Holding up in Displacment Camps – Women and Girls Confronting Persistent Intersecting Patterns of Gender-based violence in Northwest Syria
A combination of social, cultural, and economic factors accumulated for decades, generated a hierarchy that placed women inferior to men in patriarchal societies and created what might be called the acquired rights of men at their expense. It resulted in a series of difficulties and obstacles facing women in various fields, according to the different social and economic groups to which they belong. These hardships are exacerbated in contexts of humanitarian crises and conflicts, where they expand and ramify, targeting women›s basic rights as a result of weak social structures and the collapse or inability of political and legal systems. They are thus exposed to deeper and greater threats with insecurity, and violations that may extend to the highest human right, which is the right to life, and to forms of gender-based violence that intensify in cases of refugees and forced displacement leaving their effects on women and on other generations to come. With the length of the conflict, Syrians were forced to seek refuge outside the country or to be displaced within it. Women and girls in Syria faced a steady increase in risks and forms of violence, which are particularly acute in displacement camps, due to the deterioration in the level of basic services in the areas of security, health, justice and social services, and the deepening of inequality and discrimination against them. Although forced displacement provides a level of safety away from combat, it also brings with it enormous challenges: the absence of basic shelter; limited access to public services and social protection; loss of income.
