A Japan-funded facility for female Syrian refugees opened Wednesday in Gaziantep, southern Turkey, to provide vocational training and Turkish language education.
The facility, for which Tokyo offered $1 million, is operated by U.N. Women, an organization dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. It is the first such facility to be run by U.N. Women in Turkey, Japanese officials said.
Turkey has accepted over 3.2 million refugees from Syria, making it the largest shelter for them in the world. Of the total, nearly half are women and about 400,000 of them are staying in Gaziantep.
"The empowerment of women holds the key to overcoming the Syrian crisis," Japanese Ambassador to Turkey Akio Miyajima said in his address at a ceremony to open the facility.