The world is currently home to more than 1 billion adolescent girls, nearly 90 percent of whom live in low- and middle-income countries. Adolescence can be a time of tremendous personal creativity, social connections, and growing independence. For girls, it can also be a time of increased risk of gender-based violence (GBV). The risk of GBV for adolescent girls increases during humanitarian and refugee crises. Girls displaced by conflict or crises experience disrupted social connections, interrupted schooling, limited access to core services, difficulties obtaining documentation, challenges in using financial services, poverty, and exploitative employment situations. These difficulties exacerbate gender inequalities, discrimination, and power differentials within communities and leave refugee adolescent girls coping with multiple layers of vulnerability that increase their risk of GBV.
The Global Refugee Youth Network (GRYN) works closely with adolescent girls through young women leaders in communities to combat gender-based violence through seed funding, skill building, and advocacy. However, there is a huge gap in young women’s leadership, which is indicative of how cultural norms and gender discrimination disempower young women. This disempowerment undermines young women’s leadership and directly and indirectly contributes to GBV and weakens efforts to combat it. Even when they are active in the community or within refugee youth-led organizations (RYLOs), young women and adolescent girls are often not recognized as leaders. They may not even recognize themselves as leaders.
Bridging this gap is one of GRYN’s strategic priorities, and is implemented through various programs, such as the GRYN Youth Action Fund, research, and the inaugural LeaderSHEp program launched in 2024.
The GRYN Youth Action Fund is in its third year of implementation. It has invested more than US$300,000 to support 120 RYLOs in 20 countries, impacting over 25,000 individuals. Through the implementation of this program, GRYN learned that applications and leaders were predominantly from men. As a result, we decided to pilot the LeaderSHEp program to empower women leaders to amplify their voices, increase their visibility and recognise their vital contributions as leaders in the community. This initiative focuses on providing women with the tools and platforms they need to be heard and seen, ensuring their leadership and efforts are acknowledged and valued within their communities.
Through youth-led research, GRYN creates and documents evidence that can be used to improve the quality of life for all displaced youths, including refugee young women and adolescent girls. For the past eight months, GRYN has been working on a guidance document for the UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR’s) Global Gender-Based Violence Unit. The guidance highlights how to work with refugee adolescent girls to prevent and respond to GBV.
The guidance is based on a review of literature, a survey of young refugees involved with RYLOs, documentation of GRYN’s experience partnering with RYLOs, consultations with adolescent girls, and discussions with UNHCR practitioners and staff.
The guidance highlights the challenges and gaps in reaching refugee adolescent girls and providing the GBV services and support they need. It emphasizes that working with young refugee women to step into leadership roles is an untapped opportunity to address GBV. It advocates for partnerships with and empowerment of young women leaders, who are uniquely placed to form and facilitate girl-led groups and empower adolescent girls to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. The guidance explains principles, approaches, steps, tools, and resources that could support UNHCR and partners in identifying and working with young refugee women leaders who are active in their communities and could facilitate girl-led groups.
In addition, the guidance helps practitioners overcome challenges in reaching adolescent girls by leveraging opportunities with young women leaders to create safe, empowering spaces. It offers strategies for UNHCR and partners to effectively engage these leaders, providing them with tools to connect with and support adolescent girls in developing their leadership roles. It outlines key principles for engaging with adolescent girls and young women, ensuring their needs and input are central, and offers adaptable approaches for various contexts to ensure the guidance is practical globally.
The guidance document will be launched in the coming days and will be available to all practitioners and actors working to prevent and respond to GBV, including refugee young women leaders. We are hopeful that the guidance will be a valuable resource in combating GBV and reducing violence against refugee women and girls.
*The Global Refugee Youth Network was co-founded and is supported by the Women’s Refugee Commission.
