Conflict And Crisis Settings: Promoting Sexual And Reproductive Rights - Reproductive Health Matters Journal

Main Category: Sexual Health / STDs
Also Included In: Fertility;  Aid / Disasters
Article Date: 07 Jun 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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Under conditions of global economic and ecological crisis and rampant militarism, growing numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) find themselves stripped of ordinary rights or even 'the right to have rights'.

Disaster has a strongly gendered dimension, particularly related to sexual and reproductive health and sexual and other forms of violence. The camps and shelters that are supposed to provide refuge often become places of violence and mutilation, demoralisation and dehumanisation, especially for women and girls. This issue of Reproductive Health Matters attests to the great distance that remains between verbal recognition of the sexual and reproductive rights of IDPs and refugees and their implementation on the ground.

By the end of 2006, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that nearly 33 million people worldwide qualified for humanitarian assistance - an increase of 56% over available statistics from 2005. The great majority of these were IDPs who do not qualify for the rights and benefits conferred by refugee status.

The long-term duration of armed conflict in many countries means that IDPs and refugees may find themselves displaced for years or even decades. Conditions of unequal power, dependency, crowding, sub-standard housing and lack of privacy make rape and abuse a constant threat. The demeaning images of refugees often projected by local residents, media and policy-makers as economically burdensome and morally threatening - if not potential terrorists - are often deeply racist as well as gender-biased.

Despite this, displaced communities, often under the leadership of women, have extraordinary energy and resilience, as papers in this journal show. A new humanitarian paradigm is needed which will allow those directly affected to define their needs and find appropriate solutions during disasters, rather than having external organisations impose solutions on them.

Titles in this journal issue include:

-- Reproductive health: a right for refugees and internally displaced persons
-- Legal aspects of conflict-induced migration by women
-- Providing reproductive health care to internally displaced persons: barriers experienced by humanitarian agencies
-- Delivering maternal health services among Internally Displaced Populations in Eastern Burma

Articles focus on Afghanistan, Argentina, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Iraq, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Italy, Jordan, Nigeria, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Timor-Leste, Uganda and United States.

Reproductive Health Matters is published twice a year, in May and November, in English. There are also editions once a year in other languages, i.e. Arabic, Chinese, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

The journal covers laws, policies, research and services that meet women's reproductive health needs. Each issue focuses on a main theme and includes feature papers, topical papers on other subjects and a round-up of information from the published literature.

www.rhmjournal.org.uk