So far this year, more than 644,000 refugees and migrants have arrived in Europe by sea. Of these, just over a third – 34 per cent – are women and children who are particularly vulnerable to abuse as they transit Europe, UNHCR said.

“Refugee and migrant children moving in Europe are at heightened risk of violence and abuse, including sexual violence, especially in overcrowded reception sites, or in many locations where refugees and migrants gather, such as parks, train stations, bus stations and roadsides,” UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming told a news conference in Geneva.

“From testimony and reports we have received there have been instances of children engaging in survival sex to pay smugglers to continue their journey, either because they have run out money, or because they have been robbed,” she added.

Fleming noted that unaccompanied children can be particularly vulnerable as they lack the protection and care of an adult. They may also be placed in detention in some countries, including with adults, posing great risks to them, she said.

Refugee and migrant women travelling on their own are also at heightened risk as they move through Europe, sometimes at night, along insecure routes or staying in places that lack basic security. Many reception centres are overcrowded, and lack adequate lighting and separated spaces for single women and families with children.

UNHCR is appealing to all concerned national authorities in Europe to take measures to ensure the protection of women and girls, including through providing adequate and safe reception facilities.

The refugee agency is also calling to all authorities, as a matter of urgency, to find alternatives to the detention of children. UNHCR and partners are working to prevent and address immediately family separations, as women and girls on their own face enhanced risks.

Together with partners, UNHCR are working with authorities to ensure access to information, to enhance the identification of persons with specific needs, including unaccompanied children, and their referral to appropriate services, to provide psychosocial support and to enhance reception areas, including through the provision of safe spaces.

She still relives the trauma of September 10, when an unidentified vessel rammed into the smuggler’s trawler that was carrying Doaa and more than 500 other people, including many women and children, who dreamed of reaching Europe. The vessel quickly sank off the east coast of Malta; there were just 11 survivors.

The young woman, who showed tremendous courage in saving one baby and trying to keep another alive during the three days she spent in the water before being rescued by a Greek vessel and taken to Crete, says she is even more determined to reach Sweden where she has relatives.

But her resilience and determination to survive and to try and save others has inspired many people in Greece, including the local authorities in the Crete port of Chania, were she was taken after being rescued by a Greek Navy helicopter. People there believe that Doaa should be given Greek nationality for her bravery.

“What she did – suppressing the instinct for self-preservation and trying to save two babies – is astounding,” said Dimitris Nikolakakis, a senior public health and welfare official in Chania.

Doaa’s story begins in the south-western Syria town of Dera’a, where she was born and grew up in a family of nine. But as the war escalated, her family decided to flee to nearby Jordan in 2012 before making their way to Egypt. Doaa was just 16 at the time.

She spent two-and-a-half years in the northern Egyptian resort of Gamasa, where she worked as a seamstress to help supplement the money her father made as a barber. But Doaa believed there was no future in Syria or Egypt and so she decided, like thousands of others, to try and reach Europe by boat despite the news of ever more horrendous sinkings and deaths on the high seas.

“Three thousand people have drowned so far this year in the Mediterranean. It is unbelievable that such tragic loss of life takes place on Europe’s doorstep,” said Laurens Jolles, UNHCR’s regional representative for southern Europe.

But Doaa and her fiancé, Bassem, went ahead and found a place on a trawler that was used to smuggle refugees and migrants from Egypt to southern Europe. Four days after the trawler set sail from Damietta in the Nile Delta, it was stopped by another boat. “The people on it asked us to stop. They threw pieces of metal and wood at us and swore at our captain,” recalled Doaa. “Our boat refused to stop and they circled us and rammed us. They waited until we had sunk and they left.”

The trawler sank in minutes. Most of the passengers were below decks. “Some people grabbed ropes hanging from the ship’s masts to save themselves. Some were cut to pieces by the propeller when they fell into the water. Most drowned,” Doaa said. “We were from Sudan, Africa, Egypt, Syria, some from Libya, some Palestinians from Gaza.”

