“Ideal” Refugee Women and Gender Equality Mainstreaming in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps: “Good...

“IDEAL” REFUGEE WOMEN AND GENDER EQUALITYMAINSTREAMING IN THE SAHRAWI REFUGEE CAMPS:

“GOOD PRACTICE” FOR WHOM?

Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh*

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Executive Committee and theRefugee Women and Gender Equality Unit within the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees have both asserted that the Algerian-based NationalUnion of Sahrawi Women is an “ ideal” partner by virtue of its success in main-streaming gender equality and empowering Sahrawi refugee women. In this article, Iexamine the nature and implications of this idealization of the protracted Sahrawirefugee camps, arguing that international celebrations of the National Union ofSahrawi Women and the refugee women it purports to represent have directly influ-enced the development of projects in the camps that marginalize the needs andpriorities of “non-ideal” women and girls with grave effects. As such, I suggestthat while refugees and their political representatives may formally adopt donors’rhetoric and preferences vis-a-vis gender equality mainstreaming, such strategiesmay facilitate and solidify processes of exclusion and marginalization in differentcontexts of displacement. Concurrently, this leads us to ask who benefits from asser-tions and categorizations of “ good” and “bad” practice, and whose interests areadvanced by discourses surrounding “gender equality”.

1. Introduction

Development and humanitarian projects have increasingly integrated elements of“the trinity of democratisation, good governance and women’s rights”,1 with

* Dr Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre,University of Oxford. Acknowledgments and thanks are due to Dr Dawn Chatty for granting access to theproject Children and Adolescents in Sahrawi and Afghan Refugee Households: Living with the Effects of ProlongedArmed Conflict and Forced Migration (SARC) data-set referred to in this article, to the Editor of this SpecialIssue for her invaluable comments on an earlier version of this article, and to Yousif M. Qasmiyeh for hissupport and critical feedback throughout the course of this research, which was funded by the Economic andSocial Research Council (United Kingdom).

1 D. Kandiyoti, “Political Fiction Meets Gender Myth: Post-conflict Reconstruction, ‘Democratisation’ andWomen’s Rights”, IDS Bulletin, 35(4), 2004, 134.

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such projects at times being contingent upon recipients complying with “genderconditionalities”.2 However, while agencies including the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) embrace and promote “the mantras ofgender mainstreaming and gender equality”,3 discourses and policies surround-ing gender equality may have paradoxical effects on aid recipients. Althoughrefugees and their political representatives frequently adopt and reproduce dis-courses of gender equality when interacting with international audiences, theymay strategically mobilize such invocations to secure the support of relevant stateand non-state actors, rather than substantially improving living conditions orenhancing refugees’ participation in project design, development, implementa-tion, and evaluation. Indeed, as stressed by Harrell-Bond, “most refugees are ableto infer” that in order to be “successful in obtaining aid” and gaining “theapproval of the helper”, one of “the most effective survival strategies” is to“ingratiate themselves” with aid providers.4 Such strategies may result indonors celebrating the successes of their “ideal” aid recipients and partners,whilst concealing mechanisms of exclusion and marginalization.

Drawing on research conducted with and about Sahrawi refugees in theirAlgerian-based refugee camps,5 in this article, I examine how, why, and to whateffect humanitarian agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) havecelebrated Sahrawi refugees’ “success” in achieving “gender equality” and “femaleempowerment” in the camps. In the first part of the article, I introduce main-stream accounts of the Sahrawi refugee camps, Sahrawi refugee women, and thecamp-based National Union of Sahrawi Women (NUSW), all of which aresystematically presented by international actors as “ideal” and “unique” innature. Through an examination of the Fifth NUSW Conference held in the27 February Refugee Camp (commonly known as the “Women’s Camp”) in2007, I then demonstrate the extent to which a female-centred aid industry existsin the camps, in turn outlining the ways in which the NUSW explicitly drawsupon donors’ discursive frameworks vis-a-vis “feminism” and “women’s em-powerment” to secure continued political and financial support. In the secondhalf of the paper, I subsequently argue that although idealized reports of thecamps parallel donor preferences and guarantee continued international invest-ment, the celebratory discourse reproduced by the Sahrawi’s political represen-tatives and camp managers (the Polisario Front), the NUSW, and international

2 Vis-a-vis humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, Moghadam argues that “moral suasion may have to be combinedwith conditions placed on community aid projects to ensure that women and girls participate and benefit(‘gender conditionalities’)”. V.M. Moghadam, “Building Human Resources and Women’s Capabilities inAfghanistan: A Retrospect and Prospects”, World Development, 22(6), 1994, 871.

3 Kandiyoti quoted in R. Hammami, “Deniz Kandiyoti”, Development and Change, 37(6), 2005, 1352.4 B.E. Harrell-Bond, “The Experience of Refugees as Recipients of Aid”, in A. Ager (ed.), Refugees: Perspectives

on the Experience of Forced Migration, London, Pinter, 1999, 151.5 Over 100 interviews were conducted with Sahrawi refugee women, men, boys and girls in Algeria, Cuba,

Spain and Syria between 2002 and 2007; these interviews are complemented with research conducted as partof an Andrew Mellon Foundation funded project led by Dr Dawn Chatty (University of Oxford) entitledChildren and Adolescents in Sahrawi and Afghan Refugee Households: Living with the Effects of Prolonged ArmedConflict and Forced Migration (SARC). All translations from Spanish interviews and articles are by the author.

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actors alike has led to a failure to identify and address the needs and rights ofdiverse groups of camp residents.

Since discourses “create not only knowledge but also the very reality theyappear to describe”,6 I argue that this idealized system of representation hasplayed a critical role in “creating” donors’ “knowledge” about life in theSahrawi camps, in turn influencing the development of policies and programmesimplemented there. This therefore leads us to question the impacts that donoragendas surrounding “women’s rights” may have on recipients, precisely byrecognizing:

[the] growing gap between the discourses circulating in transnational fem-inist [and donor] networks, politics at the national level and the way genderrelations, which are embedded in complex layers of historical and culturaldetermination, are actually played out in everyday livelihood contexts.7

In essence, as international accounts of the Sahrawi refugee camps have discur-sively “mainstreamed” gender equality and have rhetorically centralized “idealSahrawi women”, these processes of idealization have directly influenced thedevelopment of projects, in effect marginalizing the needs and priorities of“non-ideal” women and girls with grave effects.8 In this respect, the case studybelow exemplifies “a form of double-speak that upholds the principle of genderequality and social inclusiveness in official pronouncements, while marginalizingwomen in the allocation of [. . .] aid”.9

Concurrently, this article elucidates the role played by a range of interna-tional observers, including United Nations (UN) agencies and members ofEuropean civil society, in ensuring the reproduction of certain discourses ininternational and “local” arenas, and in accepting and reinforcing the designa-tion of specific groups of refugees and women as “ideal” and “good” to thedetriment of others. Evaluating refugee (and indeed non-refugee) situationsthrough comparative frameworks and notions of positional superiority10 by ne-cessity constitutes “other” refugee groups and women as “bad”, therebyre-victimizing these individuals and groups, potentially inducing antagonismsand solidifying hierarchies rather than encouraging observers (and the observedthemselves) to contest such processes. This analysis equally highlights the“difficulties of developing a principled feminist response (and an appropriate

6 E.W. Said, Orientalism, New York, Vintage Books, 1979, 94; see also, J. Sunderland & L. Litosseliti,“Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis: Theoretical and Empirical Considerations”, in L. Litosseliti &J. Sunderland (eds.), Gender Identity and Discourse Analysis: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society, andCulture, Amsterdam, Benjamins, 2002, 13.

