Life of Sri Lankan refugee women in the camps of Tamil Nadu

Abstract

A large number of Sri Lankan Tamils fled to India escaping violence during the civil war that lasted from 1983 to 2009. Numerous studies are available on global Sri Lankan Tamil refugees in general; however, only a few foci solely on women and their conditions in refugee camps, particularly in India. This study is an attempt to fill this gap in the existing scholarship and offer a preliminary understanding on the subject matter. A qualitative study was conducted on fourteen first-generation and nine second-generation refugee women from two refugee camps of Vellore district in Tamil Nadu. Adding to that, six female employees, out of which five have previously lived in refugee camps, from the Organization for Eelam Refugee Rehabilitation (OfERR), Chennai, in Tamil Nadu were also interviewed to overcome the limitation of the small sample size of refugee women the authors could access and validate the data collected. This study analyses the conditions of Sri Lankan Tamil refugee women in camps, focussing on four specific factors –employment opportunities, toilet facilities, and menstrual hygiene, domestic abuse, and return to Sri Lanka. The findings of this pilot study indicate that even after a decade of living as refugees, their situation still seems uncertain and deplorable. Most of the women in the camps are not educated beyond high school and are largely unemployed. Some get into the loop of marriage and child-rearing at a young age, and many are victims of domestic violence. The toilet facilities of the camps studied are subpar, which is an added inconvenience for them, especially during their menstrual cycle. The study has also identified a generational gap in terms of attitude towards their return to Sri Lanka. The first-generation mothers wish to go back to Sri Lanka but are unable to do so as their children prefer to stay back in India. This study thus focuses on the narratives of the vulnerable refugee women to elucidate their everyday life and conditions in the refugee camps in India.