History

1989
kargah e.V. starts its advisory services for migrants and refugees.

The mid 90s
The number of female refugees and migrants, who are seeking advice at SUANA due to domestic violence, is increasing significantly. This increasing need for advise shows the lack of institutions and counseling centres for female migrants in Hanover.

At the end of the 90s
Through a 3 year measure, subsidized by the employment office, SUANA is able to make a small contribution to a better social-educational counseling of these women. SUANA also gains a better intercultural specialist expertise and social competence.

Since 2001
SUANA is dedicated to this work, thankfully supported  by the government aid.

Since December 2005
SUANA is the counseling and intervention centre (BISS) for female migrants, affected by domestic violence. This means, that SUANA is contacting proactively female migrants affected by domestic violence.

Counseling

Aims

• multilingual and intercultural counseling
• encouragement of affected female women
• violence prevention in families with a migration background
• cooperation and collaboration with different institutions

Intercultural competences

SUANA’s employees:

• are multilingual
• maintain knowledge about realities of life, of female refugees and migrants in Germany
• are able to share their knowledge and experience about different family structures, gender roles in different cultures and family law issues in different countries, as well as in Germany

Cooperations

• Hanover Intervention Programme against male violence in families (HAIP)
• working group “female migrants”
• working group “forced marriages”
• working group “women”

Number of female visitors

Female migrants and refugees are affected by domestic violence particularly bad (“Life situation, security and health of women in Germany”; the Federal Ministry for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youths, 2010, 3^rd edition). In their study, also the counseling and interventions centres in Lower Saxony (BISS) came to the conclusion that 27% of the women, who are registered by counseling centres, have a migration background (“Against domestic violence with BISS”; the Lower Saxony Ministry for Social Issues, Women, Family and Health & KFN, April 2005). The number of female visitors from 2007 to 2010 is shown in the table below.