With the help of HIAS Greece, Ovileya, a transgender refugee woman, won her case in court to have her gender and name changed on her identification papers.
The Regional Safe Spaces Network of the Americas helps organizations working with refugees in Latin America to provide services for victims of sexual and gender-based violence.
These new tools provide practical guidance to frontline humanitarian workers on how to integrate gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls throughout their programs.
“Creating these training materials was a three-year process, and the results reflect all that we learned along the way. I hope that anyone who works with refugees will consider using them to improve their outreach to survivors of SGBV,” Levitan said.
In August 2013, when she was just 24, Joseline* fled her home country of the Democratic Republic of Congo after surviving a brutal act of sexual violence perpetrated by six unknown male attackers. Now 27, she is getting a new lease on life thanks to the help she received from HIAS.
“We were glad to be trained together with the NGO members,” said one man, a refugee community leader from the Goz Amir camp. “We learned from them and they learned from us. Now we are aware of our rights." He was one of the more than 50 participants in a HIAS workshop on protecting older refugees from sexual and gender-based violence.
A new report released by UNHCR calls attention to the growing plight of women in Central America and the forces that are causing them to flee from their home countries in ever increasing numbers.
Winnie Gacheru, director of psychosocial programs at HIAS Kenya, describes working with some of the world's most vulnerable refugees in this short video.