7 Kandiyoti, “Political Fiction”, 135.8 On the discrepancies between normative expectations regarding Western donor agendas and “material

realities”, see D. Kandiyoti, “Between the Hammer and the Anvil: Post-conflict Reconstruction, Islamand Women’s Rights”, Third World Quarterly, 28(3), 2007, especially 512.

9 Ibid., 513.10 L. Nader, “Orientalism, Occidentalism and the Control of Women”, Cultural Dynamics, 2(3), 1989, 324.

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politics of solidarity)”11 in highly politicized situations characterized by depend-ence upon external observers and aid providers.

2. The “ideal” refugee camps and the “ideal” refugee women

The “uniqueness” and social superiority of Sahrawi refugees over “other refu-gees” has been systematically proclaimed by Western academics and NGO work-ers since the establishment of the Algerian-based Sahrawi refugee campsin 1975–1976.12 Based on her fifteen-day visit to the camps in 1981,Harrell-Bond’s work on the Sahrawi13 has been oft-quoted and referenced inaccounts of this protracted refugee situation. In Imposing Aid (1986), a seminalbook which prompted a major shift in the way that refugees and refugee campsaround the world are perceived and dealt with by aid providers and academics,she labels the Sahrawi camps a “success story” amidst a failing system whichcreates a “dependency syndrome” amongst refugees.14 Further, under the head-ing “The ‘ideal’ refugee”, in a 1999 chapter that relies on the same 1981 trip tothe camps, Harrell-Bond writes, “I proceeded to tell them [the Sudanese refugeecommittee] about the ‘good’ Saharawi who lived under much worse conditionsthan they did, but who were reluctant to complain”.15 The notions of “success-ful” camps, and “ideal” and “good” refugees, have continued to dominate main-stream accounts of the Sahrawi refugee context, with Brazier referring to theSahrawi camps as “the best run refugee camps in the world”.16

One major characteristic that is commonly invoked to substantiate claimsthat the Sahrawi are “the ‘ideal’ refugees” is their egalitarian approach to genderrelations and the position of “Sahrawi women” in the camps. Hence,Harrell-Bond reports that the Polisario Front built “a twentieth-century demo-cratic nation, women’s equality being one of the strongest features of their socialorganization”,17 and that “[w]omen’s equality was a most dominant theme of lifein the Sahrawi camps”.18 Similarly, Oxfam’s desk-officer in the mid-1980swrote, “[p]erhaps the most impressive thing about Sahrawi society is that it is

11 Kandiyoti, “Political Fiction”, 134.12 For an overview of the conflict over the Western Sahara, and of the establishment of the Sahrawi refugee

camps, see E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “When the Self Becomes Other: Representations of Gender, Islam and thePolitics of Survival in the Sahrawi Refugee Camps”, in D. Chatty & B. Finlayson (eds.), Dispossession andDisplacement: Forced Migration in the Middle East and North Africa, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010.

13 Especially B.E. Harrell-Bond, The Struggle for the Western Sahara, Hanover, American Universities FieldStaff, 1981; B.E. Harrell-Bond, Imposing Aid: Emergency Assistance to Refugees, Oxford, Oxford UniversityPress, 1986; Harrell-Bond, “The Experience of Refugees”.

14 Also E. Voutira & B.E. Harrell-Bond, “‘Successful’ Refugee Settlement: Are Past Examples Relevant?”, inM.M. Cernea & C. McDowell (eds.), Risks and Reconstruction: Experiences of Resettlers and Refugees,Washington, DC, World Bank, 2000, 66.

15 Harrell-Bond, “The Experience of Refugees”, 151 (emphasis added).16 C. Brazier, “Special Edition: War and Peace in Western Sahara”, The New Internationalist, 297, 1997, 14.17 Harrell-Bond, “The Experience of Refugees”, 156.18 Quoted in D.M. Indra, “Interview with Barbara Harrell-Bond”, in D.M. Indra (ed.), Engendering Forced

Migration: Theory and Practice, Oxford, Berghahn, 1999, 44.


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the most fundamentally balanced society I have ever come across in terms of therelationships between men and women”.19 Paralleling such reports, the WorldFood Programme (WFP) has stated that Sahrawi women “are known tobe assertive and to participate in all aspects of camp life”,20 further indicatingthat in the years 2000, 2002, and 2004, Sahrawi women constituted 80 per centof the health workers in 29 health centres in the camps, and 60 per cent of bothmedical and paramedical staff and camp teachers.21 The organization’s descrip-tion of Sahrawi women’s participation in the camps was substantially magnifiedin 2004, when it claimed, with no supporting references or consideration of thecomplexities of the terms invoked, that “Saharan society is primarily matriarchaland the women are totally empowered”.22

On the one hand, Sahrawi refugee women (and men) are understandablyproud of women’s contributions to the creation and maintenance of the camps,with refugees, academics, and NGOs consistently celebrating the active roles ofSahrawi women as distributors of aid, nurses, teachers, builders, as members ofthe NUSW and the Polisario Front, and as individuals who have received mili-tary training to protect the camps if they were to come under attack.23 Indeed,one 14-year-old refugee girl indicated in a SARC interview that the Sahrawiwoman “is the most important [in the camps]. She built the tents, and providesthe food, organizes the municipalities, and in all the refugee camps, they areactive”,24 while a 44-year-old woman equally reflected that:

We feel that women contribute here a great deal and participate in theactivities of the camp. They administer the camps, and have their ownorganization that promotes their own affairs. They feel free, and no mancan dictate to her what he wishes.25

Sahrawi women’s visibility and centrality in social and political life in the campsis thus not only constitutionally recognized by Article 41 of the 1999(camp-based) Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic’s Constitution but is alsowidely celebrated by refugee girls and women in the camps.

On the other hand, and without wishing to dismiss the role of Sahrawiwomen in these protracted refugee camps, it is essential to explore how, why, and

19 C. Mowles, Desk Officer’s Report on Trip to the Sahrawi Refugee Camps near Tindouf, Southern Algeria, Oxfam,1986, 9.

20 WFP, Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation – Algeria 10172.0. Assistance to Western Sahara Refugees, WFP/EB.2/2002/6/4, 15 Apr. 2002.

21 WFP, Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation – Algeria 6234.00. Assistance to Saharawi Refugees, WFP/EB.2/2000/6-B/5, 20 Apr. 2000; WFP, Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation – Algeria 10172.0; WFP, ProtractedRelief and Recovery Operation – Algeria 10172.1. Assistance to Western Saharan Refugees, WFP/EB.2/2004/4-B/4, 5 May 2004.

