Refugees Crisis are Humanitarian Crisis // Annahita Mahdavi

Credit for the picture: Google Images

We have been hearing the phrase “Refugee Crises” a lot in the news recently.  We have witnessed some of the most horrifying events with those refugees looking for a safe place and running for their lives. However, the more fitted phrase for this catastrophe should be “Humanitarian Crisis”.  Those innocence people who overnight became refugees are first and foremost human beings and the crisis are affecting all of us not just refugees. 

Many of these refugees are women. Women who lost their husbands and fathers and are left with nothing to take care of their children. They are silently suffering with the impact of this horrifying humanitarian disaster. Just among the Syrian refugees, there are about 2 million Syrian women refugees displaced in camps in countries such as Lebanon, Iraq, and Turkey. The women have been victims of sexual assaults, poverty, malnutrition and more. One thing we need to remember is, when a women refugees is impacted with all these atrocities, it is not only her, rather; her children as well who are being victims of the same crisis.  Many reports from the camps, although anecdotally, (but never the less) indicate that many of these women’s testimonials include the experiences they had of sexual assault, rape and human trafficking. This is exactly why the phrase” refugee Crisis” is an injustice to this situation. This is not just crisis of finding a new land and safety, this is also crisis of potential mass human trafficking with the most venerable population of our times.

The international organization are working towards placement and resolution, however, the aid and assistant is not enough and does not include intense prevention measure and methods to protect these women and their children of all these types of  secondary traumas they are suffering from. There is need for more intervention and more strategies to be implemented in the refugee camps. We cannot allow this crisis to continue. It is our duty as human beings to intervene and do as much advocacy as we can regardless of the field we are in, but most important for those of us in the field of social work and psychology. These days the slogan “women’s rights are human rights, and human rights are women’s right”, is a very popular slogan. Well, the loudness of our slogan will not create protection, intervention and prevention programs, rather practicing what preach and implementing it for those who need it the most will.

Written by: Annahita Mahdavi