Mehrangiz Najafizadeh, University of Kansas, tries to give Azeri women refugees/IDPs a voice and to capture, through their own thoughts and words, the essence of refugee life, the essence of the difficult and troublesome life experiences that they have confronted and continue to confront on a daily basis and the ways in which they cope with their status of displacement through the social construction of hope. Through his emphasis on listening to the people to gain knowledge of the everyday experiences of such women, he provides insights into important gender-related policy issues and human rights policy issues. In focusing on the day-to-day experiences of IDP/refugee women, he organizes his preliminary research findings into three phases, the initial experience of becoming displaced, the process of finding a sanctuary, a place of safety, and problems that IDP/refugee women confront and the process of coping with the prolonged period of temporary displacement while maintaining the hope of returning to their homes and communities in Nagorno-Karabakh. The poetries written by both IDP/refugee women and men, frequently recalls the beauty of their homelands, their pain, their anger toward Armenia, and their hope and longing to return to their native lands.

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refugee social construction human rights Armenia [West Asia] womens status