22 WFP, Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation – Algeria 10172.1, 8 (emphasis added).23 J. Firebrace, “The Sahrawi Refugees: Lessons and Prospects”, in R. Lawless & L. Monahan (eds.), War and

Refugees: The Western Sahara Conflict, London, Pinter, 1987, 181; S. Caratini, “Systeme de parente sahraoui:l’impact de la revolution”, L’Homme, 154–155, 2000, 443.

24 SARC–F50.25 SARC–D4.


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to what effect “women’s equality” has come to be “a most dominant theme” inthis particular refugee context, and how such declarations of the “ideal” nature ofthe NUSW and broader claims of “gender equality” and female participationcorrespond to daily life and unmet needs in the camps.

3. The NUSW: an “ideal” partner

In 2001, the UNHCR Executive Committee heralded the NUSW as an “ideal”partner, proclaiming that the Women’s Union is a role model which the UNagency is “learning from”.26 Furthermore, the UNHCR’s Refugee Women andGender Equality Unit not only declared that the case of Sahrawi refugeewomen’s empowerment is “unique” but explicitly presented the NUSW,which has been active since the mid-1970s, as an example of “good practiceon gender mainstreaming” in its 2001 publication A Practical Guide toEmpowerment.27 While I will later identify the dangerous effects which suchclaims have had on policy development in the camps, in the following pages,I will highlight the NUSW’s success in capturing the attention and investment ofhumanitarian actors through specific reference to “gender equality”.

Beyond “general” support for the “Sahrawi national cause”, many Westerncivil society aid providers (in particular those from Spain, the Western Sahara’sformer colonial power) directly relate their humanitarian and political commit-ment to the Sahrawi refugee camps to the “special” nature of Sahrawi women inthe camps. Indeed, one of the primary aims granted by the Sahrawi Constitution(Article 137) to “mass organizations” and “unions” such as the NUSW is pre-cisely to “help widen the field of solidarity with the Sahrawi people and to drawattention to its national cause”.28 As such, the NUSW:

[C]alls for all women across the world to express their moral and politicalsolidarity with the legitimate struggle of the Sahrawi people [. . .]. [We]consider that solidarity between all women [. . .] is highly important becausethat solidarity constitutes an essential pillar in the interwoven relations ofcooperation, solidarity and friendship and exchange of experiences and thusconstitutes an essential factor in the search for solutions for the innumerableproblems which women encounter in their struggle for the freedom anddignity of women [sic].29

26 Executive Committee for the High Commissioner’s Programme, Standing Committee, Refugee Women andMainstreaming a Gender Equality Perspective, UN Doc. EC/51/SC/CRP.17, 30 May 2001, para. 26.

27 UNHCR, A Practical Guide to Empowerment: UNHCR Good Practices on Gender Equality Mainstreaming,Geneva, UNHCR, 2001.

28 Author’s translation; also stressed by M.F. Es-Sweyih, El primer estado del Sahara Occidental, 2001, 62,available at: http://www.arso.org/rep.saharaui.htm (last visited 13 Jul. 2010). The NUSW itself states thatone of the organization’s international objectives is to “enlarge the solidarity and support base for ourpeople’s struggle for self-determination and independence” (NUSW pamphlet on file with the author).

29 NUSW statement, available at: www.arso.org (last visited 31 Jul. 2010) (author’s translation).


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This leads us to explore the ways in which the NUSW has secured Spanishcivil society’s political and financial support for the Sahrawi on the basis ofgender equality and empowerment. I will do so by briefly presenting an overviewof the non-Sahrawi delegates invited to the Fifth NUSW Conference, demon-strating not only the extent to which a female-centred aid industry exists in thecamps, but also the ways in which the NUSW draws upon donors’ discursiveframeworks to secure their continued support.

3.1. Engendering political and financial supportThe Fifth NUSW Conference30 was held in early April 2007 in the 27 FebruaryRefugee Camp, which is also known as the “Women’s Camp” by virtue of beingthe location of the National Women’s (boarding) School, and the NUSW’sHeadquarters. At the Conference, each of the four main Sahrawi refugeecamps (Aaiun, Ausserd, Dakhla, and Smara) were represented by 80 to 85women who had previously been elected at a range of colloquia held aroundthe camps in March 2007. Following these preliminary discussions, at which allof the camps’ women were invited to discuss issues of concern, the Conferenceprovided a forum for the NUSW’s policy agenda for the next five years (2007–2012) to be debated and set. On the last day of the Conference, the Executivemembers of the NUSW were elected (or in most cases re-elected).31

A multiplicity of international organizations and groups participated in orhelped fund the Conference, including international bodies such as UNHCRand the Federation of African Women, but also State and non-state representa-tives from Algeria, Botswana, Cuba, France, Italy, Mexico, Namibia, Slovenia,and South Africa.32 Despite this broad international turnout, the vast majority ofparticipants and funders were Spanish, with over 150 Spaniards (almost allwomen) having travelled to the Algerian-based camps to attend theConference, living with Sahrawi refugee families during their time there.Amongst those attending or funding the event were Spain’s National, Basque,and Canary Islands Institutos de la Mujer (Women’s Institutes); representativesfrom Spain’s national socialist, conservative, and left-wing political parties andtrade unions; major regional development organizations; municipal councils;national-level NGOs; local and regional groups of “Friends of the SahrawiPeople”; regional or local Spanish women’s organizations; and both theSpanish Support Network for the NUSW and the Basque Support Networkfor the NUSW. This demonstrates the strong and active support which theNUSW enjoys from a variety of high profile and local-level organizations, allof which provide the NUSW with essential financial support.

30 Since 1985, the NUSW has held a camp-based conference on average every five years to elect the Union’sExecutive Committee and National Secretariat, and to develop its policy agenda for the coming years.

31 E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gender, Islam, and the Sahrawi Politics of Survival, DPhil in Development Studies,Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, 2009.

32 The distinct absence of women from the Middle East and North Africa (other than Algerian women) isnotable, and is explored elsewhere: Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “When the Self Becomes Other”.


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It is worth noting that despite claims of the NUSW’s political and financialindependence from the Polisario, the Sahrawi Constitution indicates thatthe Polisario’s National Secretariat supervises the activities of the Sahrawiunions (of which the Women’s Union is one), which are in turn the “pillars”of the Polisario.33 Further, not only is the Secretary General of the NUSWautomatically granted a position in the Polisario’s National Secretariat, butone of its main Executive members (and former Secretary General) is theSahrawi President’s wife, Khadija Hamdi.34 As such, the connection betweenthe NUSW and Polisario is tangible, and funds designated to the Women’sUnion may have always been part of the resources potentially available to thePolisario. Importantly, remarks made by members of several Spanish women’sgroups during interviews indicated that they had more confidence in financialcontributions not “going astray” when given to the NUSW, in contrast with theirawareness of the regularly made charges of corruption and mismanagement offunds in the camps.35

It could be posited that the camp-based political post of “Secretary of StateResponsible for Social Assistance and the Promotion/Empowerment of Women”that was recently created in 2002 is connected to the recognition that “women’sissues” attract considerable investment from international organizations. Whilethe NUSW and its Basque Support Network claim that the new position allowsthe Union to focus more specifically on working on “politically essentialwomen’s issues”,36 rather than dealing with social assistance as it had oftendone in the past,37 it is equally the case that this new position has divertedfunds and institutional capacity from the NUSW directly to a growingPolisario Ministry. The potential of this woman-centred and female-directedeconomy and aid industry in the camps suggests that the NUSW andPolisario may increasingly compete to obtain funds and political support fromorganizations which are particularly dedicated to solidarity with Sahrawi women.As such, the official rhetoric apropos women’s roles and ideal identity in thecamps emerges as a prerequisite ensuring continued investment in these agencies,which could be defined as one way in which the representation is strategicallyrelated to the survival of these bodies.

