Women's Refugee Commission

Mission

The Women's Refugee Commission's mission is to improve the lives and defend the rights of refugee women, children and adolescents, including internally displaced people, returnees and asylum seekers.

Founded in 1989, the Women's Refugee Commission works in consultation with refugee women, children and adolescents to ensure that their voices are heard. We seek solutions to seemingly intractable problems by:

Assessing and monitoring the situation of refugee women, children and adolescents through research, field visits and consultation; Identifying and documenting the widely overlooked problems and issues that affect refugee women, children and adolescents; Developing and promoting policies and practices that will lead to real on-the-ground change by advocating to policy makers, key organizations, donors and the public to ensure their implementation.

Through our advocacy, we ensure that refugee women's and children's voices are heard in the halls of power and taken into account in the decision-making process.

Our work contributes to long-term solutions, thereby lessening the likelihood of continuing cycles of conflict and displacement.

Background

Four out of five of the world's 42 million refugees are women, children and young people. Children and young people make up approximately 50 percent of all refugees.

Women and adolescent girls in refugee settings are especially vulnerable to exploitation, rape and abuse. Children and young people often miss out on years of education. They are the targets of abuse, military recruitment and abduction. Women, children and adolescents who flee persecution and human rights abuses by seeking asylum in the U.S. are often imprisoned, subjected to inhumane conditions and denied access to legal representation.

Read our Women's Refugee Commission fact sheet.

www.womensrefugeecommission.org