How To Help Refugees: Women and Girls

Fighting for women’s rights, safety and opportunities

Photo: ©UNHCR/Georgina Goodwin

In some societies, women and girls face discrimination and violence every day, simply because of their gender.

An everyday task, like collecting water or going to the toilet, can put them in danger of rape or abuse. In a time of displacement, these risks escalate – especially for women who are unaccompanied, pregnant, disabled or elderly.

Across the globe, UNHCR teams are working hard together with women and girls to help ease the struggle. This includes providing safe, private shelters, help with construction, fair food distribution systems and separate sanitation facilities. UNHCR teams also run programmes to help women gain leadership skills, get better access to education and improve the lives of themselves and their children.

 

Our supporters help fund

Shelter

that offers safety and privacy to women.

Sanitation facilities

that are separate from those used by men.

Education

so that more women can learn and fulfil their potential.

Refugee Women and girls in need of support

Widowed, displaced and traumatised

With so many men killed or recruited by armed groups in Nigeria, many families there are now headed up by women. They’ve often fled their homes and are struggling to survive in new communities – still traumatised by all that they’ve been through.

For women like these, UNHCR is providing support and counselling to help them recover and start to move on with their lives. We’re also helping them to build safe, secure livelihoods, so they can feed and clothe their children – without resorting to prostitution or other desperate measures.

Photo: ©UNHCR/Hélène Caux

Did you know that women and girls make up around 50% of any refugee, internally displaced or stateless population?

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