Considering Gender in Border Management

In marking International Women’s Day today, we have the opportunity to celebrate achievements made towards gender equality and we’re obliged to take stock of areas where further progress is still necessary. 

Although half of all people on the move globally are women, border management is a field still dominated by men at both the operational and managerial levels. [1]  In many countries, the duties of a border guard are considered a man’s job; women and people of diverse gender identities and/or expressions may feel discouraged from applying to work at border agencies and men are often favoured for leadership positions. Without diverse views and considerations, border management does not meet the needs of people of all gender groups.

Migration is a gendered process. From the motives for migrating, safety along the way and the use of transnational migration networks, to the opportunities available at destination, gender affects every step of the migration journey. Taking migrants’ lived identities as a primary consideration, gender mainstreaming is a strategy that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) uses to assess the gendered implications of all planned actions, including policies, programming, and legislation. IOM is committed to promote gender-sensitive and human rights-based approaches for migration management to ensure gender equality and diversity inclusion in the design, decision-making and implementation of policies and programmes in all spheres, and at all stages of migration governance. IOM aims to contribute to gender equality and reach migrants of all groups to make sure that existing inequality is not perpetuated. 

But what does this mean in practice? 

Over the last few years, gender mainstreaming has been increasingly applied in Immigration and Border Management (IBM) projects at IOM. In 2021, 65.6% of new IBM projects had a gender component, in contrast to only 9% in 2017. Within this initially limited number of projects, many only featured women as vulnerable migrant groups or cooperated with women’s organizations as implementing partners. As gender mainstreaming has become more prevalent, it has also become more comprehensive. For example, many of IOM’s new projects develop staff capacities for conducting gender analysis, include gender-responsive budgeting, integrate gender in monitoring and evaluation, support policies to address gender-based discrimination and harassment, and improve gender- and age-disaggregated data collection. 

Women’s specific needs when crossing borders cannot be marginalized when, globally, on average, migrants are 48% female [2].  This proportion is notably higher, at 52%, [3]  in the South-Eastern Europe, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (SEEECA) region, and IOM is actively working with these countries’ border services to better integrate gender perspectives in their everyday work

A comprehensive training course on Gender Mainstreaming in Border Management was conducted through two online sessions last year, with the aim of enhancing the capacity of IOM staff who work in IBM in the SEEECA region and giving them the tools to promote gender mainstreaming in projects and among partners and beneficiaries. Today, IOM would like to highlight the work of some of these colleagues and the feedback that they’ve received from beneficiaries. 

Gender-responsive training has been an important component of an ongoing project aiming to improve border security at selected Turkish airports. This project demonstrates how gender issues need to be emphasized in diverse capacity building activities. As one of the main roles of customs officials is to analyse travellers for possible safety risks, using a gender-sensitive lens in passenger control procedures can demonstrate gaps in the risk assessments 

performed during customs checks. Furthermore, including gender in training programmes for border security staff can ensure that gender-based discrimination is averted at all levels. 

In North Macedonia another project from the IBM portfolio, which includes migrant protection and assistance activities at Temporary Transit Centres for migrants, as well as humanitarian border management capacity building for the national border police, has entered its third phase. By building on a foundation of responsiveness to the needs of migrants in vulnerable positions, the focus of this project has extended beyond introducing gender mainstreaming, to applying it in more consistent and systematic ways. 

For example, one workshop conducted with the participation of border police officials on the identification and referral mechanism of migrants in vulnerable situations, including trafficking in human beings, dedicated particular attention to the gender and human rights approach. A human rights law professor and former police academy educator spoke about the nexus between migrant protection, gender, and human rights in a legal context, complemented by her operational experience and concrete examples relevant to border police duties. 

By fostering dialogue on the topic of gender mainstreaming within border management, both examples provided IOM the opportunity to hear directly from border officials about the specific issues which affect them. 

Border police officials in North Macedonia particularly noted the importance of cultural differences intersecting with gender, which further compound pre-existing vulnerabilities. They expressed their interest in cultural mediation tools and greater knowledge-sharing on cultural differences in order to better asses, and respond, to migrants’ needs in a more timely and effective manner. 

Similarly, in Turkey, explicitly including gender considerations during trainings gave border staff of all genders a platform to discuss their concerns. For instance, the lack of women’s bathrooms at certain border checkpoints for both staff and migrants was an issue that was raised and addressed for the first time.

Through initiatives such as these, IOM is making quantifiable progress in its goal of addressing gender inequality for migrants and professionals working in the field of migration, by being committed to the promotion of gender mainstreaming and learning from beneficiaries at all levels. 
 

[1] DCAF (2020) Gender and Border Management – in Gender and Security Sector Reform Toolkit https://www.dcaf.ch/tool-6-border-management-and-gender 
[2] UN DESA (2020) International Migrant Stock https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-st…;
[3] UN DESA (2020) International Migrant Stock https://www.un.org/development/desa/pd/content/international-migrant-st…