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SD Conferences
Missing Links in Sustainable Development: South Asian Perspectives
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AbstractsSub-theme: Gender Panel: Women, conflict and security
'Halat Kharab' Tension Times: The Maternal Health Costs of Gilgit’s Sunni-Shia Conflict Drawing on my ‘under-fire’ doctoral research in Gilgit, administrative and economic capital of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous and federally neglected Northern Areas, I analyze how maternal deaths were foremost among the hidden, unreported consequences of 2005’s Sunni-Shia hostility. Nestled in the heart of Pakistan's Karakoram Mountains, Gilgit’s population is equally divided between Sunni, Shia and Ismaili Muslims. Until Gilgit’s foremost Shia cleric Syed Agha Zia-u’din Rizvi was assassinated by Sunni extremists on January 8th 2005, these three communities interacted with relative ease. Gilgit was subsequently plagued by sectarian clashes, substantial political tensions and lengthy civic curfews. Following the Pakistani Army’s January 2005 takeover of civil administration, governmental concerns with health service provision, physician safety and patient access were de-prioritized. Closures of in-city roads and the Karakoram Highway (KKH) disrupted medicinal supply deliveries and patient transport. Sunni physicians were purposefully targeted and killed in sectarian attacks, echoing and inverting the targeted killings of Shia physicians during Karachi’s sectarian strife. And because maternal health centers are located in Shia neighborhoods (mohallas) and frequently provided by Shia physicians and support staff, Sunni community members were profoundly impacted. By summer 2005, thousands of pregnant Sunni women were either denied access to services by the Army during curfews, or by family members unwilling to accompany patients to seek treatment in Shia mohallas. Comparative analysis of Gilgit’s maternity clinic records between late 2004 and early 2005 shows an 80% drop in the number of Sunni patients. Service disruptions and associated higher rates of unattended childbirth have compounded Gilgit’s already high maternal morbidity and mortality rates ; with field workers reporting substantial increases in post-natal complications, and maternal and infant deaths following home deliveries . Besides structural impediments, conflict creates a context conducive to ideological barriers to service access. These included anti-Shia sentiments and Sunni physician preference, in-community allegiance and the often dangerous practice of medicine at Gilgit’s rudimentary “Sunni Hospital”, a provisional alternative to Federal Hospitals in Shia mohallas. Moreover, Sunni community-based narratives positively, and problematically, framed women’s maternal health risks as symbolically intertwined with polemics of community allegiance and religious martyrdom. This paper permits innovative, qualitative analysis of the social, territorial and ethnic modalities underlying conflict, identity and women’s health in Pakistan’s Northern Areas between January and September 2005. Embedded within this approach, my research emphasizes the experiential dynamics endured by individuals in times of flux and turmoil. Footnotes: 1 Supplies include blood plasmas, PPH-related [post-partum hemorrhage] medicinal treatments and Rhogam shots required by Rhesus (Rh-factor) negative mothers. 2 On January 8th 2005, Northern Areas Health Office Director Dr. Sher Wali Khan was shot and killed by Shia assailants while escaping the Gilgit District Hospital (DHQ). By summer 2005, a number of Gilgit’s Sunni physicians, including two of the city’s preeminent female obstetrician-gynecologists, had their names appear on Shia “hit lists” and their homes subjected to grenade attacks. 3 Northern Pakistan suffers a high burden of maternal mortality. Recent estimates have suggested “the maternal mortality ratio [to] range between 300 and 700 per 100,000 live births” (WHO 1991 in Midhet, Becker & Berendes 1998:1587). Sunni women in the Northern Areas are approximately “1.6 times as likely to die” (Agha 2000:203) as Pakistani Punjabis, and “the higher levels for disadvantage for [Northern] women are highlighted by the fact that only 48% of the school age population is female, despite the natural advantage of girls” (AKES 1996 in Sales 1999:409). And in both rural and urban areas “24% of births occur within 18 months of the last birth” (Agha 2000:203). 4 Fieldworkers include Lady Health Visitors (LHVs), Lady Health Workers (LHWs) and Family Planning Motivators, working on behalf of the non-governmental Family Planning Association of Pakistan and the Pakistan’s federally funded Family Planning Organization. * A previous Visiting Research Associate with the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (2004-2005), Islamabad, Pakistan, Emma Varley is presently completing her doctoral dissertation in Medical Anthropology at the University of Toronto, Canada. On Theorizing/Writing/Representing Women in Contexts of Conflict in Pakistan: The Promise and Perils of “Global Feminism” This presentation derives its impetus from two larger questions: What is the “project” of global feminism? Who is the “subject” of global feminism? These questions will be scrutinized, critiqued, and, ultimately, reframed using the lives and experiences of women in contexts of conflict in Pakistan. While I will take into account the burgeoning literature on women in conflict zones in Pakistan in general, I will make a case for a “grounded” theoretical approach to representing women in conflict zones, by drawing more specifically on the Sustainable Development Policy Institute’s study with women in the Karachi context of conflict. Working from a rather contradictory position -- feminist scholarship on women in conflict zones has to be motivated by women’s lived experiences and realities, but we need to be critical, even wary, of prevalent conceptions of “voice”, I will discuss the pitfalls and the potential of multiple strands of feminism, academic as well as activist, (and those that claim to be both) that purport to be global and/or “transnational” in their scope and depth. * Dr. Lubna Chaudhry teaches at the State University of New York, Binghamton, USA. She is also a visiting fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute, Islamabad, Pakistan. Coming out of private: Women forging voices in Bangladesh The paper is an attempt to scope out women’s voices in Bangladesh. The paper argues that women’s voices have been silenced through the historical process of state formation, and later on through state processes and institutions. Yet women at various stages and through different processes and institutions have been voicing their voices and creating spaces for themselves for scoping their voices. The paper examines the above processes and institutions, and in conclusion, charts out a few spaces where women can make their interventions. * Amena Mohsin teaches International Relations at the Department of International Relations, Dhaka University, Bangladesh. Cartographies of Conflict
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