page_title: Refugee women
section_title: Nutrition
hierarchical_section_title: Refugee women / Health / Nutrition
caption_attribution_description: English: Struggling to get a share of food in a camp This is an image of "African people at work" from Uganda
context_page_description: Refugee women face gender-specific challenges in navigating daily life at every stage of their migration experience. Common challenges for all refugee women, regardless of other demographic data, are access to healthcare and physical abuse and instances of discrimination, sexual violence, and human trafficking are the most common ones. But even if women don't become victims of such actions, they often face abuse and disregard for their specific needs and experiences, which leads to complex consequences including demoralization, stigmatization, and mental and physical health decay. The lack of access to appropriate resources from international humanitarian aid organizations is compounded by the prevailing gender assumptions around the world, though recent shifts in gender mainstreaming are aiming to combat these commonalities.
context_section_description: Malnutrition of refugee women manifests in a variety of ways both in refugee camps and in countries of asylum and resettlement. Issues of food security, economic and political misunderstanding, and discrimination within refugee camps contribute to the poor nutrition and health of many refugee women. In a study of food aid in Rwandan refugee camps, experts found that international aid agencies' lack of consideration and attention to the political, economic, and cultural workings of countries in crises can lead to inadequate and inappropriate food aid, which in turn may result in malnutrition for refugees. Likewise, studies have shown that despite no legal distinction between male and female refugees, international refugee communities and even aid organizations tend to uphold discrimination based on gender. This translates into disproportionate malnutrition for refugee women through lack of priority in food distribution as well as medical attention for nutrition-related issues and lack of reproductive nutritional care. 
  Issues of malnutrition persist in countries of asylum and resettlement for refugee women though mechanisms of food insecurity and lack of nutritional education. A study on Somali refugee women in 2013 found that rates of meat and egg intake were significantly higher in refugee women than comparable populations of host-country national women, while rates of fruit and vegetable intake were significantly lower. A related study of Cambodian refugee women found that common reasons for poor nutritional intake were living in food insecure, low-income areas, lack of economic means to purchase  nutritious food, and lack of education about nutritious eating in their new country of residence.
caption: South Sudanese refugees being served food. Many of them complain of hunger due to the food rationing by World Food Program
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