Doaa found herself in the water with 100 or so survivors, shocked and bewildered at the murderous behaviour they had just seen. She grabbed a life belt and looked around for her fiancé. She realized he must have gone down with the boat.

For three days, the survivors floated in the Mediterranean without food or drinking water. They were at the mercy of the winds and currents – and gradually they started to die. “Some people died of stress; others willed it to happen,” Doaa noted. “One man took off his own life vest and sank. Some died of fear, some of cold. The weather was rough. It was cloudy and cold.”

People began to ask Doaa to take care of their children. A man with his one-year-old granddaughter handed over the child and Doaa put it on her life belt. “Then a mother came with an 18-month-old baby girl and a six-year-old boy and asked me to take care of the baby and I kept it too. I watched the grandfather and the mother and her son die.”

Doaa said the goal of saving the two babies increased her determination to survive. She was rescued by a Liberian-flagged vessel some 90 nautical miles south-west of Crete on September 13. “The one year-old baby died just as we were about to be picked up” and taken to Chania. The other child rallied and recovered.

UNHCR’s Jolles said Doaa’s ordeal and the number of people who drowned was yet another sign of the need to do more to resolve the problem of people risking all to reach Europe. “There is an urgent need for a joint European response, based on collaboration among states and European Union support,” he said.

“For the moment, an efficient rescue operation needs to be maintained aimed at saving lives, in absence of other available alternatives,” Jolles stressed in a clear reference to the Italian Navy’s operation which has rescued 150,000 people at sea since late October 2013, including many people in need of international protection.

Doaa, meanwhile, waits alone to hear what her future will bring after such a costly journey. She was recently moved from Chania to the Greek mainland and is staying with a Greek family as the authorities try to locate her family in Sweden.

Source: UNHCR. John Psaropoulos in Athens, Greece contributed to this story

When I was first offered the practicum at Alyunanaia, my first thought was to revive a non–intrusive observation I did a bit less than a year ago on Athenian street prostitution and turn it into a field research backed with proper interviews and questionnaires. Nonetheless, I was strictly advised by my inside source not to do so for security reasons. Therefore, the aim of this field report was developed into looking at various aspects of the issue of racism and racial relations in several Athenian strip clubs by utilizing several research methods, mainly interviews and observations.

A Hopeful Sojourner: My Inside Source

I met Blessing (pseudo name), a former sex worker and a stripper, after a Sunday Mass at a church she regularly attends. One of the church’s clergymen—an energetic public speaker who was able to keep the congregation drawn to him throughout the two-hour Mass I attended—was kind enough to introduce us to each other, so that she would help me with my endeavor to comprehend the racial dynamics of her previous workplace.

Blessing is from a big African family of eleven. Like many of her hometown peers who endured abject poverty, she grew up hearing stories about how good life in Europe was. Finally, her dream materialized when she was in her early twenties; she came to Athens on a tourist visa that she overstayed till she legalized her residency status later on. I was shocked to know that her visa did cost her a sizable sum of 40 thousand EUR that she spent four years paying off.

Burdened by this huge debt, Blessing was desperate to find a job the minute she stepped foot in Greece. As she told me, she was very afraid that if she didn’t pay back the money on time “someone [(of those who got her the visa]) is gonna hurt [her] family.” Hence, she had no other choice but to work in the sex industry. She got her first job as a stripper at a club in a quiet town that is approximately three hours away from Athens. There, as she told me, she faced a fair share of racism and harassment. She was sometimes singled out by some customers because of her color. She even got physically harassed by a drunken teenager who thought that it was funny to call her a “slave” in front of everyone. The incident, regrettably, went unpunished.

