Report from The Balkans
There is virtually no consideration of gender-based violence along the route to ensure safe environments, identify survivors and ensure that services are provided to them.
Protection risks for women, girls and other vulnerable groups are present at every stage of the European refugee migration; and at every point where risk could be mitigated, the opportunity to do so is squandered.
Refugee women and girls are often unable to access basic services in transit centers, including sexual and reproductive health care. The lack of clear information and inability to access interpreters, especially female interpreters, hinders women and girls from accessing services and leaves them vulnerable to smugglers and other opportunists. Government officials are inadequately equipped to manage this mobile, vulnerable population. Civil society organizations with relevant gender expertise are typically excluded from the places where they could be most helpful. Finally, the protection risks that women and girls face in all humanitarian crises are exacerbated here by the lack of meaningful legal options to seek asylum or other relief along the route.
“Homelessness among young people is a serious and complex issue. On any given night, the US National Runaway Switchboard estimates that there are approximately 1.3 million homeless, “throwaway,” and runaway youth living unsupervised on the streets, in abandoned buildings, in shelters, transitional housing, with friends, or with strangers. The problem of homeless youth should be viewed as a social justice issue with its underlying roots based in all forms of oppression (including racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, ageism), victimization, poverty and limited access to needed and necessary resources.” Janet Anderson Washington Coalition of Sexual Assault Programs
RUNAWAY & HOMELESS YOUTH AND RELATIONSHIP VIOLENCE TOOLKIT - Guidance and Materials for Practitioners
There is a serious risk that by failing to take into account the needs of women and girls the very policies that aim to address the issue of climate change may not only be less effective, but could inadvertently do harm by increasing gender inequalities.”
18 January 2016 - Climate change is finally being recognised as one of the most serious threats of the 21st Century. At the Paris climate conference (COP21) in December 2015, 195 countries adopted the first ever universal, legally binding global climate deal. The agreement sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C. It includes measures to reduce global carbon emissions and to support people in developing countries, who have been affected by climate change. However the agreement falls down in its lack of attention to gender equality.
Via IOM – International Organization for Migration
CNN, CBC Radio, Inquisitr, The Nation (Pakistan) and IRNA (Iran) reported the Europol’s claim that 10,000 migrant children who travelled to Europe are currently unaccounted for. http://www.iom.int/newsdesk/20160202 - 2 February 2016.
IOM - International Migration Law Information: The Protection of Unaccompanied Migrant Children
