Wong Maye-E/AP
R, 13, covers her face with her headscarf in her tent in Kutupalong refugee camp in Bangladesh. The rape of Rohingya women by Myanmar’s security forces has been sweeping and methodical.
A torrent of geopolitical conflicts has triggered the largest refugee crisis in history, uprooting more than 70 million people worldwide, according to the United Nations. Among the women and girls fleeing their war-torn homes, many were subjected to violence of a different form: 14 million, or one in five, experienced sexual exploitation or abuse during a humanitarian emergency.
The collapse of economic and social structures that ensues breeds this rampant gender-based violence (GBV). Women are overwhelmingly, but not exclusively, the victims. The U.N. estimates that thousands of Rohingya women who escaped from Myanmar to Bangladesh reported being raped by Burmese soldiers. For many women, the assaults continue in refugee camps—at the hands of family members and even aid workers. Yet, only 0.12 percent of global emergency aid is spent on prevention and response measures—which leaves about $2 for each at-risk woman or girl.
Democratic Representative Grace Meng of New York wants the United States to play a stronger role in fighting GBV and has introduced the Safe from the Start Act, a bill that would close funding gaps for a State Department program that develops strategies to curb sexual violence in conflicts. “Humanitarian agencies are often under-equipped to address GBV specifically or to close gaps between services and accountability,” Meng said at a recent Capitol Hill briefing. “This bill will ensure quality services for survivors from the very onset of these emergencies.”
The proposal would mandate congressional oversight of the program and aims to reduce the risk of GBV by investing in critical medical services and innovative, grassroots campaigns led by local women. Through this initiative, the U.S. Agency for International Development provides important funding for global agencies like the International Rescue Committee (IRC) that work with local NGOs that are already operating in affected regions.
The IRC has implemented “Building Local, Thinking Global in 2016,” a three-year project that works with community activists and feminist groups from East Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to assess the unique risks that women face in disasters and to develop effective tools to deal with those situations. Last year, Congress allocated $18.6 million to Safe from the Start projects. If Meng’s bill passes, that sum will be the new annual funding baseline for the program.
The organization develops relationships with residents and local NGOs, which is crucial to reaching young victims of abuse. “Getting adolescent girls to talk to you can be like pulling teeth,” Helena Minchew, IRC’s adviser for gender equality advocacy said at the forum. “So we absolutely need to build trust and talk to people in the community.”
Women refugees form an integral part of the organization’s GBV response team, working as interpreters and social workers. Monica, a South Sudanese refugee who now lives in Northern Uganda, works closely with the IRC to teach accountability practices to the boys and men in her village and to set up a sexual exploitation and abuse task force.
But an effective GBV program is difficult to implement quickly without substantially more money. In conflict zones, most funding goes to food, shelter, and medical services, which aid groups prioritize over reacting to violence against women. Amany Qaddour, the regional director of Syria Relief and Development (SRD), said that her group couldn’t implement any GBV systems until 2015, four years after the Syrian civil war began—and many sexual-abuse victims had already suffered permanent physical and psychological injuries. “We were powerless to change a structure that defined [resources for] gender-based violence as not necessarily lifesaving,” Qaddour said.
Meanwhile, Meng has already introduced two other human rights bills this year to improve safety and sanitation conditions for women in refugee camps and migrant children at the southern border. Currently pending in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, her latest bill has bipartisan support: Of the 20 co-sponsors, 12 are Democrats and eight are Republicans. The bill also has considerable support from key international aid groups like CARE, which may help improve its prospects.
