Securing Restrooms in Refugee Camps

Floor Speech

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Ms. MENG. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in gratitude that my bill, H.R. 615, the Refugee Sanitation Facility Safety Act, unanimously passed the House. I thank my colleagues for their support.

I am especially grateful to Chairman Engel and Ranking Member McCaul for their leadership and support of this critical bill to ensure the protection of women and girls.

While refugee camps are intended to serve as a temporary refuge from war, refugees often find that they have been followed by the very violence rise and insecurity that caused them to flee their home countries in the first place. Women and girls, in particular, face high levels of sexual assaults, and the infrastructure of camps fail to protect against these already-vulnerable populations.

Refugee camps around the world don't provide safe and secure access to sanitary facilities, and those that exist are often mixed sex, public, and without locks or well-lit paths.

Many women and girls so fear using the bathroom at night that they develop urinary tract infections, are forced to relieve themselves in their tents, or are unable to change their clothes for weeks.

Refugee camps have failed to provide commonsense solutions to protect refugees from sexual assault in sanitation facilities. This legislation aims to fix that by requiring U.S. refugee funding to prioritize securing restrooms in refugee camps.

I now urge the Senate to take up this commonsense, but critical legislation.

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