Voices that deserve to be heard.

• Position: Women refugees - Brief Article

"Do not think that because women wear a veil we do not have a voice", says Jamila, a refugee from Afghanistan. "When the UN is looking for leaders, look to us. Tap our networks that reach and assist women and their families. Women must be included in any peace-building to ensure peace and lasting security."

The story is the same around the globe. As Guatemalan Maria Guadalupe Garcia explains, women refugees are not given an education or allowed to learn of their rights. Consequently, they are perceived as ill-educated, traumatized victims, and not as potential leaders with valid ideas and proposals. "We realized that women did not participate, that they knew nothing about their rights", she explained. "They were not leaders. They were illiterate. They were almost invisible."

Xuan Sutter, an exile from Viet Nam who founded the Refugee Women's Network in the United States, said: "I realized that until women like me, survivors of the refugee experience, decided to speak up and take action, little would change. We need more refugees who can go beyond the bigger picture ... to go beyond those borders and spread our fighting spirit to other refugee women."

In 2000, the United Nations Security Council passed an historic resolution on women, peace and security that aimed to protect women in times of war while ensuring their participation in peace talks. For the first time, this world body was recognizing the contribution women could make to peace-building during and after times of crisis and conflict. Refugee women need to be represented at the peace table in order to ensure that the voices of ordinary people stricken by war are heard by politicians, generals and diplomats, but they also need mechanisms like the Security Council resolutions to protect them from violence and abuse.

Wherever there is a refugee crisis, more than 50 per cent of those refugees will be women. In Bosnia, men were conscripted, imprisoned or killed, leaving many women to escape into exile alone. Refugee women put themselves at extreme physical risk to flee conflict or persecution. Many are raped or abused on their journey. But the dangers do not necessarily end at the gates of the refugee camp. Women are still targeted for physical abuse, simply because the camps are not designed to meet women's specific needs. In the Sherkole camp on the Ethiopian border, Sudanese women refugees spend up to two to three hours a day gathering firewood from land surrounding the camp. There...