Thailand activities
Refugee women and girls project
Refugee women and girls project
Working in Malaysia, Thailand and Bangladesh, the project is being conducted in close partnership with local academics, refugee women and refugee services. To respond effectively to different refugee contexts, the project has taken a slightly different approach in each country, using the research team’s signature Reciprocal Research methodology.
Our local partners will take forward the work of the project, to achieve the long-term objectives of increasing refugee women’s participation and ending sexual and gender-based violence
Academic partner: Dr Sriprapha Petcharamesree, Ratawit Ouaprachanon and Mark Capaldi, Institute Human Rights and Peace Studies, Mahidol University.
Organisational partners and collaborators: Karen Women’sOrganisation (KWO), The Border Consortium (TBC), Karenni Womens national Organisation, Muslim Women’s Organisation, Muslim Women’s Association
Research consultations were held on the Thai/Myanmar border in August 2019, with 38 women leaders from 9 border camps and 2 male leaders, and with UNHCR and NGO staff. These were co-led by the UNSW team and Sriprapha Petcharamesree and Ratawit Ouaprachanon, Institute of Human Rights and Peace Studies at Mahidol University, with the support of Karen Women’s Organisation (KWO) and The Border Consortium (TBC).
The participants identified key issues affecting their communities, and suggested solutions, using the UNSW team’s Reciprocal Research methodology. They presented their ideas to UNHCR and NGO staff in a final meeting.
With the permission of the refugee women, short film segments were prepared and shown at the Global Refugee Forum in Geneva. The key findings also informed an advocacy brochure distributed at the Forum.
The report of these consultations is at this link.
The impact of COVID19 has led to some modifications to next project steps. However, the project was always designed to work in a range of contexts, and to provide remote support of local implementation, so the UNSW team sought approval from DFAT to adapt the project to respond to the current crisis and its impacts on refugee women and girls and their communities. This slightly revised approach provides an opportunity to support and document refugee women-led and local NGO supported gender sensitive responses in the context of a humanitarian emergency
Through this approach, four refugee women’s organisations are providing support to refugee and displaced women in 7 camps on the Thai-Burma border and in one Internal Displacement camp in Myanmar. The women’s groups identified the need for material support to vulnerable families to be combined with COVID and SGBV education and support. The projects are entirely refugee women-designed and run. Funding has been provided under the auspices of the Border Consortium (TBC). The outcomes will be documented as part of the overall project. Additional virtual training on suicide prevention and psychosocial support was also developed and delivered by the UNSW team at the request of the refugee women’s groups.