On Women, Water, and Migration in Africa
Paper presented for the Panel on Women, Water and Migration in Africa: The Case of Ghana, Zimbabwe, Guinee and Chad--a Side Event at the 56th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, sponsored by The Drammeh Institute Tchad Agir Pour l’Environnement.
777 UN Plaza, Saturday, March 03, 2012, 10:30am to 12 pm
Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké
Okome
Professor
of Political Science
Brooklyn
College, City University of New York
Since we are African, and our philosophies of life demonstrate
an engagement with the issues that we face in our daily lives, it is appropriate
to begin with African aphorisms. Unfortunately,
I only speak Yorùbá, so, I will use some proverbs from my mother tongue that are
relevant to our subject matter today.
- Omi l’ènìyàn: People are water—they flow
- Eni bá da’mi síwájú, á te’lè tútù—whoever throws water forward will walk on wet ground—if you do good, you will reap the rewards.
It is also important to pay attention to African popular culture
and what it has contributed to our knowledge base. Fela has become newly popular worldwide after the
launching of the Broadway show titled Fela! Not having to explain who Fela is makes it possible
to move directly to the song that he performed while alive that speaks to our subject
today. Fela sang in Yoruba and pidgin English,
making his music accessible to the Nigerian masses.
Omi o l’ota o! Water, e no get enemy! –Fela
T'o
ba fe lo we omi l'o ma'loIf you want to go wash, na water you go use
T'o
ba fe se'be omi l'o ma'lo
If
you want cook soup, na water you go use
T'o
ri ba n'gbona o omi l'ero re
If
your head dey hot, na water go cool am
T'omo
ba n'dagba omi l'o ma'lo
If
your child dey grow, na water he go use
If
water kill your child, na water you go use
T'omi
ba p'omo e o omi na lo ma'lo
Ko
s'ohun to'le se k'o ma lo'mi o
Nothing
without water
Ko
s'ohun to'le se k'o ma lo'mi o
Omi
o l'ota o
Water,
him no get enemy
Omi
o l'ota o
If
you fight am, unless you want die
I
say water no get enemy
If
you fight am, unless you want die
Omi
o l'ota o
I
dey talk of Black man power
I
dey talk of Black power, I say
I
say water no get enemy
If
you fight am, unless you want die
I
say water no get enemy
I
say water no get enemy
Omi
o l'ota o
Omi
o l'ota o
Water is vital to life.
The first proverb, Omi l’ènìyàn: People are water—they flow, shows us
that the Yorùbá get it. Although they
did not know western science when this saying came about, they knew then, and
know now that we human beings are water.
Western science confirms it by telling us that we are mostly water. But the Yorùbá also mean something else—that
we human beings flow like water. We do
this when we move from one place to another, we do this when we develop
relationships, we do this when we help one another, we do this when we just
are. Then, evoking the second proverb,
that Eni bá da’mi síwájú, á te’lè tútù —whoever throws water forward will walk
on wet ground—if you do good, you will reap the rewards, also evokes the values that Yorùbá hold dear,
their ideals doing good, and the notion that what goes around essentially comes
around. And then, Fela, when he said: Omi
o l’ota o! Water, e no get enemy! He
meant to tell us that water is such a necessity that no one can possibly hate
it. One could also interpret the Fela
lyrics as meaning that water is an inevitable part of life. We cannot do without it. Until humanity decides to consciously change
things, women worldwide are primarily responsible for ensuring that family well
being is served. In Africa, a lot of the
work that it takes to nurture families devolves on women. finding water, fetching it, using it and
making sure that there is enough for the needs of the family are all tasks that
women take on, mostly assisted by the children in their families and
communities.
