Handbook on gender-responsive police services for women and girls subject to violence Image. Publication year. Number of pages. UNHCR is working to promote gender equality by using a rights- and community-based approach, by mainstreaming age, gender and diversity, and through targeted actions to empower women and girls in civil, political and economic areas.
The aim is to ensure that the rights of all persons of concern — whether male or female, young or old, or facing discrimination on account of disability, ethnicity, class, sexuality or other factors — are enjoyed equally. This Handbook is a tool to help achieve this. It replaces the UNHCR Guidelines on the Protection of Refugee Women and incorporates comments on a provisional edition, issued in June , from a range of partners and users in the field.
Exhausted and uncertain about the future, a line of Syrian women and a young girl queue to register at an impromptu registration centre set up by UNHCR and partners just outside Arsal in November Photo: M. Alarmingly, this abuse is not only perpetrated by male residents of the camp but can come at the hands of national migration administration or humanitarian staff. A report showed that girls were sexually exploited by humanitarian agency staff and security forces in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, yet this problem has still not been stamped out.
A French soldier was recently accused of child abuse in Central African Republic. Recently, allegations were also made that hundreds of girls have been raped and sold in a Nigerian IDP camp. Imagine finding yourself in a place that was supposed to give you refuge but ends up causing you more fear than the violence that forced you to leave your home? Non-governmental organization Caritas Lebanon says that half of the Syrian female refugees who sought aid from their workers reported having been sexually abused.
And shockingly, Caritas says, many of these women reported wishing that they could return to Syria immediately, despite the ongoing dangers there that caused them to flee. Sex crimes are a serious problem because they violate personal freedoms, traumatize the victim, and often lead to undesired pregnancy, unsafe abortions, complications tied to early childbearing age, or even death.
Astoundingly, the reason for the deplorable situation of violence against displaced women that is still ongoing in camps is simply inadequate implementation of a range of existing policies that aim to protect and prevent women from assaults.
As far back as , UN Member States committed to taking steps to make the world safe and equitable for women. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women stipulates that states should employ necessary steps toward eradicating the prostitution and trafficking of women.
This norm should be applied to protect women in refugee and IDP camps from assaults such as those that took place in Nigeria and Libya. A doctor and patient in a Mogadishu camp. Moreover, the Declaration notes that states have an obligation to protect women, including refugees, and enable them to enjoy the given rights.
The UNHCR strategy tackling sexual and gender-based violence SGBV focused on improving three areas crucial for providing protection for potential and actual victims.
The first area that seeks improvement is data collection and analysis, which has to be supported by research projects conducted in consultation with field offices and with full participation of stakeholders.
This would help to accurately map the existing risks of SGBV and obstacles that the stakeholders encounter in accessing the protection services. The second challenging area was found to be at the management level. Moreover, this strategy stressed the need for allocation of sufficient resources for meeting the long term needs of survivors of SGBV.
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