Humanitarian Action and the Experience of Armenian Women Refugees in the Post-Genocidal Context (1919-1924): Resilience and Agency.

In this article, we examine through archival research the actions and roles of humanitarian workers of the Near East Relief (NER) and the American Women's Hospitals (AWH) working in the Middle East and Greece to help refugees from the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the post-genocide massacres (1919-1922), including the Smyrna disaster of 1922. This event in particular led to the forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of Greek and Armenian refugees in Greece. In this context, we emphasize the central role of women doctors and nurses in their humanitarian efforts to save this population. We pay close attention to their successful practices, achievements and support as allies of the survivors. We also examine the survivors' strategies as agents of their own resistance and resilience. In other words, we aim to understand how these survivors, with the support of organizations working in humanitarian emergencies, developed strategies to overcome their status as victims of both gender-based violence and genocide. Ultimately, we focus on the survivors' quest for agency and resilience, through an examination of how vocational education and training and also other support policies and strategies served as a gateway to refugee empowerment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]