UN estimates tell us that by 2000, there were 16 million
international migrants out of the continent’s 796 million population, an
increase from 9.4 million out of 277
million in 1960. These are population
movements within the African continent. According
to Hania Zlotnik of the UN DESA, Population Division, In comparison to the other major areas of the developing
world, Africa has had more than double the number of international migrants
than Latin America and the Caribbean since 1980 and about one-half to one-third
of the number in Asia. However, the share of Africa in terms of the worldwide
number of international migrants has been decreasing steadily since 1980,
passing from 14 percent to an estimated 11 percent in 1990 to an estimated nine
percent in 2000. That is, neither the absolute number of international migrants
in Africa nor Africa's share of the world migrant stock has been increasing
markedly during the past 20 years, and even over a 40-year horizon the changes
in the migrant stock of Africa seem modest, particularly when compared with the
near tripling of Africa's population during the same period.
It seems to be good news that after
1980 there has been a consistent decrease in the number of international
migrants as a share of the population in the continent. But the news seems less palatable when
African statistics are compared with those in other world regions. From 1960 to1980, over three percent of
Africa's population were international migrants, and by 2000 the figure had
declined to two percent. Asia in 1960, had
less two percent of its total population as international migrants, a figure
that declined to approximately one percent in 2000. Latin America and the Caribbean had less than
three percent of the total population as international migrants in 1960 and saw
declines to one percent in 2000 (Zlotnik, 2004). At the dawn of the era of decolonization in
1960, Africa was 3.4 percent of its population as international migrants while Europe
had 2.8 percent. By 2000, Europe had 7.7 percent of its population
as international migrants compared with Africa’s 2 percent (Zlotnik, 2004). West Africa had the largest share of international migrants in Africa by 2000: 42
percent, as compared with 28 percent in East Africa; 12 percent in North Africa;
and nine percent in Central and Southern Africa respectively (Zlotnik, 2004).
As an earlier piece written with a colleague says, "Human migration is as old
as life itself." Scholars have confirmed
this, providing evidence that the very first human migrations occurred in the
African continent, about 80,000 years ago, when human-like beings moved from
Africa to colonize other parts of the world ((Okome
and Ngo Ngijol Banoum, 2002. Also see Gugliotta, 2008). Humans move
around for many reasons, and economic crisis, driving the need to attain a
better life is one reason why people move.
Some such migration is caused by a lack of economic opportunities, some
by environmental degradation, and climate change some by food insecurity, some
by the need to find a safe haven from war, persecution and crisis (UNECA, 2010,
p. 1).
Although today the causal effects of the forces of
globalization in moving people from less to more affluent regions of countries,
and the world, are more glaring, such processes have been with us for a very
long time. In testament to the
long-standing nature of migration as a human phenomenon, we can find many
illustrative examples in the African continent, where there were many great
migrations that occurred in the peopling of the continent, many wars of
conquest waged by expansionist states, forcing those determined to escape the
crises that they set in motion to flee in search of refuge. There was also the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade,
there was the trade in slaves that went via the Indian Ocean, the one that went
through the Sahara. Some scholars call
these forced migrations. I don’t like
using this phrase to describe the enslavement of people and their removal from
their homes, loved ones, even continent, to feed the maw of commerce. Men, women, and children were enslaved. This paper will not focus on the slavery
imposed movement of African peoples. However, contemporary Diasporization in the
continent can be included among the cases the paper focuses upon. Among such Diasporization, are migrations
caused by prolonged economic crisis, drought, desertification and the environmental
degradation caused by these and other sources.
According to experts like Aderanti Adepoju, increasingly,
African migration is feminized. Zlotnik
(2004) agrees. While in the past, men
moved first and their spouses followed, today, women are not only moving, many
are leaving husbands and children at home and becoming the primary breadwinners
for their families (2004). Zlotnik
presents data that indicate that while female international migration within
the African continent was lower than in other world regions in 1960, by 2000,
it constituted about 46.7% of the 16 million migrants in the continent, a
figure that easily outpaced Asia’s 46% and Latin America and the Caribbean’s
45%. Other regions of the world had over
50% female migration. Zlotnik also contends that statistics demonstrate
that the increases in female migration in the African continent are rapidly outpacing
those in other parts of the world (2004).
