Executive Summary
The Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) completed a research mission to Nyarugusu Refugee Camp in Tanzania in October 2012. The purpose was to gain understanding of Congolese refugee adolescent girls’ protection and empowerment needs; learn what existing program and community-based strategies appear to serve them; appraise gaps in services from girls’ perspectives; and identify potential local partners that could implement a pilot program focused on enhancing girls’ safety.
The WRC met with UN and civil society agencies working with refugees in Dar es Salaam and in the Kigoma Region (where Nyarugusu Refugee Camp is situated) to learn about the operational context. We then met with refugee girls, boys, women and men, as well as agency staff and refugee incentive social workers, to learn how we can enable refugee adolescent girls to become resilient, self-reliant, healthy young women and leaders in their families and communities. We completed the assessment with a debriefing workshop in Nyarugusu with service provider agencies, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) staff and members of the refugee communities to discuss some approaches that could potentially work as a pilot project.
This was the second in a three-country series of assessments; the first was to Ethiopia, the third to Uganda.