Refugee Women and Girls (Open)

To urge NFAs to discuss and to develop strategies in assisting refugee women and girls:

1. To have their existing rights applied and implemented in existing national laws;
2. to obtain recognition as refugees when their claim to refugee status is based on the well-founded fear of persecution through sexual violence or when they are persecuted because of gender factors on reasons enumerated in the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol;
3. to cope with their traumatic experiences and uprooting; to promote public and professional awareness of the specific mental health problems of refugee women and girls due to the background of gender related violence;
4. to ease their access to education, training and employment, thus promoting their socio-economic participation;
5. to reinforce existing resources among refugee women and girls and to empower them in order to play an active role in the management of their own lives.