World Refugee Day: resilient women

In celebration of World Refugee Day the Atlantic Council hosted Stories of Resilient Women with the support of the Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center to recognize global factors that force movement and create a more robust understanding in host countries of how to shape future generations with policies that support social, economic and political inclusion. Through the discussion of individual experiences, the event highlighted the resilience of refugee women around the world. The speakers were:

Reena Ninan (moderator)
Journalist and International Correspondent

Suzana Vuk
Account Executive, Zoom Video Communications

Priyali Sur
Founder & Managing Director, The Azadi Project

José Felix Rodriguez
Regional Coordinator of Migration, Social Inclusion and Non-Violence (Americas Region), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Lilia
Interviewed by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

Sedighe
Interviewed by the Azadi Project

Masouma
Interviewed by the Azadi Project

Rebecca Scheurer (closing remarks)
Director, Humanitarian Initiatives, Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center, Atlantic Council

Suzana Vuk:

Vuk’s family arrived in San Francisco from Bosnia in 1993 after her father survived persecution and torture in a concentration camp due to his Muslim identity. In June 1992, he was captured by the Bosnian Serb Army and sent to a concentration camp near their home. Her mother communicated with offices in Croatia to secure travel visas for the entirety of their family. In 1993, as refugees, Vuk’s family was offered free housing at a camp in Croatia, and her mother was able to feign a Croatian identity. Vuk’s mother gathered the proper resources and contacts to get visas for their family and secure the family passage to Italy, then the United States.

Vuk explained how her refugee background shaped her life in the United States, as it instilled values of family, hard-work, and gratitude into her daily life. As an adult working in the field of developing digital technologies, she feels she has been offered more opportunities and independence than her parents in Bosnia and Croatia. While she feels a sense of familial pressure and debt to her parents for giving her this life, Vuk reminds herself, and those around her, that she is fortunate and grateful for where she is today.

International Red Cross:

A representative from the International Red Cross, Rodriguez, discussed an initiative that offers humanitarian services and neutral spaces along migratory routes, primarily in South and Central America. These spaces are constituted as friendly environments for migrants who are in need of international support. Entitled Human Service Points, they can be either fixed or mobile stations, where migrant people and refugees access different Red Cross services provided. Their primary objective is to contribute to the security, dignity, and protection of migrants in vulnerable situations during all the steps of their journey as well as promote individual resiliency.

Past programs, Rodriguez explained, aimed to reach 400 people daily, but could peak with interactions with 4,000 people in one day. The International Red Cross decided to expand the Humanitarian Service Points to different countries and border areas like Colombia-Venezuela and Panama-Colombia.

One woman, Lila, expressed her gratitude to these programs in her recounting of the strenuous migration from Venezuela through Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. She traveled through Colombia, spending 12 days in the jungle, facing death daily and now living with extreme trauma and fear. However, she recognized the importance of leaving and the barriers to life for not only her, but the rest of her family, in Venezuela.

Priyali Sur :

Sur’s project, the Azadi Project works with refugee women to provide safe spaces where women can discuss and process their experiences and trauma within a community. As there exists an intersectional bias towards against refugee women, specifically women of color and women from regions subject to explicit bias, Sur emphasized the importance of creating a space for a targeted and vulnerable population.

While her program began by hosting workshops that developed storytelling skills, that could later transform into digital storytelling and fostering employable skills through digital empowerment. The community shifted towards psycho-social support. Organically, through time, the space transformed from a workshop to create and market female empowerment through employable skills to a community where women could gain empowerment and exposure to safe spaces and support.

Conclusion:

While unique in experience, each of these stories emphasize the power of female empowerment within the refugee community and the importance of support, through NGOs, policy, or volunteer work. While over 80 million people have been forced to leave their homes around the world, the resilience of individuals and organizations fosters success.