To make ends meet, besides performing at the club, Blessing slept with customers procured, or at least approved, by her bosses. Although she needed the money really bad, Blessing did not sleep with just whomever. She agreed to bed only those whom she “kinda” liked. But, in our second session, her previous statement appeared to me as self-compensation in disguise, for when I inquired about the number of customers she slept with prior to quitting the business, she answered: “more than I can remember.”

Dangerous Encounters

Blessing gained more experience and insight on the business, as she, throughout her nine-year career, worked for as many as ten strip clubs. Her experience left her convinced that even the police, who are supposed to treat everyone equally, “view all black [women] as prostitute[s].” For instance, once, after quitting stripping, she had to go to the police station to deliver a passport to friend of hers who had been detained because she did not have an identity document on her when stopped by the police. When Blessing arrived with her friend’s passport, one of the policemen asked her in English about what she did for a living. Before she got the chance to answer, another policeman replied in Greek: “she is black; she works on the street[s].” When she protested the man’s answer, he firmly told her: “you are black; that is your job.” Such an incident does reflect the haunting racial tension in a once-hospitable country that, according to Amnesty, witnessed “a dramatic rise in the number of racially motivated attacks throughout 2012,” as Russia Today reports.

Away from the common scrutiny of law enforcement, even when the lights are dimmer and people are intoxicated into friendliness, even glamorous places of pleasure can somehow be hostile to a black folk. Blessing informed me that most black strippers are disempowered by three basic practices that are common in her ex workplace. First, no strip club would usually hire more than three black strippers. Most of them hire one or two. Second, customers generally treat white strippers noticeably better than they do treat black strippers, because customers usually desire the former more, an assertion that can explain Blessing’s first claim. Third, usually, white strippers—mostly eastern European—by virtue of their color and language, stick together and spend most of their unaccompanied time in the club in groups. On the other hand, black strippers, spend most of their time alone, as they mostly find no other fellow black stripper to spend time with when unescorted. Expectedly, this makes them feel lonely and vulnerable. When visiting several strip clubs in Athens, many of the aforementioned claims were verifiable through interviews, casual talks, and observations.

Glamorous Encounters

In order to verify the claims put forward by Blessing, I have visited four different known strip clubs in Athens. Three of these clubs did indeed provide me with an insight on the subject matter of this field report. The first place I visited was something between a bar and a brothel. Upon entering, one could see the escort girls sitting at the bar eyeing newcomers. The girls offer either their company at the table or sexual services in special rooms on the second floor of the bar. There was only one black girl sitting by herself at the bar next to a couple of white girls conversing together two chairs away from her. No contact between the black girl and her white counterparts was observed. During my conversation with the girl, she seemed to be very secretive about her country of origin. Despite the fact that her accent clearly indicated the part of Africa she is from, she insisted that she is from Latin America.  No matter how hard I tried to steer the conversation away from the casual business and pricing talk, the girl kept a firm attitude not to involve herself in any kind of talks irrelevant to business. When the drink I offered her finished and her time was up, she politely bade us farewell and headed back to the bar only to sit alone again. On the other hand, the white girl—who sat with us along with the aforementioned black escort—immediately, when her time was up, headed back directly to her friend only to continue chatting and laughing. The two ladies (the black and the white escorts) did not have any kind of contact during their stay with us at the table. We stayed there for more than thirty minutes after the girls departed, and yet we couldn’t observe any interaction or contact between the black escort girl, on the one hand, and the other white ones, on the other. This, though might be a bit superficial, seems to confirm Blessing’s claim that in the workplace, black stripper are always outnumbered and alienated.

The second place we visited did not have any black strippers at all, in spite of the fact that it had a huge number of white workers. One of the white girls who escorted us was from an eastern European country. She struck me as intelligent and well-spoken; later, I learned that she had a degree in law from a well-known state university in her home country. Her pretty face with all of its friendly features changed when I asked her if they had any black girls around. She, in a very cold manner, told me that they did not. The minute I told her that I think that black girls were beautiful, she appeared to lose interest in me. She made it clear that she did not only find black girls undesirable, but also she found it bizarre that someone thought they were desirable. Throughout the ninety minutes we spent there, we could not spot any black girl.

