Event Date: January 22, 2018 - 11:30 to 15:00
Location: FTX 570 , 57 Louis-Pasteur Private
Community Mobilization in Crisis and CIPS present a talk followed by a networking lunch with members of the uOttawa community working on refugee-related issues.
In this talk, Sawsan Abdulrahim examines two social and health outcomes that affect women in displacement – early marriage and poor birth outcomes – through a feminist approach based on examining intersections between gender and other forms of inequities. Employing a social structural analysis, the talk will delineate the multitude of factors that lead to the rise in early marriage under conditions of displacement. The talk will also analyze the paradoxical phenomenon of the relatively good birth outcomes of migrant women, despite poor living conditions and socioeconomic disadvantage. Abdulrahim’s analysis builds on the feminist approach that an adequate understanding of women’s health demands an in-depth examination of the socio-political context within which health is experienced.
Professor Abdulrahim, currently the chair of the Department of Community Health and Health Promotion at the School of Health Sciences at AUB, is at the forefront of action research in support of refugee hosting initiatives in Lebanon. She spearheaded the AUB Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs initiative to research host and refugee mutual perceptions and attitudes, toward dialogue, understanding and reconciliation. She co-authored the 2015 United Nations report on refugee vulnerability, focusing on Palestinian refugees from Syria to Lebanon. Her latest work explores the complex causes of early marriage, as Professor Abdulrahim works in partnership with local host and refugee communities to seek ways of understanding and furthering the empowerment of young people. She has served as the AUB representative in the CMIC initiative since 2015.
Please RSVP if you are planning to attend the networking lunch to [email protected]