33 Es-Sweyih, El primer estado, 61 and 62, respectively.34 Key NUSW figures that have also held Polisario positions include Khadija Hamdi (currently Minister for

Culture and Sport), Mariem Salek (formerly Minister of Culture and Sport, currently Minister forEducation), and Senia Ahmed Marhba (a former member of the Sahrawi Political Bureau and NationalSecretariat, and Polisario representative for Switzerland and Ambassador to Libya). A. Lippert, “SahrawiWomen in the Liberation Struggle of the Sahrawi People”, Signs, 17(3), 1992, 636–651; Association desoutien a un referendum libre et regulier au Sahara Occidental (ARSO), Western Sahara – News. Weeks43–44: 17.10–30.10.2004, available at: http://www.arso.org/01-e04-4344.htm (last visited 13 Jul. 2010);Mundos de Mujeres, Senia Ahmed, available at: http://www.mmww08.org (last visited 13 Jul. 2010).

35 See A. Garcıa, Historias del Sahara: el mejor y el peor de los mundos, Madrid, Catarata, 2001.36 NUSW documents on file with the author.37 E. Fiddian, Promoting Sustainable Gender Roles During Exile: A Critical Analysis with Reference to the Sahrawi

Refugee Camps, unpublished MSc Thesis, London, London School of Economics, 2002.


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3.2. Gender equality and shared sisterhoodThe terminology used by the vast majority of these non-Sahrawi organizationsboth during the 2007 NUSW Conference and on their respective websites re-flects that their commitment and involvement in the camps is based on “soli-darity” (solidaridad) and “friendship” (amistad) with the Sahrawi refugeecommunity, and with Sahrawi women more exactly. As a whole, Spanish feministand “gender equality” groups have offered “Sahrawi women” support via theNUSW on the basis of “shared sisterhood” and a “shared” goal of female em-powerment, a relationship which has been actively fostered by the NUSW’sDepartments for External Relations and Cooperation on the one hand, andSpanish women’s groups on the other.38

Concepts of “feminist sisterhood” and “international female solidarity” arehabitually based on women’s common experience of oppression and exploit-ation.39 Despite the fundamental limits of these terms,40 the equation between“sisters” and “feminism” has reached the Oxford English Dictionary, whichdefines a “sister” as “a fellow woman seen in relation to feminist issues”. Inthis context, Sahrawi officials’ claims to sisterhood and overarching commonal-ities immediately enable them to call for more involvement (and investment) byWestern women to help Sahrawi women continue to struggle forself-determination on individual, group (as women), and “national” levels (asSahrawis struggling against Moroccan occupation), both in the camps and in theinternational arena. Significantly, it is Sahrawi women’s oppression by Moroccowhich is explicitly referred to in such accounts, rather than “patriarchal” oppres-sion by Sahrawi men; the existence of the latter in the camps is resolutely deniedthrough describing Sahrawi society as “matriarchal”, and asserting that there is atotal absence of violence against women in the camps.41

Sororidad (sisterhood) and common gendered interests and goals were ex-plicitly evoked by the NUSW’s Secretary General, Fatma Mehdi, during andafter the 2007 NUSW Conference,42 simultaneously creating ties withnon-Sahrawi women’s groups whilst/by reflecting the importance assigned by

38 The “promotion of women” has increasingly become a central socio-political concern in Spain: the SpanishGovernment has invested considerably in addressing ever-increasing rates of violence against women inSpain. More visibly, in April 2008, Rodrıguez-Zapatero created not only an Equality Ministry, but afemale-led Cabinet (including, for the first time in Spanish history, a female Minister of Defence). Theseand other shifts towards gender parity and female “empowerment” in Spanish governmental institutionshave been paralleled by an increasing commitment by NGOs and Spanish regional and municipal authoritiesto fund female-centred projects in Spain and abroad.

39 J. Steans, Gender and International Relations: Issues, Debates and Future Directions, Cambridge, Polity, 2006,119.

40 Ibid.; M.A. Simons, “Racism and Feminism: A Schism in the Sisterhood”, Feminist Studies, 5(2), 1979,384–401.

41 This assertion is contested in E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “Concealing Violence Against Women in the SahrawiRefugee Camps: The Politicization of Victimhood”, in H. Bradby & G. Hundt (eds.), Global Perspectives onWar, Gender and Health: The Sociology and Anthropology of Suffering, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2010.

42 Verbatim proceedings. Similar claims have been made during smaller encounters with “solidary women”. Forinstance, see Mehdi’s declarations celebrating the participation of a group of socialist Swedish “sisters” in acamp-based conference about the rights of Sahrawi women and children. Quoted in Sahara Press Service,


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international agencies to gender equality mainstreaming. Hence, when address-ing the primarily Spanish and overwhelmingly female non-Sahrawi delegatesafter the Fifth NUSW Conference, the newly re-elected Secretary General con-cluded: “we need your intervention, courses on leadership, on gender politics,empowerment, education regarding human rights and women’s rights.”43

NUSW representatives’ declarations, alongside documents produced for theFifth NUSW Conference and agreements signed by the NUSW and Spanishfeminist groups, are all widely infused with strategic Spanish feminist terms suchas empoderamiento (empowerment), emancipacion (emancipation), liderazgo(leadership), educacion feminista (feminist education), and feminismo(feminism).44

In addition to strengthening NUSW ties with Spanish women’s groups,declarations made by representatives of the Friends of the Sahara also explicitlyconnect the solidarity network with the projected image of gender equality andthe importance of women in the camps. In a letter to the Director of Spain’snational newspaper, El Paıs, in 2002, Vallbe Bach (from Barcelona’s MunicipalCouncil) refers to the basis of such groups’ solidarity with the Polisario asfollows:

[. . .] those of us who have always defended the legitimacy of the Sahrawicause in their fight for their legitimate independence [. . .] [do so] becausewe have always defended the democratic basis upon which the SADR’sconstitution is founded and the values of equality between all Sahrawi menand women.45

This extract clearly indicates that support for “the Sahrawi cause” is both justi-fiable and necessary when the camps are simultaneously perceived to be a loca-tion for “democracy” and “gender equality”. This parallels the claim made byVoutira and Harrell-Bond that the Sahrawi’s unique “success” has come to be“measured by the extent to which they [. . .] promote their longer-term demo-cratic goals, which include the equality of women”.46

Despite these international celebrations by civil society organizationsand international bodies such as UNHCR and WFP, it is vital to estab-lish whether the Sahrawi refugee camps truly represent instances of “gender

Participacion feminista sueca en la conferencia sobre derechos de la mujer y de la infancia en los campamentos derefugiados, 20 Oct. 2004, available at: http://www.spsrasd.info/sps-s201004.html (last visited 13 Jul. 2010).

