As COVID-19 threatens refugee camps, humanitarian responses must not forget the needs of vulnerable women and girls Olfat Mahmoud is the Founder and Director of the Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organization in Lebanon. Marcy Hersh is the Senior Manager for Humanitarian Advocacy at Women Deliver. In Bourj-el-Barajneh refugee camp in Lebanon, residents now joke: “Perhaps COVID-19 will forget about us too.” Their sprawling settlement – home to up to 45,000 refugees – has no known cases of COVID-19 so far. Yet despite this grim humor, advocates agree that it is just a matter of time before the pandemic reaches all refugee camps, and those hardest hit will be girls and women. For refugee girls and women everywhere, the feeling of being “forgotten” is rooted in an unacceptable reality: for decades, their perspectives have been an afterthought in humanitarian action. Across the globe, most displacement settings have been lef...
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