A group of women, including 13 refugees from six countries, have climbed Morocco’s Atlas Mountains to highlight the struggle to end violence against women.

The women – together with seven female staff from the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR, and their partner organisations – set out to scale Mount Toukbal, Morocco’s highest peak at over 4,100 metres.

The women, originally hail Syria, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Libya and Senegal, undertook the trek as part of UNHCR’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.

Their goal was to climb within sight of the summit, and in doing so raise awareness of the challenges and dangers facing refugee women in their home countries, on their journeys and in their host communities.

Morocco is currently host to more than 17,500 registered refugees and asylum seekers from some 50 countries. With one-in-five forcibly displaced women globally having faced some form of sexual violence, UNHCR says it is committed to tackling the issue and the taboos that often surround it.

For refugee climber Hanin, a 24-year-old medical student who fled the conflict in Syria and came to Morocco as a refugee in 2012, it is a particularly special moment.

“We want to send a message specifically to women that we are with you,” Hanin said.

After setting off on their two-day ascent from the village of Imlil at the foot of the mountain, the members of the group with varying levels of physical fitness grasped the scale of the challenge they had taken on.

Equipped with walking poles and protected from the cold by knitted hats, padded jackets and bright orange scarves – a colour symbolizing the struggle to end violence against women and girls – the group made slow but steady progress up the steep, rock-strewn mountain paths.

When some climbers faltered or stopped to catch their breath, fitter members of the group held back to offer words of encouragement and drive them on.

Among them was Farida, a 27-year-old refugee from Pointe-Noire in the Republic of the Congo, who arrived in Morocco in 2018 and, despite currently a playing as a professional footballer with Kawkab Athletic Club in Marrakesh, also found the climb challenging at times.

“It wasn’t easy. We walked the whole day, but in the end it did us all the world of good,” Farida said.

The group spent the night at a mountain refuge where they shared a meal and sang, danced and talked into the night.

The following morning, they set out on the final leg of their climb.

After several more hours of walking, they finally reached the spectacular Ighouliden waterfalls in the shadow of Mount Toubkal’s summit.

Source: UNHC0052

One of the women told how the trek had brought back difficult memories for her, but the overall experience had been a healing one.

“The atmosphere here with all these women was great. When we had the energy, we sang, we yelled and we danced. For me it was like a therapy… because it allowed me to face my fears and to have hope in life. To know that we can do these kinds of hikes for the pleasure of it, and not because we’re forced to,” said Valerie, a 28-year-old refugee from Cameroon.