The last place we visited was quite bigger than any of the ones we had previously stepped foot in. They had an enormous amount of white girls and only one black girl. Prior to my conversation with the latter, I could observe that she did not have any contact with the white girls. She was standing in the corner by herself till a customer offered her a drink, an invitation that she overstayed by the standards of her workplace. A small drink with one of the white girls lasts for a maximum of twenty minutes. She stayed with the customer for more than thirty five minutes for one drink. As soon as I could, I invited her to our table for a short interview. She informed me that there are no black girls around but her, and that she had no friends at all, but also she did not have any enemies. In contrast to the white stripper I had talked to earlier in the other club, she told me that she cannot wait to quit her job after saving the amount of money she needed. As we were talking, I noticed that only white girls performed solo dances on the central stage. When I asked her if she had ever performed solo, she said that she did but only for a brief amount of time, adding that it is not really usual for black girls to perform solo. She further informed me about her plan to get products from a northern American country and sell them in her home country in Africa. Above all, she was very open about her life, contrary to the African girl I had spoken to earlier and even to my inside contact who made me work hard to earn her trust. After conversing with me for more than forty five minutes, she left to continue doing business. The only observable social interaction she had was with the marginalized workers at the club, such as the cleaning staff and the lady who was in charge of the rest rooms.

Words into Places

After paying a visit to several strip clubs in Athens and through observation, interviews, and casual talks, the three aspects of disempowerment of black workers illustrated by Blessing, my inside source, could be substantiated. First, the fact that black strippers are outnumbered to the degree of disempowerment is observable in their apparent social alienation. Two out of the four places inspected over the course of this field research did not have any black strippers at all. The other two had only one black girl each. As observed, as a result, these girls spend most of their time lonely and unaccompanied, unless called upon by a customer. Second, the claim that customers prefer white girls can be traceable in the fact that the central stages of all of the visited clubs are exclusively white spaces where only white girls perform solo. Third, the product of these socio-racial dynamics is a by-default, auto-forced social reality in which performers in strip joints are kept segregated into racial groups: the white girls, on the one hand, and the alienated African stripper—rarely strippers—on the other.

A critique of this field research can be drawn from the fact that this investigation in some way does not provide a wide range of testimonies and case studies to back up the main premises of the core argument. However, given the nature of the topic and the restrictions imposed by the environment (the scarcity of black workers in Athenian gentlemen’s clubs and the dangers stemming from directly talking to street prostitutes), one cannot adequately probe into such a question, unless a lot of financial resources and inside connections are available. In the light of all of that, this field research remains a humble attempt to engage the question of racial relations among strippers working in Athens.

In early September, a story emerged about an 8-year-old girl who bled to death on her wedding night after she was raped by her new husband, who is in his 40s. Since then, activists across the region have been discussing on various social media platforms how to combat the practice of child marriage.

A new Human Rights Watch video documents the psychological and physical harm that child marriage causes to girls. In the video, a father expresses his regret at having chosen to give up his two young daughters to marriage, and two members of the religious community and a Nobel Laureate speak about the need to abolish the practice.

“Thousands of Yemeni girls have their childhood stolen and their futures destroyed because they are forced to marry too young,” said Liesl Gerntholtz, women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Yemeni government should end this abusive practice.”

Members of the Rights and Freedoms Committee in the country’s National Dialogue Conference should recommend prohibiting child marriage during its final plenary session in September 2013, Human Rights Watch said.

When the committee charged with drafting a new constitution as part of the transitional period is convened, it should consider including an 18-year age minimum in the new constitution Human Rights Watch warns, adding that if no minimum age is included, parliament should pass a law setting the minimum age at 18.

