July 2002) According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), reproductive health care is among the crucial elements that give refugees the basic human welfare and dignity that is their right.1 Reproductive health care has been a neglected element of relief work, but many international humanitarian organizations have begun to develop and implement programs to give refugees the support they need.

Who Are Refugees and IDPs?

Nearly 37 million people worldwide are currently living away from their homes and communities because of natural disasters, persecution, war, or violence. People are considered refugees if they have crossed an international border, and internally displaced persons (IDPs) if they have been forced to leave their homes but remain in their own countries. Worldwide, there are more than 14.5 million refugees; the number of IDPs is even greater, at more than 20 million people.2

While proportions of female and male refugees are nearly equal on a global basis, regional differences exist. In some areas, women and children make up 90 percent of the refugee population, because their husbands or fathers have died, been taken prisoner, or become combatants.

Many refugees have significant health problems even before being uprooted. Most displaced people come from countries with low life expectancies and high levels of maternal and newborn mortality. They also have limited literacy and skills, as well as low rates of employment and low social status. These problems may be exacerbated by displacement.

Refugees and IDPs face myriad changes, including disruption in the social support from family and friends, pressure to change their desired fertility levels, and changing societal roles. Refugees who end up in camps, however crowded, are often the lucky ones, since camps usually provide food, water, and basic health care, along with education, job training, and other activities. Such services are not always available to IDPs or to refugees not living in camps.

Women and men may find themselves without any reproductive health care at all, or they may receive care through UNHCR or another donor.3 But basic family planning and maternal and child health services often do not address problems commonly experienced by refugees and IDPs.

Refugees' and IDPs' Reproductive Health Concerns

Many women who are refugees or IDPs face unwanted, unplanned, and poorly spaced pregnancies, due to a lack of access to contraceptive services and supplies, overburdened providers with little time to educate or counsel clients, pressure from husbands or other family members to "rebuild" the population, and increases in rape and prostitution. Refugees are at higher risk than stable populations for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and gender-based violence.4

Research indicates that the availability of contraceptives has improved in stable refugee populations since the mid-1990s.5 Researchers know little about how the immediate aftermath of flight affects fertility preferences, but refugees' fertility desires appear to revert relatively quickly to what they were before flight.6 A reproductive health study of Afghan refugees in Pakistan in 2000 showed that family planning methods were used by 9 percent of currently married women, with 70 percent of those users preferring to receive injections.7

Rape and other forms of violent sexual assault have been used as weapons of war to demoralize communities (as in the former Yugoslavia) and even to alter the ethnic composition of a population (as occurred in both Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia). Border guards, soldiers, and fellow refugees may also perpetrate acts of violence against refugee women. One study of more than 1,000 households in Sierra Leone during its eight-year civil war showed that as many as 11 percent of displaced women and girls experienced war-related sexual violence.8 Gender-based violence can have long-lasting, severe physical effects, including HIV/AIDS.
https://yakshub..com.ng/2016/08/living-as-second-class-citizen.html?m=1

Lalasticlala

Second class citizens in Nigeria are southerners .