A move to change - building on principles of SC Resolution 1325 : Australian National Committee on Refugee Women (ANCORW), African Women's Advocacy Unit

Overview
This article will focus on actions taken by a small group of refugee women from African countries to begin to address issues of displacement in resettlement and bring about policy change and better support for refugee women who have resettled to Australia.

Background
Despite the enormous efforts made by UNHCR, Governments, non-government organizations, the media and civil society groups around the world many people still don't fully understand or recognize the extent to which a person's life is affected by being in a refugee or internally displaced situation.

Forced displacement from home and all that is familiar, loss of economic and social status, loss and separation from loved ones, in some cases extreme deprivation, living in poverty, unsanitary conditions, lack of access to health services, harassment and torture can impact severely on resettlement to a safe third country. For women, rape, sexual violence and harassment are commonplace before and during flight, and in refugee camp situations.

It is acknowledged that resettlement to a new country is challenging for all refugees. However, for refugee women, their situation is often compounded by the impact of displacement, resettlement and rebuilding family and community while still dealing with the mental, physical, psychological and emotional impacts of the refugee experience as outlined above.

A high amount of stress is placed on newly arrived refugee and humanitarian families from the African region. Difficulties with finding adequate housing and employment , limited English language skills, cultural differences along with financial pressures creates barriers to resettlement. Resulting hardship, lack of understanding around child protection issues and other legal mechanisms exacerbates fear, impacts on feelings of safety and security and leads many women into social isolation.

Many African women and men, girls and boys are dealing with changing roles, responsibilities, obligations and identities. The intensity of being torn between two cultures, compounded by the changes in family structures experienced in flight and the refugee camps can cause family and intergenerational conflict and may result in family breakdown.

A move to change … building on principles of SC 1325
“We have a right to be here, and we have a right to have our voice heard – a woman's voice”

“[Security Council Resolution] 1325 was there when we were in the camps – but we didn't know about it. How could we use it?

"We were invisible. A woman's voice is never heard – there is no protection in the camps”.(quotes by AWAU trainees in a presentation to DIAC)

For the last four years, Australia has been actively resettling refugees from African countries (in 2005 – 2006 period, 49% of all humanitarian entrants to Australia were from African countries). In 2005, the Australian National Committee on Refugee Women (ANCORW), a national advocacy and advisory organization based in Sydney, Australia was approached by one of its board members to seek funding to work with refugee women from Africa to begin to further identify and address some of the issues impacting on their successful resettlement in Sydney, Australia.

Funding was sought from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) to run a small pilot program for a group of 15 refugee women from various countries in Africa. Women were trained in how to work within a human rights framework, incorporating a gender perspective to resettlement, representation and advocacy skills. The ANCORW board and DIAC worked with the graduates of the training to make links and networks into the agencies and services in order to further progress the issues identified by their communities and to begin to influence policy and service provision to bring about change in their situation. From this training the ANCORW African Women's Advocacy Unit (AWAU) was born.

AWAU is an organization run for and by refugee women from African countries to advocate and lobby for issues of refugee women locally, nationally and internationally.

Since it's conception and the initial training of 15 refugee women from Sierra Leone, Burundi, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda and Liberia, AWAU has successfully identified key issues for their communities and began negotiation with various government departments and national agencies to bring about more insight into the issues for refugee women in resettlement and to offer more ‘durable solutions' to these issues. In 2006 the graduates were trained in training methodologies to pass on their skills to a new group of refugee women from African countries. A new group of 35 refugee women from African countries have now actively joined AWAU and are working towards building the refugee women's voice in resettlement.

While this is a success story, with potential to reach out to refugee women from other countries, the author of this piece returns to the question so eloquently posed by one of the participants in the training. “How are women in refugee and displaced situations to know about Security Council Resolution 1325, and how can this resolution to used to addresses the impacts of war on women in resettlement.”