Jordan is one of the countries most affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria; with over 666,000 UNHCR registered refugees from Syria alone in the country.
Around 80 percent of Syrian refugees in Jordan are living in urban settings alongside the Jordanian population, rather than in camps, and a vast majority of this population lives in poverty. This is putting considerable strain on over-stretched services, and also means that refugee women and girls are often missing out on many specialized services available to refugees living in camps.
During times of emergency and in fragile settings affected by humanitarian crises, women and girls are at a heightened risk of violence. In Jordan, one of the countries most affected by the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria, the Arab Women’s Organization (AWO), a grantee of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women, runs two women’s centres to respond to the unmet needs of women and girl survivors of violence; serving both Syrian refugees and the local Jordanian community.
In these centres, Syrian refugee women and local Jordanian women alike receive access to support services including case management, legal consultations, referral services and skills training.
One of the activists at AWO’s centre in Mafraq, Rasha, leads workshops focused on increasing awareness of the forms and dynamics of gender-based violence. She explains that the community initially tends to understand and “recognize physical violence, but [violence] can take more than one form”.
Her classes include information on how to also identify emotional, economic and psychological violence. She meets women individually to discuss their questions and makes appropriate referrals to available services in the community.
Rasha explains that “many women are unaware of their rights and feel helpless about their situation. Such attitudes change when women participate in the centre’s activities”.
In these safe spaces, AWO has already provided 2,352 women with information about their rights, violence against women and the risks of early marriage; provided vocational and literacy skills training; and run awareness-raising programmes for men and boys about gender equality, gender roles, violence against women, and women’s rights.
Original source: UN Women
Published on 30 January 2019