43 Verbatim proceedings, 8 Apr. 2007.

44 Key examples include the invitation letter for the Fifth NUSW Conference, which refers to this eventas a space which will enable the NUSW to continue working towards the “emancipation of women” andclaims that the creation of the NUSW statutes has “contributed to the dissemination of feminist thought”.Document on file with the author; see also, N. Tendeiro-Parrilla, Khadidja Hamdi: “Los jovenes saharauisno deben ser condenados como pueblo prohibido” , 8 Jan. 2007, available at: http://www.levante-emv.com/secciones/noticia.jsp?pNumEjemplar¼3397&pIdSeccion¼16&pIdNoticia¼261626&rand¼1168633955310 (last visited 13 Jul. 2010).

45 F. Vallbe Bach, “Cartas al Director: Aicha”, El Paıs, 29 May 2002 (emphasis added; author’s translation).46 Voutira & Harrell-Bond, “‘Successful’ Refugee Settlement”, 68.


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equality” and “good practice”, or, on the contrary, whether such assertions mayhave enhanced instances of inequality and exclusion within the camps.

4. “Good practice” or “unmet needs”?

It has been widely recognized that local-level “representatives may not be repre-sentative”47 and that aid agencies habitually prioritize certain groups whilstothers’ needs remain “invisible”.48 The urgency of developing “a planningframework based on assessment of a broad range of community and individualneeds” and enabling “invisible” people to be consulted and actively engagedin the planning process has therefore been broadly promoted,49 including byUNHCR which argues that:

Gender equality mainstreaming [. . .] ensures that the different interests,needs and resources of displaced women and men, girls and boys, aretaken into consideration at every step of the refugee cycle, in UNHCRprotection activities, as well as in program design, planning, implementa-tion, and monitoring and evaluation. It requires active consultation withdisplaced women, men and youth in all aspects of UNHCR’s work.50

In spite of the UNHCR’s official commitment to gender equality mainstreamingand participatory consultations, and despite international declarations of the“success” and “good practice” of the NUSW, in the remainder of this article, Iargue that instead of responding to a variety of problems faced by different socialgroups in the camps, a core selection of projects are paralleled, mirrored, repro-duced, and recycled, with the same target groups being the “beneficiaries” ofsuch initiatives. Such beneficiaries, I propose, are rarely “the most vulnerable”inhabitants (to use the UNHCR’s terminology), but rather the key protagonistsof the Polisario, NUSW, and UNHCR’s representations of the camps: idealizedand empowered “Sahrawi women”.

Harrell-Bond’s claim is noteworthy in this respect: “It is ironical, but theorganization which these [Sahrawi] refugees have developed is so efficient that acasual observer might go away without appreciating the enormous unmet needswhich exist.”51 It is arguably not simply the self-sufficient “organization” of thecamps lauded by “casual” and professional observers that has led to this failure to

47 K. Jacobsen & L.B. Landau, Researching Refugees: Some Methodological and Ethical Considerations in SocialScience and Forced Migration, New Issues in Refugee Research, Working paper no. 90, Geneva, UNHCR,2003, 12.

48 J. El-Bushra & E. Piza-Lopez, Development in Conflict: The Gender Dimension, Oxford, Oxfam/ACORD,1993, 191.

49 Ibid.50 UNHCR, A Practical Guide, 7.51 B.E. Harrell-Bond, A Visit to the Sahrawi Refugee Camps, unpublished work, 1981, 3.


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identify and address these unfulfilled needs. Rather, the (re)creation of theSahrawi refugee camps as the ideal refugee camps, and the central images offemale participation and gender equality presented through mainstream dis-courses may have made such a situation possible, and perhaps even necessaryon certain levels. Such a connection highlights the tangible effects which thisdiscourse has had on individuals, families, and groups living in the camps, andthe need for external observers to critically question the legitimacy and potentialdangers of such idealized and idealizing discourses.

One interviewee expanded on the nature of these unfulfilled needs, indicat-ing that, “lots of aid is distributed but it doesn’t reach the people who need it themost; to the people who it should reach first”.52 He concluded that:

The NGOs should go to see the families who hardly have anything, theyshould look more closely, try to find the marginalized people, try to helpthem directly. [. . .] [there are] people who don’t participate, who are margin-alized, who are in the margins politically [. . .]. It’s important to help them.53

The observations which I draw upon below support this broad claim that manySahrawi refugees’ needs remain unmet despite the myriad of projects in thecamps. I argue that this reflects the reality that humanitarian workers tend torespond to requests presented by the Polisario and NUSW, and leads us toenquire which residents are marginalized and do not receive aid directly.

4.1. Projects for “ ideal/ized women” in “ ideal/ized camps” : in whose best

interests?By discursively “creating” the refugee camps as “ideal” feminized,female-centred, and female-oriented spaces, the mainstream discourse has estab-lished the need for specific projects to attend to the camps’ “constituted” inhab-itants. Through “imagining” the beneficiaries of projects as static andhomogenized “empowered and active women”, projects have often been bothmis-designed and mis-implemented. Rather than asking which social groups areexcluded, marginalized, and sidelined, initiatives oriented towards “Sahrawiwomen” predominate in the camps. While these projects are invaluable forcertain refugees, several levels of constitutive marginalization result from thissystem.

In a relatively rare critical reflection on the mechanisms by which projectsare run in the camps, another interviewee based in the 27 February Camplamented:

Generally, the projects that arrive come directly to a specific institution andit’s almost always the same people who run that institution who benefitfrom the project. The people who work to support us here should look abit, and not continue always with the same institution, they should

52 Interview, 27 February Camp, Apr. 2007.53 Ibid., (emphasis added).


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approach other people who are more in need, to give them more opportu-nities to work.54

Indeed, institutional partnerships and sponsorship abound in the camps, withthe NUSW in particular, as noted above, being seen as an “ideal” partner by UNagencies and NGOs alike. During our interviews in the camps, NGO workersrepeatedly informed me that they were “responding to Sahrawi requests”(namely, Polisario and/or NUSW requests) for specific projects through theseinstitutions. They explained that by implementing projects through existinginstitutions, such as the NUSW, not only would “local participation” and“local ownership” characterize these projects, but the institutions themselveswould also benefit from investments in their administrative structures and build-ings, access to local and international transportation, and further funds. In fact,institutional strengthening is an explicit goal behind funds channelled throughthe NUSW,55 including by UNHCR,56 and many NGO workers believed thatthis should be a priority in any development or humanitarian project.

