Gender Assessment of the Refugee and Migration Crisis in Serbia and North Macedonia

In 2015 over one million women and men sought asylum in Western Europe. The vast majority transited from Turkey to Greece and traveled through the Western Balkans to reach destination countries further north. For the countries of the Western Balkans, especially for fYR Macedonia and Serbia this was the first time they were confronted with such a massive refugee flow since the Yugoslav wars. The governments had to quickly scale up their response with the support of UN agencies and international organizations. This publication is a gender analysis of the response in fYR Macedonia and Serbia which looks at the main risks that women and girl refugees face; classifies the services available for women; determines which barriers exist to access services and information for women and recommends how gender issues can be mainstreamed in the national and international response. 

Recommendations to Government, UN and NGO counterparts include: to strengthen coordinated action on mainstreaming of gender-responsive programming and advocacy; and increase national capacity to effectively respond to the specific needs, priorities of and protection risks facing refugee and migrant women and girls. The report also calls for more attention to be paid to gender based violence and establishment of referal mechanisms; women only spaces along the transit route; the provision of more information on transit that women can easily access; and the collection and use of sex-disaggreagated data for planning and operations.