There are regional differences, with Southern Africa having
the lowest percentages of international migrants (30% in 1960, and 42% in 2000),
and West Africa the highest (41-42% in 1960, and 48% in 2000), North Africa by
comparison experienced a decline from 49.5% in 1960 to approximately 43% in
2000 (Zlotnik).
There is a way in which the operation of
the capitalist economy also compels rural-urban migration such that those left
behind in rural communities are predominantly women, children and the elderly,
sick, disabled, and those unable or unwilling to do the available jobs. While such migrations can be found throughout
the African continent, Southern Africa stands as a significant example of this
phenomenon both historically and contemporarily. The mining and industrial sectors are
particularly implicated in this phenomenon that has customarily used the rural
areas of Southern Africa as labor reserves for the mines and industries in
South Africa (Collinson, Tollman, Kahn & Clark, 2003,
1). Other demands for labor come from the
agricultural sector, and even house hold economy. Due to deliberate state policy under the
Apartheid system, Black African populations have historically been pushed to
the most marginal lands. The result is
intractable unemployment (1) as well as the extreme impoverishment of the heavily
populated rural areas that become virtually denuded of men for given periods of
the year, due to circular migration (3).
As a result of the villagization policies
that were an integral part of the process of creating homelands, the problem of
insufficient land became pervasive, and a great deal of pressure is put on the
land that results in its decreased fertility and productivity. The economy actually becomes transformed from
an agrarian one to one based on capitalist production, but only some of the
labor was recruited, and only for specified periods of the year that were
documented in contracts and supported by pass laws. In some situations such as in Agincourt
sub-district, on the border of Mozambique for example, due to the insufficiency
of the land for subsistence production that would adequately feed a family, the
problems are compounded by food insecurity (3), lack of potable water, and by increased
burdens on women and young children who must expend more energy to locate and
fetch water for their communities. They
do so by transporting 25 gallon drums of water in wheelbarrows, or carrying
containers of water on their heads (3). Where
water is more readily available, there’s the problem of purification when there
is no access to potable water. Again,
such tasks fall primarily or in many cases, exclusively on women and girls who
are being groomed to take their positions as providers of free, unremunerated
labor in their families.
High levels of infant mortality due to diarrhea and
kwashiorkor, and increased prevalence of HIV-AIDS, and higher adult mortality
due also to the HIV-AIDS pandemic, congestive heart failure and strokes cause most
of the deaths in the sub-district. That
a lot of deaths are caused by diarrhea means that water-borne ailments are very
serious public health issues in this community.
Unfortunately, the same obtains in many parts of Africa where access to
potable water remains a challenge.
Although it is conventional to focus on these issues as primarily
affecting rural populations, they are also thus far, intractable problems for
poor urban communities in many of Africa’s overcrowded cities. If migration is
also thought of as rural-urban movement, the move from rural to urban locations
should also be seen as putting pressures on inadequate infrastructure,
including water supply. Let me repeat
myself: due to the gendering of society
in such a manner that domestic work and the work of raising children as well as
caring for the sick devolves on women, the burden and challenges of access to
water, the work of purifying the water and stretching sometimes meager family
resources to purchase water, falls heavily on women.
Africa also has a great deal of refugees. This contributes substantially to the
increases in its stock of international migrants. The numbers of refugees in the continent
escalated progressively from 79,000 in 1960 to 6.4 million in 1995. The successes in conflict resolution in the
1990s in some long term wars, contributed to significant refugee repatriations,
and lower numbers. Many African
countries are also increasingly reluctant to welcome refugees and refuse to
grant them asylum and refugee status, causing further diminution in the numbers
of people officially designated as refugees.
According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), African
countries reported that they had 3.6 million refugees in 2000, showing a 44
percent reduction from 1995 (Zlotnik, 2004).