Although participatory intervention and “local ownership” is promoted by awide range of institutions and individual researchers,57 the notion that “localsolutions” are favourable has been forcefully critiqued through recognition thatlocal elites habitually dominate such processes and reproduce, “reinforce andentrench power relations rather than transform them”.58 With specific referenceto the difficulties of addressing “local” women’s needs, Kandiyoti stresses that:

The problem everywhere seems to revolve around how donor-led effortsand projects relate to local women’s groups and movements and whetherthey only select out a narrow range of clients who speak [the donors’ lan-guage] and know how to write proposals and reports.59

Indeed, while recognizing that the NUSW runs many successful projects, a maleSahrawi Ministerial Aide stressed that, “only a section of our society works there[. . .] they have good intentions, but not all women are involved. That’s a majorproblem.”60 This leads us to explore the ways in which the discursive strategypromoted by the NUSW and its interlocutors has influenced policy development

54 Interview, May 2007.55 NUSW document on file with the author.56 UNHCR’s Refugee Women and Gender Equality Unit argues that “Support to women’s organizations and

networks is a key strategy for promoting empowerment and building local capacity.” UNHCR, A PracticalGuide, 31.

57 See, J. Chopra & T. Hohe, “Participatory Intervention”, Global Governance, 10, 2004, 289–305; WorldBank, The World Bank and Participation, Washington, DC, World Bank, 1994.

58 S.E. Merry, “Popular Justice and the Ideology of Social Transformation”, Social and Legal Studies, 1, 1992,172. Also see D. Mosse, “‘People’s Knowledge’, Participation and Patronage: Operations andRepresentations in Rural Development”, in B. Cooke & U. Kothari (eds.), Participation, The NewTyranny?, London, Zed Books, 2001, 16–35.

59 In Hammami,“Deniz Kandiyoti”, 1352.60 Interview, Rabouni, May 2007.


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and implementation in the camps, asking whose voices, needs, and rights havebeen highlighted and whose have been absented, and to what effect.

4.2. Inclusion or exclusion?Even in officially designated “democratic” and “participatory” spaces in theso-called “Women’s Camp”, only a small core of women directly associatedwith the NUSW tend to participate. Hence, although the pre-Conference meet-ing held in the 27 February Camp in 2007 was intended to be a space for “all” ofthe camp’s women to debate and elect their representatives for the Fifth NUSWConference, fewer than 100 women attended on the first day, and only around60 voted on the election day. With the 27 February Camp’s total populationamounting to approximately 2,000–2,500, it is noteworthy that a significantproportion of these attendees were women undertaking courses at the NationalWomen’s School, including the NUSW-run computer and driving classes.Another contingent included women working for the Polisario in the camps’administrative capital (Rabouni), who were eligible to elect a separate represen-tative. A large section of the women present were therefore directly associatedwith official organizations at the time of the meeting.

This example also raises several matters vis-a-vis the nature of female par-ticipation in the camps which deserve brief examination. First, it is the oldergeneration of women who continue to dominate the political, economic, andsocial spheres in the camps, despite the younger generation having been educatedto higher levels in numerous locations around the world.61 The limited visibilityand inaudibility of younger women in the NUSW and other institutions based inthe camps has been noted by the NUSW, who have ostensibly created pro-grammes and “new spaces” to combat this marginalization and increase theirparticipation.62 Such spaces, which are solely accessible to young women, haverecently been designed to allow them to “speak out” during meetings, since theyare otherwise habitually overshadowed by older women. Such dynamics wereevident when I attended both the pre-Conference and post-Conference meetingsheld in the 27 February Camp in 2007, where older women (especially thoseaged over 50) were vocal and outspoken about their concerns and priorities forthe Conference and the future of women in the camps, while the youngerwomen remained silent throughout.

Building upon broader criticisms that members of official organizationssuch as the NUSW benefit unequally from externally funded projects, asecond major limitation of these projects is that, since their “beneficiaries” usu-ally include women who are already involved in particular institutions, the“image” of Sahrawi women as empowered and socially, politically, and

61 On Sahrawi women’s access to education outside of the camps, see E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “RepresentingSahrawi Refugee’ ‘Educational Displacement’ to Cuba: Self-sufficient Agents or Manipulated Victims inConflict?”, Journal of Refugee Studies, 22(3), 2009, 323–350.

62 Verbatim proceedings, NUSW meeting with Spanish delegates, 27 February Camp, Apr. 2007.


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economically active is reproduced, without recognizing the existence of otherwomen who are unable to participate in projects for a variety of reasons. I arguethat there are three main issues at hand in this case: by running projects througha particular institution, their members are “always already” prioritized; by failingto have access to “other” women, these marginalized women and their corres-ponding needs are not identified and; third, through recognizing that theseprojects do not provide for their needs, many women decide not to participate,or “select out”.

Two key dynamics support my conclusion that, despite claims to “genderequality” and female empowerment in the camps, many women are excludedfrom NGO projects and the spaces where most of these are implemented. First,interviews in the 27 February Camp with refugee women not associated with thePolisario or NUSW revealed that not all women frequent what is colloquiallyknown as al-gaws, which is the archway marking the entrance to the NationalWomen’s School precinct, where the school’s and camp’s administration and themajority of NGO projects are based. While three of my interviewees, for in-stance, had attended classes in the nearby National Women’s School when theywere younger, once they had children, they stated, they were no longer able, orwilling, to walk to the precinct. As indicated by a 41-year-old female interviewee,women often find it “difficult to take care of the children and continue workingwhile [the children are] not yet in school [. . .]. I could not find someone to takecare of [my children] in my absence.”63 Despite the existence of a small numberof creches and kindergartens in the camps, women with small children may stillfind it impossible to leave home since alternative child-care arrangements cannotbe found.

Simultaneously, however, those women who are responsible not only fortheir own children, but also for those of their relatives in turn find that theirobligations leave them unable to participate in NUSW or NGO projects andevents. One of my interviewees was looking after her two children (aged 1 and 6)as well as three of her cousins (aged between 5 and 16) while her husbandworked abroad, and her parents and other siblings lived in the open desert(al-b�adiya):

After I married, I trained as a secretary and worked in the id �ara [admin-istration]. When I became pregnant, I stopped working, and stayed athome. Now, I am always at home with my children and with my [younger]cousins. My aunt helps me make breakfast sometimes, but normally I am bymyself with the children.64

On at least three instances, I saw these women’s older female relatives (aunts ormothers) attending NUSW political meetings in al-gaws, while the youngerwomen cared for the family’s children. Equally, during the 2002 and 2007NUSW Conferences, women who “hosted” non-Sahrawi guests in their tents

63 SARC–A09.64 Interview, 27 February Camp, Apr. 2007.


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were unable to participate in the Conference or related activities due to theirresponsibilities. This confirms the continued reliance of politically active womenon other women’s and girls’ labour, either to care for their children, completedomestic tasks, or to “host” foreign guests and potential donors. This in turnreflects the significance of generation and life cycle in certain forms of femaleparticipation outside of the home, demonstrating that specific groups of refugeewomen are able to participate in NUSW events and NGO projects while othersare not.