The Friends of Yemen should at its meeting in New York consider increasing support for programs that boost girls’ and women’s access to education, reproductive health information and services, and protection from domestic violence, both in cities and rural areas, Human Rights Watch added.

Tawakkol Karman, the Yemeni activist who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011, has criticized the transitional government’s failure to ban child marriage. She told Human Rights Watch that: “[Yemen’s] popular, peaceful revolution came about for the sake of fixing these societal problems. It didn’t happen just to solve political problems, but also to address societal problems, the most important being child marriage.”

A 2011 Human Rights Watch report documented severe and long-lasting harm to Yemeni girls forced by their families to marry, in some cases when they were as young as 8. Human Rights Watch spoke to 34 Yemeni girls and women. They said that marrying early meant that they lost control over their lives, including the ability to decide whether and when to bear children. They said that it had cut short their education, and some said they had been subjected to marital rape and domestic abuse.

There is no legal minimum age for girls to marry in Yemen and the only legal protection for girls is a prohibition on sexual intercourse until the age of puberty. In some cases documented by Human Rights Watch, however, girls were married before their first menstrual period and were raped by their husbands.

Yemen’s transitional authorities have failed to seriously address child marriage, Human Rights Watch said. The transition period, which began after Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down from the presidency under popular pressure in February 2012, will culminate with presidential and parliamentary elections in February 2014. As part of the transition, the six-month long National Dialogue Conference began on March 18. During the conference’s second plenary in June, it passed 363 directives, but not a single one referred to the practice of child marriage.

Yemeni government and United Nations data from 2006 shows that approximately 14 percent of girls in Yemen are married before age 15, and 52 percent are married before age 18.

Yemen has backtracked on protecting girls from forced marriage. In 1999, Yemen’s parliament, citing religious grounds, abolished the legal minimum age for marriage for girls and boys, which was then 15.

Yemen is party to a number of international treaties and conventions that explicitly – or have been interpreted to – prohibit child marriage and commit governments to take measures to eliminate the practice, including the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage and Registration of Marriage.

UN treaty-monitoring bodies that oversee implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child have recommended a minimum age of 18 for marriage.

“The protesters in Change Square in 2011 risked their lives to demand equal rights for all Yemenis, and girls should be no exception,” Gerntholtz said. “Child marriage is a violation of their human rights and should be ended.”

“Nearly all mothers are physically able to breastfeed and will do so if they have accurate information and support,” said Carmen Casanovas, breastfeeding expert with the Department of Nutrition for Health and Development of the UN World Health Organization (WHO).

“But in many cases, women are discouraged from doing so, and are misled to believe that they are giving their children a better start in life by buying commercial substitutes,” Dr. Casanovas said in a news release.

Breastfeeding, WHO stressed, is “the best source of nourishment” for infants and young children and one of the most effective ways to ensure child health and survival. People who were breastfed as babies are less likely to be overweight or obese later in life, less prone to diabetes and may perform better in intelligence tests.

However, globally, only an estimated 38 per cent of infants are exclusively breastfed for six months, the agency noted.

Concerned that breast-milk substitutes were being marketed to mothers too aggressively, the 27th World Health Assembly in 1974 urged member States to review sales promotion activities on baby foods and to introduce appropriate remedial measures, including advertisement codes and legislation where necessary.

This led, in 1981, to agreement on the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, and the adoption of several subsequent resolutions on the matter. The new report, published ahead of World Breastfeeding Week, found that only 37 countries, or 19 per cent of those reporting, have passed laws reflecting all the Code’s recommendations.

For example, 69 countries (35 per cent) fully prohibit advertising of breast-milk substitutes; 62 countries (31 per cent) completely prohibit free samples or low-cost supplies for health services; and 64 countries (32 per cent) completely prohibit gifts of any kind from relevant manufacturers to health workers.

In addition, 83 countries (42 per cent) require a message about the superiority of breastfeeding on breast-milk substitute labels, and only 45 countries (23 per cent) report having a functioning implementation and monitoring system.

