30 September 2013, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (ICMC) -– Art is helping some 100 Burmese refugee teenagers in Malaysia become aware of and learn how to combat sexual and gender-based violence, and call for respectful relationships within their communities.

The International Catholic Migration Commission (ICMC), in collaboration with its mini-grant recipient, the Kachin Refugee Learning Centre, has launched an art contest based on the themes of ‘Say No to Violence’ and ‘Respect’.

The three contest winners, aged 13 to 17 years, produced coloured drawings depicting men and women bowing respectfully before each other, pictograms encouraging people to speak out and stop feigning they had not seen any violence, and smiley five fingers joining forces to stop violence as “one”. Their artwork will be featured in postcards, posters and other materials that will be distributed in refugee learning centres and community schools around the city and surrounding areas.

Through this ‘Awareness through Art’ contest, ICMC joins the United Nations in celebrating the International Day of Non-Violence on 2 October to spread a culture of peace, tolerance, understanding and non-violence. Efforts to combat the deeply embedded social problem of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) need to start at the school level if they are to be effective in changing the attitudes and behaviours that lead to it, recent research has shown.

In Kuala Lumpur, among the almost 100,000 Burmese – who make up most of Malaysia’s refugees – many children and youth have already indeed experienced SGBV themselves. As Malaysia is not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it does not recognize the status of refugees, and has no formal legal framework in place to distinguish a refugee or an asylum seeker from any other undocumented migrant. As a result, the protection environment for refugees and asylum seekers in the country remains limited and fragile, leaving refugees open to abuse of their most basic human rights. Many refugees are not allowed to work, lack access to social protection, and rely upon their registration with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for support in case of arrest.

Burmese refugees in Malaysia face extreme poverty. Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to abusive partnerships and transactional sex, but feel disempowered and fearful to come forward to end their plight.

Yet, with the help of humanitarian aid organizations such as ICMC and its local partners, refugee children such as those who took part in the art contest can adopt and express new codes, principles and aspirations that will make them truly aware of SGBV and stop it from happening again.

“Young people defined ‘real’ violence as physical acts done by men that had legal consequences,” said Nancy Lombard, Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy at Glasgow Caledonian University, in a recent briefing of the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships. “As a consequence much of the violence experienced or perpetrated by themselves, as young people, was minimised, normalised and regarded as ‘unreal’.”

The contest is part of ICMC’s broader programme to combat SGBV in Malaysia, in particular by:

• Providing immediate healthcare assistance, psychological support and emergency shelter to SGBV survivors;
• Raising awareness about the risks and consequences of sexual exploitation and abuse to encourage change within communities;
• Creating safe school environments for girls and boys to promote gender-equitable relationships;
• Building the capacity of local communities to influence changes in attitudes and behaviours to reduce violence against women and girls and better protect them.

ICMC’s SGBV programme in Malaysia is made possible by the financial support of the US State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (BPRM).

-- by Caitlin Hannahan and Lori Brumat with reporting by ICMC Malaysia