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Safe House for Women and Children

A safe house in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, for the protection of women and children. The safe house not only takes people in but also uses its experience to address the causes of abuse and violence in the community.

Description

This initiative started in 2003 and provides an immediately accessible secure place for children and women affected by violence, providing temporary shelter, medical and legal care, and assistance with resolving their conflicts.

Further, acting on the information given by those seeking shelter, the initiative carries out awareness programs designed to address the root causes of violence in specific locations.

The project provides a much needed facility in this conflict-affected community.

Aims / Objectives

The project aims to support victims of human rights violations in Jaffna and seeks to find out about the violations that occur in silence, hoping to address their root causes effectively.

Through these measures and awareness programs responding to identified issues, the initiative hopes to reduce violence in the area.

How it is Articulated

Women and children in need of the safe house are directed there either by the police, refugee camps, women’s and children’s organisations, or by personal contacts. They may seek shelter as a result of abuse by government soldiers, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), or by their own close family and relatives. Often this latter group are frustrated by feelings of impotence caused by the conflict, and vent these frustrations on the women and children. The house can host up to 27 people at a time and it provides them with food, accommodation, counselling, legal support, and medical care in a secure and comfortable environment for a maximum of three months, or until they find a solution to their problems. It has three wardens, a security officer, counsellors, medical officers, and lawyers to provide the necessary care for the inhabitants.

Jaffna Social Action Centre analyses the locations from which the most number of clients come and tries to identify root causes. We then intervene based on this situational analysis and try to address the causes of the conflict. These root causes might be frustration from living under such extreme conditions, a personal situation affecting the abuser him/herself, insensitivity, or just a lack of awareness. We take whatever actions are within our power to help the abuser to overcome the drive to abuse the victim. This helps prevent future abuse and is a sustainable preventative action.

Achievements / Learning Points

We have been able to make our clients feel safer from the violence they experienced as direct and indirect results of conflict, both by providing immediate support and by addressing the root causes of that violence. The community know they have a safe house available and it is a reassurance to them to know they have a place where they can escape from the violence taking place around them.

Although addressing the root cause of violence against women is a vital step on the path to finding peace, we have learnt through the Safe House initiative that it is by no means an easy one. We believe it is so difficult because of the cultural beliefs prevalent in our society, which condition both men and women. Even though a woman might repeatedly suffer at the hands of her husband, she is unlikely to see separation as a possible solution. Therefore we have to find alternative mechanisms for sustainable solutions, depending on each individual’s circumstances. Often we encourage the women to participate in support groups and practise a vocation to create financial freedom.

The safe house provides shelter for a maximum of three months, but this is not enough to find solutions to the problems of some clients. Finding ways to extend this maximum period of shelter would make the initiative more effective.

Our experience has shown that the family (in our culture, extended families are the norm) is the entity that harasses women and children the most. To penetrate that social structure and address the root causes of the harassment, we need to pay more attention to the family and give more support and time to reach through its layers. For that our organisation needs strengthening in resources and finances. This is all the more important as our facility becomes more expensive with the rising cost of food due to the protracted conflict.

Finally, we face difficulties when dealing with the security forces. We are caught in a dilemma in which we are unable to reveal the reasons for the women’s presence at the safe house, due to the sensitivities of the situation. Therefore the work we do to improve the lives of women and children and to free them from violence is made more difficult by the present conflict situation.

Geographical Area of Operation

Jaffna

Funding Resources

Organisations Involved