Counselling for Refugee Women GBV Victims

Refugee women's experiences of violence form a continuum over time and geography. There is a great risk of revictimization for refugee women who arrive to the EU with a history of abuse. Reporting gender-based violence incidents to the police is not a primary concern of the refugee women. In order to recover and gather courage to report, these women would need asylum, but in order to receive asylum, they need to tell their story of abuse. This dilemma creates a vicious circle for many of the women.

The project involving 6 EU Member states took a victim-centred approach to better understand the problems and needs of refugee women GBV victims. The innovative aspect of the project was to use co-creation to develop a specific counselling method for refugee women, involving both end-users and service providers in the creation process.

Learn more about counselling methods in the Handbook on counselling asylum seeking and refugee women victims of gender-based violence.