reproductive health
© UNHCR/ Sebastian Rich
THEY TOLD ME THAT THEY WERE NO LONGER SUBJECT TO ABUSE; THEY WERE STANDING STRAIGHT AND UNDERSTOOD THEIR RIGHTS.
important to give them back their role as parents and to help them find their own solutions. Ten our job is to help them implement those solutions.”
Cornier cites a refugee camp in East Africa where she was starting a project for sexually abused children and teen sex workers. She spoke to a group of girls who were doing sex work to buy
16 / UNHCR
things that weren’t provided through the food rations in the camp, such as sugar. Sitting under a tree one morning, the girls at first told Cornier that everything was fine: they did not have any problems with what they were doing; they used condoms and weren’t getting pregnant. “I told them that I didn’t blame them for having sex to buy sugar or slippers,” she says. “I explained that I wanted to work with them to find other ways to reach the same objective.” As their discussion deepened, the girls revealed that they weren’t actually using condoms because the men didn’t like them; and that they were in fact getting pregnant and using dangerous methods to “flush” the pregnancy away. Tey lied only because they thought that’s what adults wanted to hear.
Cornier worked with the girls and their parents, explaining how the abuse of underage girls was a crime and offering options for the young women who felt
they had no choice but to engage in the sex trade. “What was great, was that six months later when I met with them again, more than half of them were no longer doing sex work,” she says. “Tey told me that they were no longer subject to abuse; they were standing straight and understood their rights. I was extremely proud of them.”
Each refugee camp is different, Cornier emphasizes,
explaining that cultural
differences call for varying culturally sensitive strategies. What remains the same, however, is Cornier’s approach to her work: “If we treat sex work, for instance, as a problem, then it involves judgement and a demand for a solution that makes these girls and women feel that they have no other options. If we treat it as an issue then we are no longer judging or blaming and we can treat it in a much more positive way.” «
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