Following on from the occasions of International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day we continue to take time to celebrate women’s outstanding global achievements.
Equally, we must recognise the many challenges and dangers affecting their safety, health, livelihoods and dignity that women and girls throughout the world continue to face daily.
GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo - Yesterday, Foreign Secretary William Hague and actress Angelina Jolie visited a displacement camp in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where the International Rescue Committee is working to prevent violence against women and girls.
The photographs above were taken by the IRC's Liz Pender in and around the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan, to which tens of thousands of refugees have fled in recent months, following fighting in northern Sudan.
Photgraphy: Liz Pender/The IRC
Article: Stefano Gelmini
Located in Central Africa and surrounded by Rwanda, Tanzania, and Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi is recovering from years of civil war. Romola Garai, star of the BBC's hit tv series The Hour, recently visited Burundi with the IRC, to see first hand the positive impact our work is having on women and girls, children and young people. This video is Romola's account of her visit.
Photography and article by: Marion Dols, IRC health advisor
By Melissa Winkler
YIDA, South Sudan - The International Rescue Committee is launching emergency health and protection programs for vulnerable women and girls who have fled to South Sudan to escape flaring violence across the border in Sudan’s Nuba Mountain region.
Kailahun, Sierra Leone - Last week I returned from a visit to Sierra Leone, where I was on location with journalist Nick Kristof, actress Eva Mendes and the film crew of Half the Sky, a documentary series to air in 2012. The film series will focus on abuses and inequities faced by women and girls around the world and inspiring women who are combating them and finding solutions. Half the Sky is partnering with the International Rescue Committee on a film segment about sexual violence.
Freetown, Sierra Leone -
“It is not your fault,” says the International Rescue Committee’s Amie Kandeh (center), consoling a 14-year-old girl named Fulamatu, as her mother listens. “You must believe that.”
Guest blogger Brenna O’Rourke is an IRC intern in Chad, where the IRC is providing healthcare and other essential services to 58,000 Darfuri refugees in two camps, and to local communities who support them. When women and girls flee a crisis such as the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, the threat of assault follows them. They can also face early marriage, domestic violence, genital mutilation or harassment. Our work in Chad includes urgent care for survivors of sexual violence.
My International Rescue Committee colleague Peter Biro is in the Central African Republic (CAR), one of the world's poorest countries.
A long-running civil war decimated CAR's health care system. Today, there are no more than 300 doctors in the entire country -- and almost 20 percent of children living there die before the age of five.