But such reduction should not necessarily be
celebrated. Compared with the world
statistics on refugees, Africa still has very high percentages. Since 1970, refugees in Africa have
constituted a substantial proportion of the world's refugees. During the heydays of decolonization, the
1960s, approximately one in every six refugees in the world was African. An increase was experienced to two out of
every five by 1970, three out of every
five in 1975, and a full third of all
refugees in the world from 1985. Only Asia has higher figures than Africa in this
regard (Zlotnik, 2004).
Central Africa had the largest percentage of asylees from
1960-1975, East Africa followed. But
with approximately half of all refugees in the continent, East Africa had the biggest
percentage by 1980, and from 1980-1990, there was a decline, settling at 46
percent of the continent’s refugees in the region, by 2000. From 1980, Central
and Northern Africa (including the Sudan), also had significant refugee populations,
each with about one out of every seven refugees in the continent by 2000. Southern Africa stands in stark
contrast. It has the smallest numbers of
refugees in Africa. By 2000, it had about
one in every 100 refugees in Africa. West
Africa on the other hand, had the highest percentages both in the 1970s and the
1990s, and from 1995-2000, had more than 20 percent of all refugees in the continent
(Zlotnik, 2004).
The challenge is somewhat formidable. While
In 1960, only one percent of all international migrants in
Africa were refugees. By 1970, that proportion had risen to 10 percent and in
1980 it had reached 25 percent. The number of refugees as a percentage of the
international migrant stock increased further to 33 percent in 1990 and is
likely to have kept on rising until 1995 before declining to 22 percent in 2000 (Zlotnik, 2004).
Just a handful of countries contribute massively to the
numbers of asylees, While the Democratic
Republic of the Congo (DRC) hosted 95 percent of the 79,000 refugees in Africa,
this increased to cover eight countries by 1970, 11 by 1980, 15 by 1990, and 18 by 2000. These are mostly least-developed countries
according to the United Nations, they have significant problems with being able
to afford to support great populations of refugees (Zlotnik, 2004).
Even outside the I think misguided intent of calling
Trans-Atlantic Trade and other instances of slavery “forced migration”, in
contemporary times, forced migration has contributed massively to international
migration in Africa. In 1990 refugees
were 54 percent of the migrants in East Africa; 36 percent in 2000; 31 percent in 1990 and 36 percent in 2000 in Central
Africa; 46 percent in 1990 and 30 percent in 2000 in North Africa (10 percent
of all international migrants during the 1990s in West Africa; and two to three
percent in the 1990s in Southern Africa (Zlotnik, 2004).
Luckily, international migration
in Africa is not predominantly by people seeking refuge from wars, conflicts,
environmental catastrophe, and other kinds of catastrophic stimuli, but the number refugees of in East, Central,
and North Africa, since 1980 there have been increasing numbers of refugees
among international migrants. At the
moment, approximately 30 percent of international migrants are refugees. “During the 1990s, between one in
three and one in five international migrants in Africa was a refugee” (Zlotnik, 2004).
We can capture the essence of our discussions this morning
as involving what scholars have couched as involving “the impact of climate
change on development and human welfare, particularly in developing countries.”
All of us are aware that we have had, sudden,
inexplicable severe weather and wild swings that experts attribute to climate
change. Many ordinary and even important
people have been affected. Their way of
life, survival and livelihood are at stake.
Many have found no other option but to move from long-term communities
to strange and sometimes inhospitable locales.
The “extreme weather events” causing such dislocations include “storms,
floods, and hurricanes”, that according to the UNECA, “have doubled from 200 to
400 during the past 20 years. In 2008 alone, these events have led to the
displacement of 20 million people worldwide” (2010, p. 1).
There are also “gradual environmental changes, such as
drought and desertification, which are especially prevalent in Africa”, and although
the scarcity of water causes problems for some, an overabundance of water
causes problems for others, a case that brings to mind the rime of the ancient
mariner: “water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink”. According to the UNECA, “rising sea levels,
are expected to have even more devastating impacts on the livelihood and
movement of people, both within countries and across international borders and
continents” (2010, p. 1). It is estimated
climate related disruptions can displace up to 200 million people by 2050, and
there are “projections that …worldwide migration will double in the next 40
years,” to approximately 405 million people (International Organization for
Migration (IOM) 2009).
