Background
Throughout 2016, the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) partnered with local organizations in urban humanitarian settings, for the purpose of piloting gender-based violence (GBV) activities that would be at once innovative, community-driven, and responsive to evidence on local GBV risks and effective risk mitigation strategies. Four pilots were undertaken, in Delhi, India; Beirut, Lebanon; Santo Domingo, Ecuador; and Kampala, Uganda. This initiative, supported by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, was part of a multi-year effort to build up the much-needed evidence base on best practices for strengthening GBV prevention and response in urban contexts.
Previous research, conducted in an earlier phase of the project, underscored the importance of empowering urban refugee communities and individuals to take a leading role in not only designing GBV prevention efforts, but also tailoring them to the particular complexities (social, political, financial, and infrastructural) of the city environments in which they live. That research also emphasized the unique challenges and opportunities that exist for GBV prevention and response in urban settings. In turn, they signaled the need for significant structural changes to how humanitarian GBV programming is developed, financed, and implemented in order to be effective in this new “beyond camps” era. As a result, pilot activities were highly localized. Yet they also adhered to three key tenets of a successful urban GBV response model: (1) proactively working with diverse local actors, governmental and nongovernmental; (2) mitigating GBV risks prioritized by communities themselves; and (3) targeted outreach and tailored programming for at-risk populations.
Each Urban GBV Case Study presents an example of an urban-specific GBV risk prevention and/or response strategy. Each illustrates, in a different way, the untapped potential that exists within both refugee communities and host-communities, for mitigating urban refugees’ immediate and long-term GBV risks.
Transwomen Refugees: Severe Violence, Still Underserved
Transwomen refugees face extreme violence, discrimination, stigmatization and isolation in the places where they seek refuge. The physical violence they report is severe, ranging from beatings on the street, to rape and gang rape; this violence is perpetrated by fellow refugees as well as members of host communities. Even where it is reported that all sexual and gender minority refugees face acute dangers, it is widely agreed that transwomen refugees are most at risk, both because of transphobia and because it is assumed, often correctly, that they will not report it and/or have no access to justice. Transwomen refugees experience exceptional difficulty finding safe shelter and employment. They often have limited access to peer networks, let alone trans-friendly or trans-competent service provision.
Transwomen refugees are also overlooked or excluded from mainstream refugee services, and/or do not feel safe accessing them for a variety of reasons; little to no humanitarian programming is tailored specifically for them, with their input, to meet their needs in ways most relevant and safe for them.
Like other sexual and gender minority refugees, transwomen refugees report fleeing to cities, rather than refugee camps, because cities offer the promise of greater anonymity and safety, as well as hope for finding peers or a community. For humanitarian actors whose mandate includes providing protection for all refugees, including those with diverse gender identities/ expressions, cities also offer an opportunity to partner with local actors who have specialized knowledge and experience working with this population.
Such local organizations can and should be integrated into humanitarian GBV prevention and response. This can be especially important for high-risk marginalized groups—including but not limited to transwomen—and especially where these organizations are run by and for members of these groups. In addition, they offer the potential for forming peer relationships and broadening social networks. Indeed, sexual and gender minority refugees, including transwomen, have reported that having peers is instrumental to their immediate safety and wellbeing; they live together, work together, navigate the city together, share information about mitigating risks, and are sometimes each others’ only source of emotional or familial support. (It is ‘familial’ not in the sense of arising from the families participants were born into, but rather the family they regard each other to be.)