Leila*, now a 32-year-old volunteer with International Medical Corps in Lebanon, was 14 years old when her parents divorced. Her mother—who married at age 16—could no longer take her husband’s physical and verbal abuse, and left with the couple’s only son, leaving her two daughters behind. As soon as her mother left, Leila’s father started …
As part of the worldwide “16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence,” which kicked off on November 25 with a commemoration of the International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls and ran until December 10 (World Human Rights Day), more than 4,000 people across six refugee camps in Ethiopia’s Gambella region …
It had been more than four years since the small village of Timangolo, in Cameroon, became the reluctant host to as many as 7,000 refugees fleeing an armed conflict in the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR), yet despite a sharp jump in population, no one had the money to invest in a place where people …
Amani, a 29-year old widow from Iraq and mother of four, poignantly describes the day she was forced into marriage at the age of 16 as “the death of the girl in me.” Amani remembers crying and shouting, protesting her parent’s decision about the arranged marriage—but her pleas fell on deaf ears. On her wedding …
Ours is a world that far too often tolerates violence against women and girls, making egregious transgressions disturbingly commonplace and pervasive. When a woman or girl experiences violence, sexual or otherwise, she needs comprehensive care to help heal the detrimental—and at times irreparable—physical and psychological consequences. International Medical Corps provides critical gender-based violence (GBV) treatment …
International Medical Corps has provided assistance and training in southern Sudan for almost 25 years. South Sudan became independent in 2011, and a bloody civil war broke out two years later. Since the beginning of the conflict in South Sudan, 4 million people have left their homes—85% of them women and children. In an economy …
Layan and her family lived a good life in Syria before the war. Her father worked as a businessman in Kuwait and made a decent income. She was a child who knew no other life, so war, death and annihilation seemed very distant. No matter where you live, nothing but experience can prepare you for …
International Medical Corps and Children’s Health Fund are working together to help communities affected by the catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas caused by Hurricane Florence. Children’s Health Fund (CHF) is supplying a mobile medical clinic (MMC) and driver to International Medical Corps, which will staff the MMC with a team comprising physicians, nurses and support …
Listening to the voice of someone who has been silenced, marginalized and even physically abused for years is a delicate task, but it’s one that International Medical Corps is determined to embrace as we look to help and heal those who have suffered from gender-based violence (GBV). GBV is defined as an action toward someone …
