Programs Livelihoods
The Women’s Refugee Commission’s Livelihoods and Fuel and Firewood Initiatives are working together to promote safe and effective livelihood and household energy (cooking fuel) programs in a worldwide series of workshops: Mitigating Risk of Gender-based Violence: Implementing Economic and Household Energy Programs as Tools of Protection.
The workshop series grew out of work we initially undertook to address the shortcomings of economic programming in humanitarian settings, which have seldom been based on market needs. Over a two-year period, we conducted assessments around the world in a variety of contexts, including refugee camps, urban areas with refugee communities, internal displacement settings and post-conflict countries of return.
Our research showed that in spite of good will and best efforts, organizations’ current economic programs were more standardized rather than customized to meet the specific needs and opportunities that existed within a given context.
We discovered that while improving women’s and young people’s economic opportunities can empower them and lead to positive outcomes, it can also heighten their risk of sexual violence and abuse. Husbands and partners may resent the change in household power dynamics that may come with women’s increased income, and they may demand control over those new resources.
Employers, especially in situations where refugees don’t officially have the right to work, may take advantage of women’s and young people’s vulnerability and sexually harass them, withhold wages and physically abuse them.
The Women’s Refugee Commission developed the workshops in an effort to push the humanitarian community to put more emphasis on gender-based violence prevention that emphasizes practical interventions addressing protection concerns associated with women’s access to economic opportunities and household energy.
The workshops bring together staff from UN agencies, international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), local NGOs, donors and host governments. They push practitioners to think through whether and how their programs might be exposing women and young people to heightened risks and how they can modify those programs to mitigate these risks and enhance protection.
The workshops also discuss access to safe household energy as a vital element of protection; firewood collection both exposes women and girls to rape and abuse and is a livelihood strategy when ncome generation options are limited.
The first “Mitigating Risk of Gender-Based Violence” workshop was held in Bangkok in January 2010, the second was conducted in Juba, South Sudan in March and the third was conducted in Ethiopia in April.
Subsequent workshops were held in Chad (June) and Kenya (July/August).
