Zarin Noor, MPH, International Health, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205, 215-508-9796, znoor2@drexel.edu, Emma Tsui, MPH, International Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe St, Baltimore, MD 21205, and Adnan Ali Hyder, MD, MPH, PhD, Department of International Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615- North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205-2179.

Intimate partner violence is the most endemic form of violence against women and a major cause of injury among women of reproductive age worldwide. The rates of intimate partner violence seem to be especially high in vulnerable situations such as refugee camps, and yet little is known about how violence is handled in these situations. The goal of the project is to gain an understanding of the context and consequences of intimate partner violence among Afghan women living in refugee camps in Pakistan in order to inform refugee health care policy and intervention. Both Afghan women refugees and camp health workers will be interviewed using unstructured and semi-structured in-depth interviews. All interviews will be used as an opportunity to gather information about women’s experiences with, and perceptions of intimate partner violence, and to learn about services available for victims and protocols, if any, that are used to address intimate partner violence in the camps. Only with this level of context-specific information can appropriate interventions be developed within a framework that is attentive to reproductive health and human rights. It is expected that the results of this work will provide a better understanding of intimate partner violence in such vulnerable settings and inform both future directed research in issues that arise in this study; and the development of approaches to violence management in traditional refugee health care programs.

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