The report stated that mothers are often inundated with incorrect and biased information both directly, through advertising, health claims, information packs and sales representatives, and indirectly through the public health system.

For example, distribution of “educational materials” on breastfeeding produced by manufacturers of infant formula have a negative impact on exclusive breastfeeding, as does the distribution of samples of infant formula.

For this year’s World Breastfeeding Week, which runs from 1 to 7 August, WHO and partners are calling for more support for breastfeeding mothers. It noted, among other things, that health facilities that support breastfeeding – by making trained breastfeeding counsellors available to new mothers – encourage higher rates of the practice.The agency also pointed out that breast milk gives infants all the nutrients they need for healthy development. It is safe and contains antibodies that help protect infants from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhoea and pneumonia, the two primary causes of child mortality worldwide. Breast milk is readily available and affordable, which helps to ensure that infants get adequate nutrition.

Infant formula, WHO said, does not contain the antibodies found in breast milk. There are also risks arising from the use of unsafe water and unsterilized equipment or the potential presence of bacteria or other contaminants in powdered formula.

Breastfeeding also benefits mothers, the agency added, noting that exclusive breastfeeding is associated with a natural (though not fail-safe) method of birth control (98 per cent protection in the first six months after birth). It also reduces risks of breast and ovarian cancer later in life and helps women return to their pre-pregnancy weight faster.

Andris Piebalgs, Member of the European Commission responsible for Development, is delighted by the launch of this new initiative and states: “This new initiative should make a difference in the lives of women in the DRC. It is unacceptable that so many young girls and women are still victims of violence that goes unpunished and have no access to education. Moreover, any sustainable development is inconceivable without the participation of all stakeholders in our partner countries and we must not forget that women are at the heart of growth in Africa.”

To help with the adoption of a new approach to relations between men and women which hopes to create a more harmonious and prosperous society in the DRC, whilst combatting gender-based violence effectively, the project aims to increase the percentage of children with proper access to education to at least 70 % in the provinces of Kinshasa and Bandundu.

The initiative also aims to increase the capacity of the units in the Congolese national police force specialised in combatting violence against young girls and women in Kinshasa, Bandundu and Maniema. This will help to provide a contact point where victims and witnesses of violence can seek guidance, so that the guilty parties can be prosecuted and their violent crimes will not go unpunished. This approach can in future be extended to the rest of the country.

This programme should make it possible to tackle the roots of the problem by encouraging a new perception of the roles of women and men in society. By turning men as well as women into instruments of change, the initiative will have a better chance of success in the long term.

This initiative will be launched together with UNICEF and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH, as well as with the support of the Congolese Government.

Republished from HRW.org

This week, reality struck home for Afghanistan over the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Ratified by Afghanistan in 2003 during the early heady post-Taliban days when it seemed like a bright future for women was inevitable, CEDAW is a treaty that requires/demands gender equality in access to education, health care, and political participation. It is the basis for global efforts to end violence against women. The Afghan government is failing in many ways to live up to the commitment it made by signing on to CEDAW.

When you ratify a convention you don’t just get a pat on the back and then a pass on your obligations. CEDAW compliance is overseen by a committee of 23 experts, who spent hours Wednesday grilling the Afghan government delegation who showed up in Geneva to defend the government’s efforts on women’s rights. Committee members pointed out many of the issues Human Rights Watch highlighted in our written statement including that now, 10 years after CEDAW was ratified, numerous Afghan laws explicitly discriminate against women, including in one case a law passed since CEDAW was ratified – the Shia Personal Status Law. They also pointed out that even where the laws on the books are good, there are major failings in their implementation, including a majority of girls not in school, physical assaults including murder against women in public life, lack of accountability for violence against women, and on and on. Not to mention a real risk of backsliding as international support and interest dries up as the end-2014 international troop deadline approaches.

