“Before I received help from the counsellors working at this centre, I was in despair,” explains Aisha*, a young mother of two children. At the age of 20, she is already a mother of two and had to endure an abusive marriage. “When my husband and I fled Syria four years ago, I was 8 months pregnant and we had to walk through the winter snow to cross the border into Turkey.”

Turkey is host to the largest refugee population in the world; nearly 4 million people have fled to Turkey due to conflict in their home countries. Of that number, more than 3.5 million are from Syria. Aisha is just one of the millions of Syrians who have sought refuge in Turkey in the past seven years, fleeing the seemingly endless conflict in Syria.

The EU supports humanitarian partners such as UNFPA in providing complementary services inside government-run migrant health centres. These centres help cover the gaps in services related to reproductive health and psychosocial support. © UNFPA

Over 95 percent of the Syrian refugee population have settled in local communities throughout the country. Turkey provides free primary and secondary education and healthcare, along with other social assistance to refugees. However, due to the scale of the needs posed by millions of refugees, the EU decided to provide €6 billion known as the “Facility for Refugees in Turkey” to support the Turkish efforts.

While EU projects help address basic needs of the refugees through such projects such as the Emergency Social safety Net (ESSN), the largest single humanitarian cash transfer project in the world, one critical aspect that EU-funded projects try to address is the protection needs of refugees, in particular women and girls.

According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) there are 900 000 women and girls of reproductive age living as refugees in Turkey. These women are vulnerable to gender-based violence including sexual violence, early and forced marriage, high risk of unwanted pregnancies, and other reproductive risks.

The EU therefore supports humanitarian partners such as UNFPA in providing complementary services inside government-run migrant health centres. These centres help cover the significant gap that exists in services related to reproductive health and psychosocial support. Through its Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), the EU has funded these services in 25 locations since September 2017.