Refugee and asylum-seeking women mark 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence. © UNHCR Cyprus
With drawings and messages painted on stones, a group of refugee and asylum-seeking women chose to mark the 16 Days of Activism against Sexual Gender Based Violence (SGBV). Many of them being survivors of SGBV themselves, they called for an end to violence against women and girls through messages of love, peace and equality.
“It is important to raise awareness about SGBV. It is prevalent in many of the countries that we come from. Take for example, FGM [female genital mutilation] which is forced on girls and women or forced marriage. They say it’s a tradition, but this is discrimination. This must stop,” said *Adama from Sierra Leone who arrived in Cyprus three years ago and recently received refugee status.
Adama* with some ten women meet twice a month at an NGO space in Larnaca to discuss their daily challenges, but also to feel they belong and get a sense of togetherness. Dancing, singing, painting or discussing a topic are some of the activities they do. They are from various African countries including Cameroon, DR Congo, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone. Many of them are single mothers with little children. They are also survivors of sexual gender- based violence. Some have gone through female genital mutilation, others have been forced into unwanted marriage and been sexually abused, others are victims of trafficking. They all wish to lead a normal life and have dreams for themselves and their children.
“We find these sessions very useful,” Adama told UNHCR. “We do activities for our well-being, how to cope with stress, how to release it. We’re learning from each other’s experiences. Before, I used to stay at home, isolated, but since I’ve started mingling with the other girls, my life has changed.”
The idea of creating this community group was coined by Manuela Borni, a Psychosocial Support Officer working at the Cyprus Refugee Council under a UNHCR funded project. Manuela has been providing individual psychosocial support to these vulnerable women and realized the need for bringing together women with similar experiences and challenges in an informal setting to strengthen and empower them. “We meet not to talk about the problems they are facing, and their traumas. It’s about doing other activities and being together and remembering how to be themselves again, to create a feeling of normal life,” Manuela said.
UNHCR team met with the group, listened to their concerns, and participated in the drawing activity the women group had planned to mark the 16 Days against SGBV campaign. Most women are asylum seekers and spoke about the challenges they face in Cyprus, most pressing of which is the housing problem. While they are all grateful to have a roof over their head, the hotel accommodation many are referred to sometimes falls shorts of their basic needs. A single mother of a newly born resides at a hotel for almost a year and spoke about her difficulties in not being able to cook at the hotel. While she lives on junk food, she’s concerned about her newly born “My baby will soon have to eat cooked food,” she says.
A young woman, an asylum-seeker, who has been in Cyprus for three years shared her experience in working long hours at a restaurant, as a kitchen helper, without extra pay. On top of that she had to face sexual harassment by her employer. She endured the abusive treatment for three months and ever since she has not been able to find a job.
Despite the odds, they don’t lose hope. They derive hope and courage through initiatives, such as this led by Manuela.
UNHCR grants funding to the Cyprus Refugee Council to enable the provision of professional psychosocial counselling to vulnerable individuals, including survivors of SGBV. UNHCR also advocates for the inclusion of specific programs for women, especially ones facilitating access to employment and childcare for women, in the calls of the European Funds Unit as well as in the national integration strategy.
*Name changed for protection reasons.
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