Women's Refugee Commission

For more than thirty years, since its founding in 1989, the Women’s Refugee Commission has worked to ensure that the needs and priorities of women, children, and youth displaced by conflict and crisis are firmly on the humanitarian agenda. Our goal is to improve the effectiveness of humanitarian response everywhere and ensure that it engages and builds on the capacity of affected populations. In addition, that humanitarian efforts ensure that those fleeing persecution and violence have their human rights respected and are able to seek safety and access legal protections and asylum wherever they are fleeing to, including in the United States. We work to change and improve the humanitarian system by developing guidance and tools to shape and strengthen practice on the ground as well as inform policy and funding priorities to secure tangible improvements in the lives of the most marginalized among the displaced persons

Strategic Priority 1:

WRC informs and influences the integration and promotion of gender equality in humanitarian contexts to improve outcomes for displaced women, children, and youth. We do so by advocating for a humanitarian response that reflects a rights-based, progressive concept of gender that respects gender diversity, and recognizes and addresses the impact of power relations on access to and control over resources.

Strategic Priority 2:

WRC informs and influences the development and implementation of resilience-based approaches in humanitarian settings, to improve outcomes for displaced women, children, and youth. We do this by (i) promoting the inclusion of women, children, and youth, in resilience-based approaches and frameworks, and (ii) advocating for humanitarian response that strengthens the capacities of women, children, and youth in all their diversity.

Strategic Priority 3:

WRC has an organization-wide, cross-departmental planning, measurement and learning framework that clearly integrates the theory of change and allows the organization to monitor progress, identify gaps, learn from its experiences, and make decisions.

WRC’s theory of change begins and ends with the communities that we serve. WRC’s three-pronged approach consists of researching the needs of women, children, and youth, collaboratively identifying community-driven solutions, and advocating for change through targeted policies and programming. That is the expertise WRC brings to bear—expertise grounded in what we learn by listening to crisis-affected people themselves.

In the first months of 2022, more than 100 million individuals were displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations. Climate change and the resultant displacement will be the defining problem of the 21st Century, expected to cause 150 million people to be displaced by 2050. The changing nature of conflict and displacement necessitates rethinking the traditional humanitarian response. To improve sustainability and efficiency, the response must be driven by those closest to the crisis – the affected populations themselves, local NGOs, and host governments – and it must build on the strengths, capacities, and coping strategies of refugees and the internally displaced. This will necessitate moving from a needs-based approach to a resilience-based response.

Further, as current responses have not advanced the needs, protection, and participation of displaced women and girls far enough or fast enough, re-emphasizing the promotion of gender equality is vital to improving the effectiveness of humanitarian response. Gender equality refers to the equal rights, responsibilities, and opportunities of women, men, girls, and boys. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs, and priorities of both women and men are taken into consideration, recognizing the diversity of groups of women and men. Gender equality is not only a women’s issue and should concern and fully engage men as well as women. Equality between women and men is both a human rights issue and a precondition for sustainable human development.

WRC advocates for equal rights, equal access, and equal opportunity for women, men, girls, and boys. We work to ensure that humanitarian policy and practice are both gender-sensitive and gender-transformative – availing of the opportunities conflict and displacement provide for the expansion of women’s rights and for challenging existing inequalities and practices that can affect all groups, such as gender-based violence. WRC understands that gender equality in its broadest sense is essential to the achievement of freedom, human dignity, and self-reliance, and to the provision of meaningful and durable solutions to pressing humanitarian challenges. Domestically, advancing gender equality necessitates ensuring that women with protection needs can fully exercise their right to asylum: that they are informed about their rights, have access to legal counsel, are appropriately interviewed, do not face separation from their children, and are not placed in detention facilities.

WRC has been working for over 30 years to center gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment in global responses to some of the world’s darkest challenges. Underlying each program area is our focus on bolstering gender equality and women’s agency and leadership, building self-reliance, and fostering inclusion of marginalized groups in decision-making.

With dramatic increases in the number of people impacted by instability, poverty, and displacement, WRC’s advocacy and research in the humanitarian and development nexus has strengthened community and government resilience, bolstered localization efforts, and created the tools that promote gender equality, economic and social justice for women and girls, and gender-transformative change.

