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Women and displacement: facing up to hardship
01-03-2010 Photo gallery
The ICRC is using this year’s International Women's Day to call attention to displaced women. The purpose is to give a voice to women who have responded actively to their plight, thereby revealing their strength and resilience to overcome appalling suffering and ultimately emerge stronger.
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Imagine the pain of being uprooted by conflict from the safety of your home and family, like these villagers were in Georgia, near South Ossetia in 2008. Suddenly, even the old and infirm had to carry all the burden of ensuring their own survival.
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Separation from their families and communities deprives women of the support networks they rely on for food and resource sharing.
An ICRC delegate interviews a woman in an IDP camp in Pakistan to help her restore contact with her family. -
Life is a daily struggle for displaced women in central Somalia’s region of Galgadud. They have to travel long distances to find water, food, firewood, medicines and other essentials.
Working with the Somali Red Crescent Society, the ICRC distributes food, shelter material, kitchen sets, clothes, mats, blankets and jerrycans to thousands of people in the country. It also provides water and primary health and medical care. -
A woman watches over her children at a camp for people displaced by violence on Mindanao island, in the Philippines.
The burden of ensuring their own survival and that of their families, compounded by the trauma of their loss, takes a huge toll on displaced women.
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Life in a camp or IDP community may offer displaced women relative safety. But living in close proximity with hundreds of other people curtails privacy and may expose the women to health problems, including a greater risk of sexual violence.
Women consult a health care centre built by the ICRC in Arkoum camp, which shelters over 10,000 displaced people along Chad’s border with Sudan. The centre, which receives basic drugs and supplies from the organization, provides general health services and obstaetric care, and administers vaccinations.
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The separation from her husband can restrict a woman's ability to fend for herself, if it is culturally unacceptable for her to be seen in public unaccompanied by a male relative.
A woman at an IDP camp in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province fetches water.
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When a woman is displaced, the trauma of her experience, conflict-related injury or sexual violence will inevitably increase her need for health care. Yet displacement can prevent her access to quality health care at a time when she needs it most.
In remote conflict-prone regions of Colombia, the ICRC helps displaced people, including women, gain access to health care by directing them to adequate health facilities.
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A woman prepares a meal at a camp in Gardasin in northern Iraq that shelters some 1,000 displaced people, three quarters of them women and children.
Displaced women seldom speak openly about their specific needs. This means that such needs often go unmet. To ensure that women are neither ignored nor exploited, the ICRC is increasingly involving them in planning, implementing and evaluating its programmes.
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Mariam lost everything when she fled fighting in her village in Darfur. Now back in the village, she is growing crops, using seed and tools supplied by the ICRC, and piecing her life back together. If she had her way, her village would get a school for its children.
When displaced women voice their concerns directly, their views and priorities often differ from those of the men who purport to speak for them. Women’s insight strengthens the ability to respond to the needs of the population in general.
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A woman displaced by fighting in North Kivu receives food distributed by the ICRC.
Women are responsible for meeting their families' food needs. It is crucial to consult them about the type and quantity of food distributed, and the location of food distribution points, for safety purposes and easy access. Failure to do so may adversely affect the quality, efficiency and efficacy of assistance.
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This woman and her family lost their home in Grozny in 2000 when they fled the fighting there. In 2004 they returned to Grozny. Sole breadwinner, she runs a mattress-making business to support her family of six, her husband having been disabled in a car accident.
Deprived of traditional sources of income, displaced women are forced to adopt new roles – often defying social expectations – to earn money and put food on the table.
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The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has forced Rosa, 25, to flee her home repeatedly and claimed the lives of her parents and two brothers. Having survived her ordeal, Rosa works as a labourer to support, not just herself, but an orphaned 15-year-old as well.
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Rocío (left) and her sister-in-law fled their home in the conflict-prone Putumayo department of Colombia after they received threats from an armed group. They are living off the profit they make from rearing chicken as they wait to be resettled.
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Hasniyye fled her home in a refugee camp in Lebanon to another camp when fighting broke out. Despite the painful loss of her son and her husband, she tries to find the strength to go on.
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This woman’s frail appearance belies the strength that has evidently helped her survive the hardship she has endured in being displaced, along with some 150,000 people, by the fighting in Yemen. She is one of the thousands of recipients of relief aid distributed to displaced people by the ICRC, supported by the Yemen Red Crescent Society.
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A Bedouin woman and her family who lost all their belongings as a result of settler violence struggle to survive in a camp near a waste-water treatment plant in Gaza.
Displaced women have to exploit available resources in harsh environments to find food and shelter for themselves and their dependents.
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