Seminar room 220, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine
Bern Lectures in Health Science
Shirin Heidari, Senior Research Fellow at the Global Health Centre and Senior Technical Consultant on Gender at WHO, will present her multi-country research project on sexual and reproductive health and rights in forced displacement at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine on 14 November 2019.
The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of war, conflict, persecution, and natural disasters has been exponentially increasing in the past few years. Displaced populations face significant hardship. They often lack access to food, housing and basic essential services including sexual and reproductive health services. Conflict, disasters and displacements are experienced differently by men, women and transgender persons and have different impacts. Crises often exacerbate gender inequalities and reinforce gender hierarchies with serious implications on the sexual and reproductive health of individuals.
Multiple factors such as sexual- and gender-based violence, social exclusion, housing insecurity and family separation lead to precarious conditions which tend to facilitate engagement in transactional sex. Transactional sex sometimes represents the only option to meet financial and safety needs. Vulnerable groups of population such as refugees may engage in transactional sex to raise money to continue their journey, and others may be coerced into sex work. Refugees who engage in transactional sex often face greater risk of gender-based violence, HIV/STIs and unwanted pregnancy.
Despite the significant public health and human rights ramifications on transactional sex in forced displacement, there is a dearth of robust evidence on the phenomenon and its sexual and reproductive health implications.
This seminar is part of the Bern Lectures in Health Science organised by the University of Bern.