GENEVA - Emergencies and forced displacements constitute serious threats to the security, freedom, and health of migrant women, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in an oral statement at the Human Rigths Council (HRC). However, the needs of migrant women have not been taken into consideration when it comes to adopting migration-related policies and programmes. 

In a joint statement with the International Institute for Rights and Development (IIRD), Euro-Med Monitor drew the attention of the Council to the need to involve gender-perspectives in the work of the Human Rights Council and its policies.

“The Human Rights Council is mandated to make gender equality and non-discrimination a reality in people’s lives,” said Michela Pugliese, researcher on migration and asylum issues at Euro-Med Monitor. “However, it cannot properly do this without sufficiently understanding these people’s lived experiences.”

Pugliese said that the Council cannot respond to migrant women’s needs if it does not increase its role in the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of gender-sensitive policies and migration-related programmes.

The statement further warned that preventing, reporting, and denouncing human rights’ violations will be incomplete if the gender perspective is missing, where the voices and desires of migrant women are unheard, and remain unresolved.

Euro-Med Monitor and IIRD called on the Council to engage migrant women in its work and mechanisms to assess accurately their needs and to produce fact-based recommendations that, when implemented, can truly improve the quality of their lives.

The two organizations urged member states to further study and provide a greater understanding of the gender-perspective in migration-related programs, so they could be able to better protect migrant women and girls from discrimination and violations.