UNHCR and partners celebrate the role of women refugees for International Women’s Day

Mahama Camp, RWANDA – Today, International Women’s Day is a day to celebrate women and their achievements all over the world, but it is also an occasion to remember the struggles and hardships many women face, especially those who have been forced from their homes like the women refugees of Mahama, Gihembe, and Rwanda’s four other refugee camps.

Talking to women refugees really reminds us all of the challenges, big and small, so many refugee women have to overcome. UNHCR’s new High Commissioner, Filippo Grandi, marked today’s events by recalling that “gender equality is not just a fundamental human right, it is also necessary for a peaceful and sustainable world.”
The protection of women and girls is a central pillar of UNHCR’s mandate, and in Rwanda UNHCR has prioritized inclusiveness but also proactive measures to promote gender equality in its programming. This has included a range of actions from promoting gender balance in community leadership structures, to hiring and training of female teachers, supporting girls’ sports, and ensuring continuous dialogue with refugees of all backgrounds to tailor programs to the varying needs and capacities of all individual refugees.
UNHCR is currently undertaking a large scale gender assessment to better understand the different needs and capacities of refugees living in Rwanda, and this will feed into UNHCR’s plans to focus on self-reliance for Congolese refugees in 2016 and beyond, to reduce their dependency on humanitarian assistance. Most Congolese refugees have lived in refugee camps in Rwanda for over a decade – some for two decades, or even their entire lives. Many of these refugees are women raising families on their own, struggling to survive despite dwindling support from donors.
It is time for Congolese refugees to be mainstreamed into national and UN development programs, in line with Government policy and the One UN Development Assistance Plan. Women refugees will play a key role in the roll-out and implementation of the new Livelihoods strategy for Rwandan refugees which is currently under development, because self-reliance is also a key factor in achieving gender equality.