NECWA RAHİM

Algeria -According to the World Migration Report 2020 released by the International Organization for Migration, there were around 281 million international migrants in the world in 2020, which equates to 3.6 per cent of the global population. Some migrants leave their country because they want to have a better life. Others feel they must leave because of poverty, lack of access to health care, education, water, food and housing, political unrest, violence, natural disasters or other serious circumstances that exist there. Women and girls are most affected by migration.

L'association Femmes En Communication (FEC), which was established in Algeria in 1995, has launched a project entitled, “Hear Her” to highlight violence against migrant women and girls in Algeria. NuJINHA spoke to Radia Boudissa, project manager at the association, about the project. “The project was launched in July 2022 to highlight violence against migrant women and girls living in Algeria,” she told us.

Workshops for journalists

Underling that many workshops will be organized as part of the project, Radia Boudissa said, “We will organize training workshops for especially journalists and civil society activists to raise awareness about the increase in violence against migrant women and girls living in Algeria. The aim of the project is to eliminate violence against migrant women and girls, to shed light on conditions of migrant women victims of violence and make their voices heard.”

The project will continue for a year

Radia Boudissa also said that the project was launched in July 2022 and will end in July 2023. “Jurists, activists and specialists in migration issues in Algeria and Africa will make presentations at the workshops about the rights of migrant women and girls and the elimination of violence against them.

She was subjected to violence for resisting harassment

NuJINHA also spoke to some illegal immigrants in Algeria about what they had experienced after leaving their countries. Maria Mokala, one of the migrants, said, “I left my country due to poverty and deteriorating living conditions in Cameroon. After a short time, I was able to enter Algeria with a group of girls. For a while, I looked for a job. We slept outside and everyone looked at us in an unwelcome way, except for some people who helped us to survive. After a while, I found a job in Bordj El Kiffan. A few weeks later, the employer tried to assault and harass me. He used violence against me when I resisted him. He threatened to accuse me of stealing his products. I managed to escape there before he filed a complaint against me.”

To have a better life…

Nour H., an Algerian woman currently living in a women's center, told us her story. “My family haven’t known anything about me whether I am alive or not since I decided to leave Algeria in 2017 by a ferryboat. My sufferings began when I met a man working with me in a shop. I was almost convinced that I should leave this country and change my life for the better. He supported me to leave the country. I collected some money and we decided to leave the country together. But he stole my money and left me with a group of young men who force girls into prostitution. So I was one of the victims of the traffickers. But I was able to escape after many attempts and sought help from some associations and they helped me.”