After four years of the Syrian war, the world finally woke up to the region’s refugee crisis when the body of three year old, Aylan Kurdi washed upon the shores of Bodrum, Turkey.
Just two years ago, we attended a beautiful long weekend in the resort town when one of my closest friends from college got married there. The Syrian civil war as still at a stage where the world was ignoring it and getting away with it.
But if the lifeless body of little Aylan taught anything to the international community it was to humanize these refugees, not migrants, who are fleeing war, torture, starvation and we can no longer close our eyes to it.
I went on HuffPost Live to talk about how women experience being refugees, how it intensifies violence against women, and how sadly, women make up the majority of the world’s refugees, roughly 65%.
The online channel’s weekly #WMN show, hosted by the fabulous Caroline Modarassey-Tehrani, analyzes the week’s main feminist headlines. It was great to join a panel of fabulous female writers, including Elizabeth Plank, my former colleague at the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Watch our segment here as we discuss Saudi women getting the vote, sexist magazine covers, and more.