Displacement, Human Rights and Sexual and Reproductive Health

Focusing on the flight of women and girls from Venezuela, this book examines the gendered nature of forced displacement across the causes of movement, the circumstances of transit, and the conditions of reception and settlement. It explores the ways in which the failures of protection regimes to be sensitive to displacement’s gendered character affect women and girls, and particularly how this exposes them to risks to their sexual and reproductive health. Highlighting how categorical legal distinctions between ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’ fail to capture the dynamics of forced migration in Latin America, this book investigates how the operation of this categorical divide generates responsibility and protection gaps in relation to female forced migrants which act as determinants of sexual and reproductive health. Drawing on the voices of displaced women, it argues that a robust political ethics of protection of the forcibly displaced must encompass all necessary fleers and be responsive to the gendered character of forced displacement and particularly to the effective access of women and girls to sexual and reproductive health rights.