65 Karenni young refugees trained on prevention of gender based violence
Date:
Sixty-five girls and boys members of the ethnic group Karenni residing in Ban Mai Nai Soi refugee camp in Maehongson province, Thailand along the Thai-Burmese border joined an ending violence against women training.
The training held from 11 to 20 May, 2015, over the course of 10 days these boys and girls learn life skills in the camp setting including the three-day training dedicated for gender-based violence prevention and response services such as access to legal assistance, safe house and camp justice system available in the camp.
The activity, organized by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) Thailand in partnership with the Karenni National Women’s Organization (KNWO) during the camp’s school break. During the training, the young participants expressed their support to the HeForShe campaign and committed to end gender–based violence in their community as well as to always treat their female friends with respect.
According to a recent reproductive health assessment within nine refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border, over 20 per cent of refugee women had experienced some form of gender-based violence in their lifetime. The majority (75 per cent) of cases handled by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in the Ban Mae Nai Soi refugee camps are perpetrated by an intimate partner, over half of which include threats to kill or the use of a weapon.
The programme, supported by the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women, scales-up an already proven approach to service delivery for gender-based violence in humanitarian contexts: a survivor-centered, multi-sectoral approach to address the needs of survivors.
The programme seeks to engender greater technical capacity for, and ownership of, such services for the long-term among the displaced Karenni community by developing KNWO into the lead agency responses to gender-based violence and a technical resource hub. This is an extremely important shift for a camp population that has been forced to rely on direct service provision from NGOs for over fifteen years. By building KNWO’s technical and organizational competence for gender-based violence service provision, the programme thus has the opportunity to foster greater, long-term community commitment to sustaining quality gender responsive services for survivors in these communities.
For more information please contact:
Nuntana Tangwinit,
Project Focal Point
UN Women Asia and the Pacific
Email: Nuntana.tangwinit@unwomen.org