There are many non-governmental organizations that fight to protect human rights such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Global Rights. One you may not have heard of is Refugees International. According to their website (refugeesinternational.org), Refugees International focuses on bringing aid to displaced citizens and helps to bring attention to the problems that have caused the displacement. Refugees International was originally formed in 1979 for the purpose of assisting Indochinese refugee's. Now they assist refugees from all over the world by looking out for their best interest and ensuring their safety. They do this by having workers in the field observe the treatment and care of refugees who have been displaced for various reasons including war and conflict. They do not take any government funding, solely depending on donations (Refugees International, n.d.).
One particular protection project that was taken on by Refugees International is the sexual violence that is going on in South Sudan. This is an ongoing issue in the region, for example, just last year there were 250 women and girls who were victims according to a NY Times report (Cumming-Bruce, 2016).The United Nations Security Council passed Resolutions in 2009 that would put so-called “Women's Protection Advisors” or WPAs into the field on their peacekeeping missions. The role of these WPAs was to collect information and report findings of sexual violence they observe, this would allow the UN to act accordingly with appropriate action (Hersh, 2013). These Resolutions that put WPAs into place was the great move and very needed due to the amount of sexual violence that was taking place with women in this area.
However, according to the field report completed by Hersh (2013), the problem was so large that all of the WPAs that were in the field were placed in South Sudan. By all I mean 6, there were only 6 total WPAs globally and they were all focused in South Sudan. It would be difficult for only 6 WPAs to cover the ground and have eyes on the situation at all times, this would most definitely make it easy for a perpetrator to hide their activity. To make the situation even worse these WPAs had a severe lack of training in the area of sexual violence, they did not even receive specific training on the Resolutions they were there to support and report back on according to Hersh's (2013) field report.
In response to these challenges and in alignment with Refugees International's mission, Hersh made some recommendations on changes and action to be taken. According to Hersh (2013), the following recommendations were made. That the UN would recruit a senior level manager to help provide guidance for the WPAs, they would provide training specific to sexual violence to the WPAs and also, the UN should have the work of the WPAs evaluated by a third party. These were the main objectives that Refugees International wanted to see in order to further provide support and oversight for the women and children in South Sudan who were subject to extreme sexual violence.
References
Cumming-Bruce, N. (2016). U.N. Finds South Sudan Increasingly in Turmoil. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 18 February 2016, from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/africa/un-finds-south-sudan-increasingly-in-turmoil.html?_r=0
Hersh, M. (2013). SOUTH SUDAN: INVESTIGATING SEXUAL VIOLENCE IN CONFLICT PROVES CHALLENGING (1st ed.). Retrieved from http://www.refugeesinternational.org/s/061813_South_Sudan_Investigating-Letterhead.pdf
International, R. (2016). Our Mission. Refugees International. Retrieved 16 February 2016, from http://www.refugeesinternational.org/what/