Marawi teen escapes war only to find another form of violence in evacuation camp

SAGUIARAN, Lanao del Sur - When a local terror group took over Marawi City on May 23, 2017, 16-year-old Fatima (not her real name) and her family fled their hometown to escape the violence of war only to face another conflict in the evacuation center.

Fatima and her family relocated in an evacuation center in Saguiaran town, province of Lanao del Sur.

In the same cubicle where they have been living for 2 Ramadans now, a teenage boy entered Fatima’s room while her mother Noraidah was away.

The boy allegedly made advances at her. He left when Fatima struggled, but came back again a few days later to try again.

This time, Noraidah and Fatima decide to escalate the incident and spoke to the boy and his mother. Instead of resolving the matter, the boy and his mother started bullying Fatima and Noraidah.

A group of kids whom Fatima suspected were the boy’s friends came and beat her up. They reported it to the authorities, but no one was punished, leaving the boy’s mother free to verbally harass Fatima and Noraidah.

The local government of Saguiaran accommodated several internally displaced persons.

During the siege, the town’s function hall was converted into an evacuation center. Malongs (tube skirts), blankets, tarpaulins, and slabs of plywoods were used to build cubicles, where each family would stay.

At the back of the building were makeshift bathrooms and toilets that were not segregated by gender.

The condition in the evacuation center exposes internally displaced women to harassment, voyeurism, and violence.

For Noraidah, gender-based violence is nothing new. Noraidah married her first husband when she was a teenager. She remarried when her first husband died. Her second husband, who has gone missing during the Marawi siege, used to beat her up whenever they had a fight.

Having this experience, she knew that the only way for her daughter to escape such violence is through education.

STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE

Gender inequality and violence have denied many women the life that they could have had.

Violence against women appears as one of the pervasive social problems in the Philippines, where women are also put to blame as the cause of their own misery.

The 2008 National Demographic and Health Survey of the National Statistics Office (NSO) reported that 1 in 5 Filipino women, age 15 to 49, has experienced physical violence.

United Nations (UN) Women estimated that 35 percent of women worldwide have experienced “either physical and/or sexual by a non-partner” at some point in their lives.

It also revealed that there are 650 million women and girls in the world “who were married before age 18.”

Lawyer Patricia Miranda, policy advisor of OXFAM in the Philippines, said “structural violence deepens the system of violence against women and children.”

Miranda refers to the form of violence “wherein some social structure or social institution, including the community, harm women by preventing them from meeting basic needs and rights.”

"It becomes a cycle. A girl might have escaped violence at home but she would still experience violence in some other form because of gender stereotypes,” she said.

“How would a woman defend her rights if she did not experience the full range of economic, social, and cultural opportunities?” she added. 

SOCIAL NORMS

Violence on women manifests in different ways, including early marriage, lack of access to education, and reproductive health, and “disproportionate burdens on women around unpaid and domestic care work.”

Groups in the Philippines have been advocating a safe and just world, where women and girls are “able to live free from all forms of violence.”

Sister Mary John Mananzan said the Office of Women and Gender Concerns of the Association of Major Religious Superiors in the Philippines “aims to reach all women and make them aware of their rights.”

The Benedictine nun stressed that women’s movement in the Philippines is "strong” and “the country’s laws to protect the rights of women are the best in the world.”

Mananzan, however, said the “problem is in the implementation of the laws and the culture or norms that dictate people that women only take subordinate roles in society.”

She said violence against women becomes normal in the eyes of the public because “even the highest public official is an oppressor and exploiter of women.”

“People laugh to rape jokes or tolerate the misogynist attacks on women. And because a lot of women are not aware of their rights, it becomes a societal norm,” she added.

She urged Filipinos to look beyond violence against women as a domestic problem only, but rather “a systemic and societal problem that has to be addressed.”

Miranda expressed that the public must recognize that changes in laws, infrastructure, and institutions “are not enough without addressing the harmful individual and collective beliefs that create and intensify power inequality."

She said it is time to tackle gender-based violence, stereotyping, and arbitrary assignments of characteristics and roles according to sex or gender identity in every community.

Fatima, in her own way, stood up against violence not only in the evacuation center. She did not accept an offer of early marriage and instead decided to continue with her studies. -- Mark Z. Saludes contributed to this report.