by PATRICIA FERNANDES DA SILVA
Female refugee at a camp in Harmanli, Bulgaria PHOTO/D. Kashavelov for UNHCR on Flickr, under Creative Commons
The photos that won this year’s Pulitzer prizestell a powerful story of massive migration from Syria and Iraq, yet the images fail to reveal how this ongoing tragedy impacts women and girls.
And while concentrating on the events in Europe, the media by and large has ignored the heavy burden that women bear in the many regions toxic with violent conflict.
For the first time since World War II, the number of refugees and displaced persons has surpassed 50 million, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The High Commissioner also emphasizes that women and children are those in the majority and the ones that face the greatest dangers.
During the first Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, these women and girls should assume their proper place at the center of world concern.
The summit brings together governments, U.N. agencies, private donors and nonprofit organizations. These are all important stakeholders. If they listen to the mothers, daughters and sisters who are suffering in conflict situations not of their own making, we can hope that something can be done for women such as Hala.
The 23-year-old woman from Aleppo, the Syrian city at the center of recent fighting, is among 40 refugee women and girls in northern Europe interviewed by Amnesty International.
Hala described the steady stream of invitations to transactional sex that she gets as a refugee. “At the hotel in Turkey, one of the men working with the smuggler, a Syrian man, said if I sleep with him, I will not pay or pay less,” she is quoted as saying. “Of course I said no, it was disgusting. The same happened in Jordan to all of us.”
‘She Said No, She’s Stranded Now’
She added: “My friend who came with me from Syria ran out of money in Turkey, so the smuggler’s assistant offered her to have sex with him [in exchange for a place on a boat]. She of course said no, and couldn’t leave Turkey. She’s stranded there.”
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