• Life as a female refugee: ’You don’t know who to trust’ - Al Jazeera English
    http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2016/02/life-female-refugee-don-trust-160210092005932.html

    “We never sleep [at the same time]. One of us always stays awake. We’ve heard too many stories of women who have been robbed,” says 38-year-old Samaher from Baghdad. She has a soft voice and sad, dark eyes.

    Three weeks ago she fled Iraq with her baby boy and two female friends.

    Now she is at the transit camp of Vinojug on the Macedonian-Greek border, waiting for the train to Serbia.

    “I am so tired,” she says. “Even when it’s my turn to sleep, I can’t. I am always afraid something might happen.”

    The sun is shining but it is bitterly cold in the camp. Hundreds of refugees huddle together in large tents warmed by patio heaters. On one of the wooden benches sits 30-year-old Manal from Damascus. Her two small daughters, aged three and four, cling to her, while their 10-year-old brother plays elsewhere in the tent.

    Heavily pregnant with her fourth child, Manal has been travelling for two weeks. She crossed the Mediterranean in a rubber boat and walked for kilometres.

    Europe is failing to provide basic protection for them, the Amnesty report stated.

    This problem is now all the more critical because the percentage of women among the refugees who travel through Europe has risen dramatically. Exact data is not available, but according to UNHCR, last summer, a quarter of the refugees were women and children - now it is 55 percent.