On Human Rights Day

Times of Malta reported in this article that migrant women have been moved from the Dar il-Liedna centre in Fgura to the men’s centre in Hal Far.

The reason behind this move was that the women’s centre was becoming overcrowded, and so a ‘temporary’ move was needed until space could be made available again in Dar il-Liedna or elsewhere. Security measures have been set in place in Hal Far:

In order to cater for this temporary arrangement, a boundary wall was constructed separating the men’s compound from the women’s compound, floodlights installed for extra security at night, and female security guards had also been deployed.

It all seems planned out and under control, right down to the women’s own ‘private sanitary facilities’, but one basic and essential action was forgotten: the women themselves '[were not] told why they needed to move to the area in Hal Far'. Why weren’t they told? They had every right to know - more of a right than anyone else, in fact. Perhaps this was another case of migrants being treated as objects to be transferred or pushed back, rather than as human beings with basic rights. We see this so often in news reports of governments bickering between themselves about who is going to take in the boat (they don’t recognise that that ‘boat’ contains individuals with families and hopes), or when a rescue vessel is detained onshore and prevented from rescuing the lives allowed to die at sea.

Maybe it was a case of the women being deemed as inferior in their intelligence. Women often are, and it isn’t just migrant women. How often have you (my female readers) delivered a powerful, sterling speech in front of a crowd and been criticised for it, not simply on the basis of its content, but on the idea that it wasn’t you who wrote it but a man? Women have brains, you know, and are far more intelligent than the majority of men in authority or who believe themselves to be occupying a position of authority. I know a teenage girl who put a vulgar man in his place in the comments section under a post online who was told by the same man to ‘shut up and go and play with [her] dolls’. This says a lot, and it definitely says more about the man than it does about her. The fact that he uses the words ‘play with your dolls’ addresses the issue of stereotyping and its tone hints at his idea of women’s inferiority. It might be this image of women as inferior that made those concerned in the transfer of these migrants feel it unnecessary to disclose the reason behind the move to the very women who were transferred.

Women are human beings. All forms of security could be put in place whilst these migrant women are in the men’s centre, but the fact remains that nobody, not even those in authority, thought to inform them. 

Where are their rights?