CSW64 Panel – Women and Forced Migration: Challenges and Consequences
10 March 2020 | YouTube Panel Discussion
On August 3, 2020, Set Them Free organized a YouTube panel discussion on the “Women and Forced Migration: Challenges and Consequences” on the occasion of the 64th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
Internal conflicts, wars, and political, religious persecution have been increasingly urging people towards forced migration. The recent UN Global Trends report indicates that over 70 million individuals have been forcibly displaced, which is a record number in the last 70 years. For the marginalized groups in the society, the right to leave is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of several other human rights, such as torture, inhuman or degrading treatment. Women and children are suffering the most during the forced migration.
In the parallel event “Women and Forced Migration: Challenges and Consequences”, experts discussed the several country cases where the right to leave is violated and the following consequences of such circumstances, psychological aspect of the forced migration on women and mothers, and the long-term challenges of forced migration on women.
The session was moderated by Hafza Girdap, Co-Founder of Set Them Free and Executive Director of Advocates for Silenced Turkey. Following her opening remarks, Irfan Engineer, the Director of Centre for Study of Society and Secularism from India discussed an overview of the challenges, present current status-quo, psychological aspect of the forced migration on refugee women and mothers and the role of CSOs to overcome the long-term challenges of forced migration on women.
Vonya Womack, Professor at Cabrini University, discussed the challenges that enforced Turkish women and children migrants in Greece faced and elaborated on the social discrimination that these dissident women encountered in Turkey, which left them with no choice but to leave their homeland.
Following Womack`s remarks, Associate Professor Zeynep Ercan from Rowan University discussed the psychological aspect of the forced migration of refugee women and mothers. The last speaker of the discussion, Ayhan Cetin, the Executive Director of Turquoise Harmony Institute presented their best-practice of language empowerment program for the refugee women in South Africa.