Brussels, 03/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament is turning a spotlight on women refugees and asylum seekers in the run-up to International Women's Rights Day and the EU-Turkey summit, organising three events, on Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 March: a press seminar and the opening of an exhibition of photographs on 2 March and an inter-parliamentary meeting on 3 March.
“Women parliamentarians must speak up before the EU-Turkey summit on 7 March and the European summit on 18-19 March. Only a strong, urgent action plan shared by all the member states will allow us to resolve the current crisis”, said former Irish president Mary Robinson.
The inter-parliamentary meeting on 3 March, bringing together MEPs and national MPs from the EU countries, candidate countries and Norway, representatives of the Council of Europe and the European Commission and members of the European Institute for Gender Equality, was structured around three themes: violence against women refugees and asylum seekers, their health needs and their integration.
“The many meetings I have had on the refugee crisis have been painful. It is a great pity that they are often reduced to debating whether or not we should close our borders. … Yet the refugee crisis is one involving people who need our help. Among these people, there are many women and children, a particularly vulnerable section of the population”, stated European Parliament President Martin Schulz in his introduction. He called on the European Union to make available the money needed to allow the refugees and asylum seekers to integrate (allowing them to enter the jobs market, offering language courses, providing access to good quality public education) and to have a decent life. “If the European instrument for refugees in Turkey provides sustainable prospects for the refugees living in Turkey, they will not feel they have to carry on towards Europe”, he argued.
The European Parliament is expected to put a non-legislative report on the situation of women refugees and asylum seekers in the EU to the vote in its plenary session of 8 March (see EUROPE 11480). The text calls, inter alia, for an end to the detention of children, pregnant women who have applied for asylum and all victims of rape, sexual violence or human trafficking. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)