During the month of June, an international conference “MAN2017: Europe talks on masculinity” was organized by Promundo – US, MenCare and Center E8, and brought together about a hundred of experts, from a total of 50 countries, who work on issues of gender equality, among whom was Association Atina.

The conference lasted for three days, and one of the panel topics was “Refugee crisis, migrations, and gender” during which the experiences on this issue were shared by John Crownover on behalf of Care International, Ankica Dragin who spoke of the influence of media in the refugee crisis, Jovan Grubic on behalf of Save the children, and Marija Cvejic on behalf of the Association Atina.

The importance of gender aspect in the refugee crisis has mostly been neglected, and all the support was focused on the humanitarian approach. Since the beginning of the refugee crisis, Association Atina has been focusing on women and girls who survived gender-based violence and human trafficking through a feminist and humanitarian approach. Atina's representative, Marija Cvejic, presented Atina's experiences from the ground, and emphasized that the unification of these two approaches, and the respect for the specificity of gender, are of utmost importance, along with the acceptance of the fact that violence against women and girls is committed by men in the majority of cases, and that it needs to be approached and combated as such. During the panel, participants drew conclusions that it is necessary to create a new generation of feminist boys who would stop the violence against women and girls, which will indisputably take years of investment.

This conference was certainly a perfect opportunity for different aspects of the refugee crisis to be reviewed, and to finally reach conclusions which would enable gender aspect to be accepted among all the actors, and thus allow a more equitable approach.