A second related point is the recognition that space is gendered in the camps(as elsewhere), and that access to certain spaces is associated with female activismand participation. In the 27 February Camp, these spaces are primarily theWomen’s School, the NUSW headquarters, and the sewing/weaving workshoprun by the NUSW and the Italian NGO Centro Regionale d’Intervento per laCooperazione. My research in the camps between 2002 and 2007 suggests thatmany individuals and families have decided to minimize their contact withspecific spaces and places. In addition to maintaining a distance from al-gaws,a comparison of the camp’s structure and distribution in 2002 and 2007 suggeststhat new arrivals to the 27 February Camp following the 2006 torrential rains(or those in search of permanent electricity supplies) are pitching their tents awayfrom the politico-administrative core of the camp. Hence, the female head(in her early 50s) of a family which moved from Dakhla Camp to the27 February Camp in 2006 reflected that:

Before, we lived our lives and made our decisions. After the rains, we rebuiltour khayma [tent] here because it is closer to the hospital and there iselectricity. My grandchildren walk to school by themselves. The school isgood for the children, but I stay at home with my daughters. We do notneed to go to al-gaws. My cousins helped us mend our tent, and we will liveour lives here [in this tent], and make our decisions here.65

The members of this and another recently arrived female-headed householdsuggested that their decision to live on the outskirts of the camp reflectedtheir desire for more “independence”. Given that tents are more closely locatedin the 27 February Camp than in the Dakhla Camp, living away from the core ofthe camp could be a way of guaranteeing a greater distance from other families,and hence a greater sense of privacy. Their comments, however, also suggestedthat they did not feel that they “needed” the projects and services run from theWomen’s School, with none of these women having participated in any eventsorganized by the NUSW since their arrival.

In other cases, individuals and families have left the refugee camps perman-ently or semi-permanently, preferring to live in the open desert which, again,allows for greater independence from the core. One overall implication of thephysical distance created between certain populations and the projects’ physical

65 Interview, Apr. 2007 (author’s translation).


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nucleus, is that those individuals who “select out” of either the NGO projects orthe camp’s politico-administrative system, are thus absent(ed) from the camps.In this way, the camp’s population, as perceived by non-Sahrawi visitors, isreinforced as inhabited by women who are empowered and active in a varietyof ways, including through projects run by non-Sahrawis and Sahrawis alike.

4.3. “Where are the girls?”As suggested above, one element of the idealized representation of “Sahrawiwomen” has been its failure to account for changes and differences in positions,responsibilities, and needs throughout different stages of different women’s lifecycles. The static and eternalized image of women (re)presented by the Polisario,NUSW, and international agencies neither defines the term “Sahrawi women”(thereby eliding the heterogeneity of the term) nor reflects on the processes bywhich “one becomes” a woman.66 While I have explored some dynamics of girls’transition to womanhood and the extent to which puberty redefines their accessto particular spaces elsewhere,67 girls are in effect invisible both in the main-stream representation, and concurrently, in the projects designed for and imple-mented in the camps.

Nordstrom documents and denounces the tendency for representations ofrefugees and displaced peoples to “focus almost entirely on adults” whilst failingto ask “where are the girls?”.68 Indeed, while the UNHCR states that “the ideathat empowerment must include women and men, girls and boys . . . upholdsthe principles of non-discrimination and equality embodied in the UNHCRMission Statement (1998)”,69 girls are entirely absent from the RefugeeWomen and Gender Equality Unit’s account of the NUSW’s “good practicein gender mainstreaming”.70

More broadly, prevailing accounts of, and projects for, Sahrawi refugee“children” systematically fail to ask whether the term “children” “really[means] girls and boys, or just boys?”,71 whilst girls are frequently renderedinvisible or muted.72 As a result of a “gender-blind” approach to childhood inthis protracted refugee context, although there are numerous projects “for chil-dren” in the Sahrawi camps and beyond, none of those currently established in

66 S. de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972, 267.67 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gender, Islam.68 C. Nordstrom, “Girls and War Zones: Troubling Questions”, in D. Indra (ed.), Engendering Forced

Migration: Theory and Practice, New York, Berghahn Books, 1999.69 UNHCR, A Practical Guide, 30.70 Ibid.71 Ibid., 75.72 The following are exceptions to this trend: D. Chatty, E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & G. Crivello, “Identity With/

out Territory: Sahrawi Refugee Youth in Transnational Space”, in D. Chatty (ed.), Deterritorialised Afghanand Sahrawi Youth: Refugees from the Margins of the Middle East, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2010; andG. Crivello & E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “The Ties That Bind: Sahrawi Children and the Mediation of Aidin Exile”, in D. Chatty (ed.), Deterritorialised Afghan and Sahrawi Youth: Refugees from the Margins of theMiddle East, Oxford, Berghahn Books, 2010.


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the “Women’s Camp”, for instance, recognize the specific needs and experiencesof girls therein.

One result is that, although a number of “women’s” spaces exist in thecamp, and boys and young men have access to numerous “public areas”, there isa distinct absence of facilities, services, or spaces for girls outside of their families’tents. As stressed by a 17-year-old girl from the 27 February Camp, “[l]ife is verydifficult in the camps, and girls have very limited places to meet or play. We meetwith each other in our homes, in my room for example, and discuss school, thefuture, and politics”.73 More specifically, a 54-year-old woman asserted that theinternational humanitarian system in the camps has failed to address the needs ofgirls, stating that, “we need programs that provide skills for girls and enable themto remain near their families”.74

Girls’ overarching invisibility in mainstream accounts of the camps (and,indeed, in UNHCR’s celebration of the NUSW’s “good practice”), combinedwith a more general academic and NGO tendency to focus on Sahrawi refugeesas active adults, has impacted the development and implementation of projectsin the camps. It has led, for instance, to a distinct failure to examine and pro-actively address the reasons behind Sahrawi girls’ early withdrawal from school,75

despite this being a broader trend throughout refugee contexts. Given UNHCR’srecognition that refugee girls tend to be withdrawn from school earlier thanboys, the UN agency does document the number of Sahrawi schools whichhave “structured girl retention initiatives” and the number which require suchprogrammes. By the end of 2003, UNHCR recognized that no schools in theAaiun Camp had such initiatives, and that between 79 and 82 per cent of schoolsin Ausserd, Smara, and Dakhla required these.76 With an increasing populationand a dramatic decrease in the number of secondary level school places followingthe 2006 floods, female enrolment rates across the camps will inevitably havesuffered even further,77 and yet such gender inequality in education remainsunaddressed to date.

Importantly, girls’ and women’s approaches to this trend vary, with oneeldest daughter in her early twenties informing me in May 2007 that she hadvoluntarily decided to leave school during her mother’s last pregnancy, and thatshe had eventually been able to take further education classes at the 27 FebruaryNational Women’s School. On the other hand, an eldest daughter who had beenunable to participate in a rihla (activity trip) in Spring 2007 was highly resentful

73 SARC–F42.74 SARC–SD35.75 Eldest daughters appear to be the most readily identifiable group of children and youth who have been

withdrawn to help their mothers with younger siblings, household tasks, and looking after infirm relatives.76 UNHCR, Refugee Education Indicators 2003, Division of Operational Support, Geneva, UNHCR, 20 Aug.

