Women on Waves/Web reaches out to Syrian refugee women in Turkey
April 23, 2015: Women on Web visits Turkey in support of Turkish women and Syrian refugee women and to reach out to the Syrian community in Turkey. In solidarity with Syrian and Turkish women, we demand the Turkish authorities to respect reproductive and sexual rights of women and we urge them to act to provide the women with contraception tools and safe and accessible abortion services.
The number of refugees in Turkey has already reached to 2 million, more than half of these are women and children. Registered numbers show that since 2011, 30.000 Syrian women gave birth in Turkey. Living in very poor conditions, these women, of whom many women and young girls have been raped, were not provided with contraception tools, neither with safe abortion services.
As sexual and reproductive rights of refugee women have been ignored and because of the already existing restrictions in Turkey, Syrian women are forced to continue with their pregnancy in a very unhealthy and unsafe environment.
The Turkish state also signed the Geneva Convention which recognises that rape and forced pregnancy is a war crime. Therefore both Syrian refugee women, and other women living in Turkey should have access to safe and free contraceptives and abortion services.
When abortion was legalised in Turkey in 1983, this resulted in a tremendous reduction of the amount of women who died from unsafe abortions. However, since 2012 the accessibility to safe abortion services has decreased dramatically. This is caused by obstacles like bad treatment of women in hospitals and high costs of treatment in private clinics.
Women on Web recognizes this problem and wants to reach out to the Syrian community in Turkey as well as to Turkish delegates and involved all parties to search for solutions together.
During our meetings planned in Istanbul, Gaziantep and Urfa, we will discuss the situation of Syrian women in the refugee camps as well as the legal situation in the world and in Turkey, religion culture and morality, reproductive health and rights and the WHO advised use of Mifepristone and Misoprostol for prevention of post-partum haemorrhage and safe abortion care. Also we will have screenings of the Vessel movie showing the history of activities of Women on Waves/Web.
Women in need of information and help and others who would like to support can contact Women on Web through info@womenonweb.org . Women on Web is a non-profit tele-medical service that supports women with unwanted pregnancies from around the world since almost 10 years. The website of the organization "Women On Web" is a source of reliable and scientific medical information.
The helpdesk of Women on Web is also available in Arabic and Turkish. (please see www.womenonweb.org for more information).
https://www.facebook.com/events/972689719428737/
For More Info: 05349786858
Place: Vardar Palace Hotel, Siraselviler Cad. No.16, Taksim, 34443
Beyoglu/İstanbul
Date: 23.04.2015
Time: 15.00 PM
