet data from the ILO suggests that far more women and girls are victims of domestic servitude and other types of forced labour than they are of the sex trade.

Of the estimated 11.4 million women and girls in forced labour globally, around 4.4 million are subjected to sexual exploitation in foreign countries, according to the ILO.

That leaves some 7 million trapped in labour exploitation. Unlike sex trafficking, most of it is taking place in the victims’ own countries.

For more, please visit TrustLaw

Picture Credit: A 19-year-old trafficking victim from central Myanmar who, two years ago, managed to escape two brokers who promised a job in a nearby town but instead took her to a town in the far north and tried to get her to become a sex worker. October 12, 2012. REUTERS/Minzayar Oo