In the period from 16-18 May, Praxis participated in a three-day workshop “Women on the Move” in Istanbul, organized by UN Women and Oxfam. At the workshop, the organizations active in the camps in the Middle East and in the “Route of Western Balkans” exchanged their experience in the field work with refugees, discussed about the problems of the refugee women and possible solutions, with an aim to empower the women to take an initiative over their lives. With concrete examples from the practice, the participants discussed about the causes of the refugee crisis, about the wartime and how it causes the current refugee wave, and how their effects, due to the lack of infrastructure, health care and education, would be the cause of the migrations for many years.
One of the key topics was the problem of human trafficking, actually the risk of trafficking in a situation when the passage of refugees following the closure of the Route of Western Balkans was called irregular. In this respect, we talked about the possibilities of obtaining the asylum and temporary international protection in the countries on the route. The participants also discussed about the challenges of the cultural mediation in the transit countries, lack of information of refugees about their rights in the transit countries and accessibility of governmental and non-governmental organizations providing assistance to refugees, especially those which are highly specialized in providing assistance to women.
The result of this workshop is the joint statement of the present organizations addressed to the currently held World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, with conclusions that there is an urgent need to work on elimination of the causes of displacement, that safety of women must be strengthened and gender-based violence prevented, as well as to ensure the participation of women in conflict prevention. Also, an agreement was reached to continue the intensive work on these issues, by monitoring and cooperating within the new regional coalition of civil society organizations and women's organizations, unless women on move regained their rights and dignity.