The climate change signified by global warming is expected
to affect Africa in a significant manner. Meteorological records indicate that the
continent had already experienced approximately 0.7 degrees centigrade warming
in the 20th century, and that the trend will continue. In addition, sea levels are expected to rise,
and the frequency of extreme weather events will increase, rainfall will
decrease in the Sahel, and increase in East and Central Africa, more droughts
will occur in Southern Africa and West
Africa, complicated by desertification in the latter. In North Africa, the Nile Delta and the
Mediterranean coast will experience rising sea levels (UNECA, 2010, p. 1).
Nomadic populations have suffered gravely from the
deleterious effects of climate change due to “the prolonged drying trends since
the 1970s”, which caused deaths of people and livestock. There are also more tensions due to
competition for scarce grazing land, and decreased availability of water. Most importantly, social systems are changing,
compelled by human responses to environmental pressures (UNECA, 2010, p. 1).
Although I have taken up quite enough time, I haven’t even
scratched the surface. I want to take
the end of my presentation as the beginning: A call that echoes the UNECA in
asking that consider that these questions, embedded as they are in the climate-migration
nexus have significant implications for:
·
Human vulnerabilities. Migration can then be seen as an adaptive
mechanism that tires to cope with the risk of displacement, with considerable
threat to life and livelihood
·
Socioeconomic structures including
o
How gender is affected by migration climate
nexus
o
What community resources exist to enable people
to cope with change?
o
What are the effects of preexisting migration
patterns on gender relations?
o
What is the impact of climate change on population
movements?
·
Necessary policy changes, multilateral
agreements to seek sustainable methods to provide infrastructure, finance, and
support for ordinary people to access the resources they need to live their
lives with dignity, and in states of well-being (UNECA, 2010, p. 3).
References
Adepoju, “Aderanti Changing
Configurations of Migration in Africa”, Migration
Information Source, 2004. Accessed
March 3, 2012. http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=251
Anikulapo-Kuti,
Fela Water No Get Enemy lyrics Accessed March 3, 2012 http://www.lyricsoncall.com/lyrics/fela-kuti/water-no-get-enemy-lyrics.html
Collinson, Mark, Stephen Tollman,
Kathleen Kahn, and Samuel Clark, “Highly prevalent circular migration:
Households, mobility and economic status in rural South Africa” Paper prepared
for Conference on African Migration in Comparative Perspective, Johannesburg,
South Africa, 4-7 June, 2003. Accessed
February 29, 2012. http://pum.princeton.edu/pumconference/papers/3-Collinson.pdf
Gugliotta, Guy The Great Human Migration:
Why humans left their African homeland 80,000 years ago to colonize the world
Smithsonian magazine, July 2008, Accessed March 3, 2012 http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/human-migration.html#ixzz1o3guWnQ4
Okome, Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké and Bertrade Ngo
Ngijol-Banoum "Ìrìnkèrindò: An Idea Whose Time Has Come." Issue 1 - September 2002 (Inaugural
Issue). Accessed March 3, 2012. http://www.africamigration.com/
UNECA, “International Migration and
Development in Africa: The Migration and Climate Nexus,” 2010 Accessed February
29, 2012. http://www.uneca.org/acgd/Publications/Migration%20Report%202010.pdf
Zlotnik, Hania "International
Migration in Africa: An Analysis Based on Estimates of the Migrant Stock",
Migration Information Source,
September 2004. Accessed March 3, 2012 http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?ID=252
Madame Adjidjatou Barry Baud of GuineeActu.com kindly taped and sent the video of the presentation as well as some photos to me. Please click on the following links:
Forum international sur l'eau, les femmes et la migration
Album photos de
la 56e commission du statut de la femme, du 27.02 au 09.03 2012 "CSW"
http://guineeactu.info/galerie-videos/gallery.html?videoid=V9d_wNbQNbI
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