The Afghan government delegation answered some questions but dodged and downplayed many others (including refusing to address question of why the marriage age is lower for girls than boys, and rebutting the suggestion that women have no meaningful access to divorce by saying women can divorce husbands “for bad breath” ). The Afghan chair, Dr. Mohammad Hashimzai, a longtime senior member of the Ministry of Justice, said there is a real commitment across the government to implementing CEDAW. “Afghanistan faces so many challenges,” Dr. Hashimzai said. “But with the continued help of the international community and the help of this [CEDAW] Committee, we will succeed.”

Human Rights Watch will be watching closely to see how deep that government commitment really is – and whether the international community still cares about Afghan women after the military pull-out in 2014.

The acting head of the UN Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women), Lakshmi Puri, stressed the role women have played in the political life of the country and called for zero tolerance against all forms of violence against women and girls after reports of rape during protests.

“Egypt’s women have been at the heart of the vibrant civil society movement that continues to press for the rights of all Egyptians,” UN Women said in a news release.

“Their participation in public life and the inclusion of their needs and priorities in any political solution is a prerequisite for inclusive democracy in Egypt.”

On Wednesday, 3 July, the Egyptian military deposed President Mohamed Morsy, suspended the Constitution and paved they way for an interim Government. Since then, Mr. Morsy’s foes and supporters have continued to face off in huge demonstrations, with security forces and police adding to the deepening chaos.

More than 80 people have reportedly been killed and thousands more have been injured in the protests. In addition, media reports stated that over 90 women have been raped during the clashes.

“UN Women is concerned by reports of the high prevalence of sexual assaults against women in public spaces,” the agency said. “UN Women adds its voice to calls on all parties to take a firm stand and show zero tolerance for all forms of violence against women and girls. Egypt’s women have the right to fully participate in political dialogue without fear or threat of violence. Their voices are essential to a peaceful and prosperous Egypt.”

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay have spoken out several times on the need for all parties in Egypt – which has been undergoing a democratic transition since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak two years ago – to exercise restraint, protect human rights and resort to dialogue to peacefully resolve differences.

Republished by Ilo.org

Twice a week, training specialist, Rania Shanti, visits a garment factory in the industrial city of Sahab, Jordan, and talks to small groups of workers about sexual harassment.

She tries to create a comfortable and – crucially – confidential atmosphere that will encourage participants to speak freely.

One of them is Indrani, a Sri Lankan woman who has worked at the factory since 2009.

“I always thought that when women spoke about being sexually harassed, they meant they were raped. Now I understand that sexual harassment can take place in many different forms,” she says.

Like Indrani, many of the workers at the factory are foreigners – mainly from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh. So, Shanti, from the ILO’s Better Work Jordan programme, often has to communicate through a translator.

“It’s difficult to assess sexual harassment in these factories due to the sensitive nature of the issue and fears of reprisals among workers. It’s never guaranteed that the workers will label themselves as being victims of sexual harassment,” she explains.

Two years ago, allegations were made of widespread rape being committed against workers at one of Jordan’s largest clothing factories. Although the allegations were not substantiated, reports of unwanted sexual advances towards workers are common across the global garment manufacturing sector.

Better Work Jordan’s own investigation found that many workers had very little understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment – even though they were concerned about it.

As a result, Better Work Jordan launched a pilot sexual harassment prevention awareness project with Indrani’s employer, the Jerash Garment and Fashion Manufacturing Company, which aims to teach line workers, managers and supervisors about how to identify, prevent and report instances of sexual harassment.

During one session held in mid-June, Indrani joined a group of shy and soft-spoken women, who told fellow workers about being groped, having their skirts lifted and even being sexually assaulted by taxi drivers.

Priyadorshani, another Sri Lankan worker at the factory, said the project helped them better understand Jordanian laws and regulations relating to sexual harassment in the workplace.

“We are foreigners in Jordan, so we do not know much about the laws, rules and procedures,” she said. “After the training, I now have a better idea of how to deal with the situation if something happens.”