2004, 12.77 Many teenage boys are also withdrawn from school; their absence from school is particularly noticeable due

to their greater visibility in public places than girls. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gender, Islam.


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that she had been withdrawn from school at the age of 11 to help her motherwith her younger siblings,78 and wanted desperately to return to her studies inAlgeria.79 This was also a concern expressed by a 17-year-old interviewee,80

while a 14-year-old girl from the 27 February Camp noted that “girls alsohave problems pursuing their education. This depends on the family. Some ofthe families do not like to see their girls go abroad. Some prefer that the boysstudy more than the girls.”81

In addition to the early withdrawal of girls from school, a brief examinationof the way in which the aforementioned activity trip was designed and children“recruited” in the camp reveals not only the difficulties which girls may face inaccessing projects, but also the ways in which NGO leaders conceptualize thepopulation they are attempting to “help”, and whose priorities and needs areaddressed in camp-based projects.82

Having arranged to take a group of boys and girls to the nearby sand dunesfor a number of days, the members of a Spanish NGO responded angrily whenthe children’s mothers refused to allow their daughters to participate. As I sug-gested to the Spanish organizers that they ask female, rather than male, Sahrawi“instructors” to speak with the mothers about the project, they replied that themothers were simply “ignorant” (“son unas ignorantes”) not to allow their daugh-ters to go “have fun” in the dunes. They indicated that they were particularlydisappointed to encounter such resistance in the 27 February Camp since it isthe home of the National Women’s School and the NUSW Headquarters. Oneof the organizers stated: “I can’t believe this is happening here. We’ve beenrunning projects around the camps for five years and we’ve never encounteredsuch ignorance. And this is meant to be the Women’s Camp? They are justignorant.”83 The NGO declared that unless girls were allowed to participate,they would never run a project in that camp again. They demanded that a groupof girls be ready for collection in the morning outside of al-gaws, and sent all thechildren who were ready home. This is a clear example of the gender-basedconditionality of the provision of aid and implementation of projects in thecamps.

The designation of the mothers as “ignorant”, contrasted with the NGOworkers’ emphasis on the 27 February Camp as a supposedly female-centred andfemale-powered camp, is notable and also reflects their preference and identifi-cation with the latter and rejection of the former. “Sahrawi women”, in theseSpaniards’ imaginations, should have unequivocally accepted the project without

78 This girl’s withdrawal became particularly urgent when her father had moved to Spain for medical treatment.79 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gender, Islam.80 SARC–F43.81 SARC–F50. On the reduction in the number of Sahrawi females studying in Cuba, see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh,

“Representing Sahrawi Refugees’ ‘Educational Displacement’” and Chatty, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & Crivello,“Identity With/out Territory”, 66–68.

82 An analysis of other “pre-designed” projects run in the camps is presented in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, Gender,Islam.

83 Interview, 27 February Camp, 15 Apr. 2007.


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questioning its organizers, and should have encouraged their daughters to par-ticipate in the outing. Indeed, returning to Harrell-Bond’s designation of theSahrawi as “good” refugees because of their reluctance to “complain”, we mustask under what circumstances Western observers allow Sahrawis to complain andreject certain interventions. This could thereby lead us to suggest that refugees’interactions with aid providers may be directly “conditioned” by the recognitionthat resisting NGOs’ priorities may lead to the withdrawal of projects.

In this case, any understanding of Sahrawi mothers’ concerns regardingtheir daughters’ contact with unrelated Sahrawi boys and men without propersupervision, especially when their daughters were approaching puberty, wasabsent. Such a lack of awareness was evident when one mother allowed one ofher younger daughters (aged 8) to participate once a responsible female guardianhad been identified, whilst resolutely prohibiting her eldest daughter (aged 13)from doing so. She invited me, as an Arabic-speaking Spanish researcher presentduring the encounter, to act as an intermediary between herself and the SpanishNGO representative, asking me to explain that:

I am alone with the children and I need to take my baby to the hospital. She[pointing to her eldest daughter] has to help me with the other children.Ask her [the Spanish NGO woman] where the girls will sleep [. . .]. Will shebe in the tent with the girls? She will? OK. Tell her that I will let my[younger] daughter go with her. Tell her that. [Pointing at the Spanishwoman emphatically] With her.84

The NGO representative, having “successfully” increased her “quota” of girls,failed to engage with any of the reasons why the eldest daughter was unable toparticipate in the project. The possibility of this, or future, projects addressingSahrawi girls’ and women’s preferences and needs was curtailed early on.

5. Conclusion

In this article, I have argued that mainstream representations of the Sahrawirefugee camps as spaces of “gender equality” and “female empowerment” havedirectly influenced, and simultaneously been reinforced by, policies developedand implemented by Sahrawi and non-Sahrawi actors in the camps. Despite theUNHCR’s assertions that the NUSW is an “ideal” partner and that genderequality mainstreaming ensures that women’s and girls’ “different interests,needs and resources [. . .] are taken into consideration”, the discursive constitu-tion of the Sahrawi refugee camps as “ideal” and “gender-equal” has led toprojects repeatedly targeting the same group of beneficiaries, and thereby sys-tematically failing to identify or address the needs and rights of social groupswhich have been marginalized from view. By channelling aid through organiza-tions such as the National Union of Sahrawi Women, a core group of

84 Author’s translation; emphasis added.


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hyper-visible, active, and employed women have benefited unequally in thecamps, while a selection of “invisible” women and girls are either excludedfrom or “select out” of such projects, at times physically disengaging from thepolitico-administrative centre of the camps by moving to Spain or the opendesert (al-b�adiya). These mutually reinforcing processes thus solidify the viewthat the camps are inhabited by empowered women who reproduce and main-stream assumptions apropos Sahrawi “gender equality”.

In the Sahrawi context, the official focus on “ideal women” has renderedboth women and girls invisible. Although numerous projects are designed for“children” in the camps, few, if any, provide opportunities and spaces specificallyfor girls. Through discussing the absence of projects tackling girls’ early with-drawal from school, alongside mothers’ reluctance to allow their daughters toparticipate in an activity trip organized by a Spanish NGO, I have aimed todemonstrate both the difficulties that girls encounter in accessing projects, andthe limitations of NGOs’ conceptualizations of the population they are purport-edly attempting to “help”. NGO workers’ anger at these mothers’ “ignorance”,and their threat to never return to the camps unless Sahrawi girls were allowed to“have fun”, confirms the unbalanced power dynamic which may characterize thedevelopment of projects in the camps. Rather than attempting to identify thereasons behind these women’s reluctance to allow their daughters to participate,the NGO workers’ priority was to implement a pre-designed project for apre-determined set of “good” and “ideal” beneficiaries who should have un-equivocally (and gratefully) accepted the activity programme. Any possibilityof addressing either the mothers’ or daughters’ needs in the future was thereforeultimately obstructed, suggesting the extent to which many residents’ prioritiesand voices are silenced by Sahrawi and non-Sahrawi authority figures alike, whilethe camps’ authorities are celebrated internationally as “ideal” partners who havesucceeded in mainstreaming gender equality.


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