Help give Syrian women and girl refugees a voice in the international media.

Why we care: Women and girls make up 75% of the 1.4 million people fleeing war in Syria and are increasingly at risk of sexual assault and trafficking without a platform to demand change and expose threats.

How we’re solving this: For change to happen in any country—especially one experiencing massive disruption and conflict—women’s voices must be heard; this special reporting project will provide a platform for Syrian women to tell their stories so that they can design their path to change and peace.

Our reporters will travel to refugee camps in Jordan across a one-month period to speak to Syrian women and report on the unique health and safety risks they face and the work they are doing to combat them. As well as being experienced journalists with sensitivity to women’s voices, our reporters speak fluent Arabic and have a deep investment in supporting women to shape their future in the Middle East.

This special reporting project will raise the stories of change and action alongside recording the abuses of women and children. We will do something that few news organizations manage to do: give women a true platform and true access to change. This project will help cover the salaries, transportation, equipment, visas, and other needs of three reporters.

Women’s eNews has already helped spread important information about the condition of girls and women in Syria. A recent Human Rights Watch report on sexual violence in Syria was covered by Women’s eNews Arabic site editor Dominique Soguel and gained greater exposure across many news organizations and agencies as a result.

No other news organization has the global focus and sensitivity to women’s voices that Women’s eNews has. No other news organization could create the impact that Women’s eNews will, through our reporting. Women’s eNews creates impact by:

  • Helping set up the news agenda for conventional media;
  • Impacts opinion leaders and policymakers;
  • Serving as a resource and catalyst for rights organizations and activists;
  • Uncovering injustices, drawing attention to issues, disseminating information, and empowering readers.

Women’s eNews has helped to sensitize other news agencies to women’s issues that conventional media tend to ignore. We have a lot of work still to do but as one Women’s eNews reader–herself a former reporter and foreign correspondent–has said, “Women’s eNews has made…dismissive treatment more or less impossible now by creating a steady drumbeat of compelling and well-researched news items about women’s situation that editors cannot ignore or dismiss as isolated cases.”

Support journalism that puts women in the picture. Donate today.