Dragana* was 16 years old and stateless.  Until last year she lived in a Roma settlement in the former Yugoslavia with an abusive man who referred to himself as her uncle.  She has no memory of her parents. Last year Dragana's uncle began to talk about arranging a marriage for Dragana with an older man he knew.  She did not want to get married, but given her lack of legal documentation, she was not in school and had little to look forward to in her life.  She wondered if this older man might provide for her better than her uncle. Later she realized that this marriage was a sham and she was being sold into prostitution.  She is now in another country where she still can not gain access to the legal support that would enable her to gain documentation and go home.  Now 17, Dragana feels trapped, exploited and alone.

This year there were two important developments for women at the United Nations.  The first was the creation of a unified gender entity, and the second was the passage of Security Council Resolution 1888 on women and armed conflict.  While neither of these developments has led to concrete improvements in the lives of refugee and displaced women as of yet, we’re hopeful that in the near future the issues affecting them will be front and center of the UN's agenda.

Public statements made by the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DR Congo, MONUC, have been the subject of much controversy in recent months. On October 28, a group of international agencies focusing on protection sent a letter to the top UN official in the country, Alan Doss. In the letter they criticized the tone of the last Secretary-General’s report on MONUC which they said minimized the humanitarian crisis ongoing in the east of the country. Although Refugees International was not involved in this letter, my colleague Erin Weir and I raised the issue of optimistic language with senior MONUC management on our recent trip to Congo last month.