Refugee women and children in the Calais ‘Jungle’ and the dismantling of the camp: Is it really the end?
What shocked me the most each time I visited1 the refugee camp in Calais, known as ‘the Jungle’,2 was the near absence of any official organisations on the ground. This structural lack of public response by French authorities has been compensated for by the support of local NGOs as well as by diverse grassroots actors from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Ireland, and also to a large extent from the UK. These organisations have brought the most basic services to the refugees every day and without these citizen volunteer efforts, refugees in Calais would have been left to find their own means of survival. Another striking feature of ‘the Jungle’ is its almost uniquely masculine population. Women are almost invisible to the ‘casual visitor’ but are present nevertheless. They have fled from protracted conflict situations and persecution which have persisted for years in countries including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq (Kurdistan). Particularly among those coming from countries in East Africa, many of them have travelled alone or with small children.
▻https://www.imi.ox.ac.uk/blog/refugee-women-and-children-in-the-calais-2018jungle2019-and-the-dismantlin