WRC pilots innovative approaches with field-based partners; conducts assessments and evaluations of crisis response efforts; provides technical assistance to partners to assist them in improving their services; produces guidance, tools, and resources to inform practitioners; advocates with donors and policymakers on priorities and needs; and maximizes reach and impact through robust communications mediums. This work has fostered gender-transformative improvements at household, community, and systemic levels. We seek to transform how the global community works and achieve impact through gender-transformative approaches built on synergistic advocacy, communications, and programming.

Sustained advocacy around funding priorities, policy developments, and programmatic approaches are required to push donors, policymakers, and practitioners forward. WRC is well placed to contribute to and lead these efforts. As an organization that works with and through networks, coalitions, and partners and participates in and leads relevant working groups and task teams, WRC sits squarely between humanitarian and development organizations; between humanitarian and human rights agencies; and between academia and applied practice. WRC is both a catalyst for change and the connective tissue that brings coalitions and networks together to promote catalytic improvements in the protection, health, and well-being of people, particularly the most marginalized, in crisis-affected and fragile states. WRC’s broad array of individual, governmental, foundation, corporate, and multilateral agency donors support the organization’s work.

WRC is recognized internationally for cutting-edge work on a wide range of issues—the U.S. State Department, donor governments, and UN agencies turn to WRC to inform their program and policy work on displaced and asylum-seeking women, children and youth. WRC is frequently invited to meet with officials, conduct high-level trainings, join coalitions, and provide input on legislation and policy. WRC fosters an environment for organizational learning through a robust monitoring and evaluation system.

WRC has made landmark contributions to humanitarian response on integrating gender considerations.

WRC is recognized as a leader in defending the human rights of migrants, empowering migrant and refugee women, children, and families to seek protection and safety, including asylum at international borders, and holding the U.S. government and other policymakers accountable when they violate those rights. WRC continues to monitor conditions of detention and access to asylum, attorneys, and due process.

WRC’s 1994 ground-breaking study “Refugee Women and Reproductive Health: Reassessing Priorities” resulted in lifesaving sexual and reproductive health care that is now a global standard and part of humanitarian response from the very onset of an emergency. Sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) policy advocacy contributed to increased support for UNFPA, more than doubling U.S. contributions to UNFPA for its critical SRHR and gender-based violence (GBV) functions. WRC serves as the secretariat for the Inter-Agency Working Group on Reproductive Health in Crises.

WRC put GBV on the humanitarian agenda in 2001 and worked to ensure that the prevention of and response to it were integrated in health, livelihood, disability, and protection programming for women and girls. WRC leads the multi-agency Call to Action to Address GBV in Emergencies effort and continues to lead work on how GBV risks affect different population groups, and promotes tailored risk mitigation strategies. WRC led humanitarian response efforts to protect and empower adolescent girls and put sexual violence against displaced men and boys on the humanitarian radar.

In 2009, WRC published the first comprehensive manual on livelihoods programs for displaced people: “Building Livelihoods: A Field Manual for Practitioners in Humanitarian Settings.” This groundbreaking manual has been used by the UN Development Program, UNHCR, and NGOs to train their own staff.

WRC’s Refugee Self Reliance Initiative has engaged 35 partners using the Self-Reliance Index to measure the impact of their livelihood programs in 25 countries. We reached some 50,000 refugee households (200,000 refugees) and aim to reach 5 million in 5 years.

WRC’s seminal 2008 report “Disabilities Among Refugees and Conflict-Affected Populations” provided innovative recommendations to improve support for refugees with disabilities across humanitarian program sectors. WRC is one of two humanitarian NGOs leading on the special protection needs and programmatic responses for LGBTQI+ displaced people.

WRC will continue to advance women’s economic empowerment, prevent and respond to gender-based violence, protect and empower adolescent girls, mitigate child marriage and female genital mutilation, and improve access and quality of SRH services and rights, focusing on bolstering gender equality and women’s agency, leadership, and self-reliance, and fostering inclusion of marginalized groups in decision-making.