Shanti notes that while some relevant laws exist, the most powerful and effective policies are those created and adopted internally by the factories, which address all forms of sexual harassment.

“Part of the training is to help the factories create their own policy on sexual harassment prevention. We share our model policy, which they can adapt,” she explains. “This has had a great impact on the factory’s management, as it has given them a great sense of responsibility where they now feel that they are in charge of the situation and can take control.”

Sanil Kumar, the company’s compliance officer, agrees.

“The training helped the managers and supervisors on issues which they were not aware of before, such as certain forms of sexual harassment and how to prevent it or deal with it. And following advice from the Better Work team, we have developed our own internal sexual harassment prevention policy for the factory which has been adopted by the management.”

Unions are also trying to play a role says Mervat Abdel Kareem al-Jamhawi, of the General Trade Union of Workers in Textile, Garment and Clothing.

“We try to raise awareness of the issues among female workers in factories but there are many challenges, such as cultural and language barriers. It is definitely a high priority for us and we need more support from projects like Better Work Jordan to conduct more programmes in a range of factories.”

Better Work Jordan plans to help create independent counseling and referral systems for workers who feel sexually harassed or under threat. The pilot project will also extend to several other factories next year – some of which employ up to 7,000 workers from as many as eight countries.

“We will continue with our training,” says Shanti. “We will continue to spread our message, especially to migrant workers, by telling them that they are not victims, they are not weak. They have come from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and other parts of the world to work here, so they must be strong women,” she said. “They need to know that there are actions that can be taken. If they don’t want to talk to their managers about sexual harassment, they can talk to us.”

The report, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, represents the first systematic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women – both by partners and non-partners.

Some 35 per cent of all women will experience either intimate partner or non-partner violence, according to the report, which was released today by the UN World Health Organization (WHO), in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council.

It also finds that intimate partner violence is the most common type of violence against women, affecting 30 per cent of women worldwide, according to a WHO news release.

“These findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” said WHO Director-General Margaret Chan. “We also see that the world’s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence.”

The report details the impact of violence on the physical and mental health of women and girls, ranging from broken bones to pregnancy-related complications, mental problems and impaired social functioning.

Among its key findings on partner violence was that globally, 38 per cent of all women who were murdered were killed by their intimate partners. Also, women who have experienced partner violence are almost twice as likely to experience depression or abuse alcohol.

“This new data shows that violence against women is extremely common. We urgently need to invest in prevention to address the underlying causes of this global women’s health problem.” said Professor Charlotte Watts, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Fear of stigma prevents many women from reporting non-partner sexual violence, the survey finds. Other barriers to data collection include the fact that fewer countries collect this data than information about intimate partner violence, and that many surveys of this type of violence employ less sophisticated measurement approaches than those used in monitoring intimate partner violence.

“The review brings to light the lack of data on sexual violence by perpetrators other than partners, including in conflict-affected settings,” said Naeemah Abrahams from the South African Medical Research Council. “We need more countries to measure sexual violence and to use the best survey instruments available.”

The study highlights the need for all sectors to work together to eliminate tolerance for violence against women and to better support women who experience it. New WHO guidelines, launched with the report, aim to help countries improve their health sector’s capacity to respond to the problem.

“The report findings show that violence greatly increases women’s vulnerability to a range of short- and long-term health problems; it highlights the need for the health sector to take violence against women more seriously,” said Claudia Garcia-Moreno of WHO. “In many cases this is because health workers simply do not know how to respond.”

The guidelines stress the importance of training all levels of health workers to recognize when women may be at risk of partner violence and to know how to provide an appropriate response.

They also point out that some health-care settings, such as antenatal services and HIV testing, may provide opportunities to support survivors of violence, provided certain minimum requirements are met.

WHO will begin to work with countries in South-east Asia to implement the new recommendations at the end of June.