Sandra Pertek | Senior Researcher and Policy Advisor

Project summary

Forced migration processes are increasingly feminised – more and more women and children undertake dangerous refugee journeys due to conflict and war, climate emergencies and economic inequalities. Women and girls often travel alone, without male relatives and financial resources. With ruptured social networks, lack of language skills and documentation, they face multiple risks of violence, exclusion, discrimination and exploitation across different locations and stages of forced migration, including in transit and refuge. Despite ongoing humanitarian efforts to tackle protection concerns, the scale of recent forced displacement has not been matched with the appropriate resources, capacity and political will to protect displaced women’s rights and dignity.

The Muslim-majority countries are hosts to some of the highest numbers of refugees worldwide. While the Islamic framework for the protection of forced migrants is an important resource, less is known about the specific mechanisms of women’s protection in forced displacement in the Muslim world.

Project brief in Arabic: حماية النازحات قسرًا في العالم الإسلامي [Word – PDF (27KB)]

Research objectives

This policy-oriented research project explores the motivations, opportunities and challenges for protecting displaced women and girls in the Muslim majority countries. It aims to develop an evidence base and conceptual resources for integrating the protection of forcibly displaced women and girls from violence, discrimination and exclusion into humanitarian policy and diplomacy in the Muslim world. In doing so, the project will identify dynamics and opportunities for strategic engagement with women’s and girls’ protection in multilateral organisations and humanitarian policy. A policy seminar will serve to exchange knowledge and co-develop recommendations to put the protection of displaced women and girls on the policy agenda.