Alima fled her home of seven decades just two days before ISIS swept through her village near Mosul in 2014. She left with just her identity papers. Alima went home recently, hoping to find some belongings or mementos. Instead, she found armed men occupying her house. “It is hard to live 70 years in a place and then someone says ‘this place does not belong to you anymore.’”

Risk of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, exacerbating the already pandemic levels of violence women and girls face.

"When you are from a war torn country, is it your fault?"

Thousands of refugees – including families with small children - are trapped in dangerously overcrowded camps on Greek islands as winter sets in.

More than two years after the United Nations declared an official famine in Somalia, over one million people are still without adequate food, water, medical care and other essentials.

To respond to the specific needs of adolescent girls in humanitarian settings and to address the gap in evidence of what works to promote the health, safety and empowerment of adolescent girls, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) has invested in a robust adolescent girl programming and research agenda. As part of this effort, the IRC partnered with Columbia University over a three year period (2014–2017) to develop, implement and evaluate the Creating Opportunities through Mentoring, Parental Involvement and Safe Spaces (COMPASS) program, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID). COMPASS was implemented with refugees living in camps on the Sudan/Ethiopia border, conflict-affected communities in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and displaced populations in north-west Pakistan.

Hear from IRC health workers around the world about their response to the coronavirus pandemic—and what gives them hope.

In crisis, the risk of GBV increases, and so does our collective need to act to prevent GBV before it happens or respond to the needs of women and girls when it does.