Syrian women in Egypt learn to fight through fear
A Cairo group is helping Syrian women gain the confidence and skills they need to confront the harassment they often face as refugees in Egypt, and even non-Syrians are joining up.
Women who fled to Egypt to escape the Syrian war are learning to stand up for themselves despite their refugee status. Sharing the common experiences of war and displacement, fear and uncertainty, these women are training to fight harassment, assault, theft and other problems that plague them in a land that's not their own.
The Souriyat Association, a nongovernmental organization in Cairo, has provided help to Syrian women since 2014. The group offers a variety of training and a sense of community. One of its more recent efforts, launched in November, has begun bearing fruit, empowering women physically, emotionally and economically, according to head Latifa Daghman.
The program includes self-defense classes. There's an urgent need to teach refugees self-defense, as so many of them have been subjected to verbal and physical harassment as well as theft, Daghman told Al-Monitor in a phone interview. Syrian women ought to be able to stand up for themselves, she said, so they can adapt to societies and communities that are different from where they were born and raised.
"I think Syrian women are vulnerable. They are not economically empowered and are without any income. They keep silent when they are abused or humiliated. All this is the result of a lack of cultural awareness, as they aren't familiar with their legal and social rights,” she said.
