Women and girls make up nearly half of the 258 million people worldwide who have crossed international borders to escape danger or pursue the opportunity.
Amidst unprecedented levels of forced displacement – with 68.5 million people driven from their homes by the end of 2017 – about half of refugees, too, are women and girls.
With support from the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), UNFPA interviewed over 1,500 young refugees and migrants in Beirut, Cairo, Nairobi and Tunis, all major transit cities. Their responses provide insight into their reasons for leaving home; their hopes, expectations and lived realities; and their access to sexual and reproductive health services.
What becomes clear above all is that there’s no single story to tell about young people on the move. But for refugee and migrant women and girls, gender inequality is a common thread throughout these otherwise diverse realities, intersecting with the other vulnerabilities they face.
Gender inequality heightens risks for women and girls
Nearly half of women and girls on the move experience abuses and violations of their rights during their journeys, according to recent research from the DRC-supported Mixed Migration Centre (MMC).
Especially vulnerable are those who move irregularly, usually relying on smugglers to help them cross borders. And the risks redouble when women and girls travel without their families, as tended to be the case among those UNFPA interviewed in Cairo, Nairobi and Tunis.
With support from partners including Canada, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom, UNFPA is working to fill these gaps. In many hot spots around the world where people are displaced or in transit, UNFPA provides sexual and reproductive health care, dignity kits containing clothing and hygiene supplies for women and girls, and services to address gender-based violence.
UNFPA is also working to improve data and systematic evidence on migration. The collaboration with the DRC will continue, notably through the new data center on forced displacement, led by UNHCR and the World Bank Group and opening in Copenhagen in 2019.
Making sure women and girls on the move are counted is indispensable to protecting their rights.
Original source: UNFPA
Published on 5 October 2018
