September 2011
For many women, finding refuge from the east Africa food crisis for themselves and their families isn’t the end of their trauma. Their low social standing means that violence can mar their lives. Melany Markham reports on the work our partner the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) is doing to support these women by providing them with a chance of a life free from violence at Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.
Mahadu Biriye beams at me from across the desk. Warm and friendly, she sits telling me about the programme she runs for women in the refugee camps in and around Dadaab.
Mahadu is the matron of the women’s refuge called Safe Haven in Dadaab. She has a background in counselling and offers empathy and understanding to the women who find their way to her haven. The refuge can accommodate up to 120 people – women and children fleeing from desperate situations that are often caused by problems they encounter with their male relatives.
Safe Haven might seem desolate when you first arrive, but Mahadu’s welcome and the happiness of the families who live there is evidence that the programme is fulfilling its purpose. To the three families who currently live there, it is a sanctuary.
The centre is run by LWF and many charities working in Dadaab refugee camp refer women and children they know have been affected by violence. Although they’re only meant to stay there for a maximum of three months, some women and their families have been staying at the haven for up to three years now, although many others are able to safely return home.
One woman in the centre had been subjected to a brutal rape, but had sought refuge in the haven not just to escape her attackers, but the stigma that she experienced in the community. While she was in the refuge, her husband found a home in another part of Dadaab and she is planning to move back there with her children.
Girls often come to the Safe Haven to escape early marriage. Traditionally, in Somali culture, women are promised to their husbands when they are teenagers. Around the age of fifteen, teenage girls are engaged and their husbands pay a dowry to the girls’ family. Mahadu spoke of cases where Somali men, who lived overseas, had come to the camps in Kenya to find young Somali women to marry. She said that the price or dowry paid to the family of the bride could be as much as Ksh 50,000, approximately £330. To a family that has lost everything, the price is enough for them to marry their daughters to people they don’t know.
The Safe Haven is not the only programme aimed at improving the situation of Somali women in Dadaab. Social workers are employed at many locations within the camp and they help identify people who have been subjected to violence or abuse. Mahadu also says that there had been a campaign to stop early marriage, with some success.
A safe place to live is only part of the remedy to violence and abuse. The other part of the solution is finding a way out of the cycle of violence – a durable solution. Counselling, literacy classes and an income-generation programme are also run in the compound.
The women and children make bags and bracelets for money and they’ve become something of a fashion statement in Dadaab. A shop operated by the UNHCR sells bags made by women in Safe Haven that sell out almost as soon as they come into stock. Other non-government organisations place bulk orders with the women for items such as computer cases.
In a place like Dadaab, the problems that refugees face can often seem overwhelming. This is especially true of women, whose problems do not abate after they leave Somalia. Programmes like Safe Haven offer a solution to some of the problems that Somali women experience – a lasting solution and a life free from violence.
