Last month, while visiting Nairobi, Kenya to train HIAS local staff on resettling vulnerable refugees, I met “Sylvia”, a refugee living in a HIAS safehouse on the outskirts of the city. For refugees like Sylvia, who have exceptionally serious protection concerns, safehouses provide critical short-term security while they await resettlement—often their only option for long-term safety and freedom from persecution.
What Does Restoring Dignity Look Like? By Sarah Baradaran, Refugee Policy Intern, HIAS-DC Jan 26, 2015 Visiting with African refugees in Nairobi, Kenya. (HIAS) Kenya is home to more refugees than any other country in Africa. Hundreds of thousands of refugees reside there in camps and urban slums, and originate from various African conflicts of […]
Triple Jeopardy: Protecting At-Risk Refugee Survivors of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, a new HIAS-authored report, addresses the barriers to protective services facing SGBV survivors.
Every year since 1991, the 16 days between the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (November 25) and International Human Rights Day (December 10) is marked by the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign, an international initiative created by the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University and now joined by thousands of organizations around the world.
In December 2012, the Kenyan government announced that it intended to send the more than 100,000 refugees living in Nairobi and other cities into refugee camps. The government hoped to eliminate a terrorist threat. But at what cost to the refugees themselves?