Moving the Needle on Gender-Based Violence: A Retrospective and Path Forward
By SJ Renfroe, WI-HER Senior Associate, and Shelby Roberts, WI-HER Intern
Key Takeaways
- Gender-based violence (GBV) is an urgent challenge in the international development, humanitarian, and global health space, which is exacerbated by climate change and increasing conflict on a worldwide scale.
- GBV is a form of structural violence that is rooted in gender inequality and must be addressed through a gender equity and social inclusion (GESI) lens.
- Although the international community has made great strides in addressing GBV through programs over the past decades, programs must more effectively center the voices of survivors and the local community, and take sustainability and local ownership into account from the outset.
- The article features actionable improvements the international community can make in GBV prevention and response activities, including developing programs that are intersectional and trauma-informed.
No matter who you are or where you live, chances are gender-based violence (GBV) has affected someone in your life: 1 in 3 women have survived such violence, and research shows that men and boys are also subject to various types of violence.
Fundamentally, GBV is a form of structural violence. It often happens due to gender inequality, and will not end until society’s structures are made more equitable. The root causes of GBV point toward fundamental challenges in society and must be addressed as part of larger, holistic initiatives that create sustainable change.
This sounds incredibly daunting, but it also presents multiple opportunities to work with one another—as individuals and organizations-–to work toward a healthier society. Moving the needle on GBV requires action at all levels, from grassroots to local government to national-level and international cooperation and coordination.
The international development/humanitarian field has already made huge leaps in the evolution of GBV interventions. In the very first formal international humanitarian GBV programs, interventions were aimed at reducing instances of sexual violence perpetrated against refugee women.[1] Rather than focusing on the root causes contributing to GBV, these early interventions focused on immediate relief instead of addressing underlying inequities. Without addressing the interconnected determinants and causes of GBV, the structural cycles that contribute to the global health issue remain intact.
Over the past few decades, the international community has realized that a new approach to eliminating GBV is necessary. New paradigms emerged, including survivor-centered care, which emphasizes the need to provide holistic resources to address the varied impacts caused by GBV. Additionally, GBV has become widely recognized as a public health crisis, highlighting the need for high-quality, effective physical and mental care from health providers informed by feminist theory and practice. Additionally, practitioners now emphasize a multi-sectoral approach to GBV response, with a key focus on the active involvement of health systems.
Despite these new tools and approaches, (see Tables 1 and 2), major gaps remain.[2] Significantly, programs aimed at preventing or responding to GBV have utilized a “just add women and stir” approach, and proposals for new projects have not sufficiently integrated the needs and experiences of these women or non-female identifying survivors, such as men and boys, as well as violence against genderqueer folks.
Also, often, the first or only place GBV survivors access care is through the health system. Yet, healthcare providers are not always trained in identifying signs of GBV or how to provide care for GBV survivors; in some cases, healthcare providers are even unaware of what GBV is. Perhaps most importantly, international humanitarian and development projects have not effectively centered the voices, needs, and wants of GBV survivors and community members themselves, which negates any potential for project sustainability post-closeout, as well as limiting the effectiveness of interventions in diverse local communities with unique needs and cultural contexts.
On top of this, other complicated public health challenges, such as climate change and rising rates of war and conflict, compound the vulnerabilities faced by certain groups, including women, persons with disabilities, and marginalized populations. These types of insecurities—protracted stress/anxiety and displacement—increase instances of GBV, and it is critical to develop new and effective approaches for specific communities.
What is GBV?
According to the Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action, GBV is ‘an umbrella term for any harmful act that is perpetrated against a person’s will, and that is based on socially ascribed (i.e. gender) differences between males and females. It includes acts that inflict physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion and other deprivations of liberty.’ This can include intimate partner violence (IPV), other forms of sexual violence/sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), or other types of gender-based violence, such as child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM).
Why is it so difficult to prevent GBV?
The nature of humanitarian and development projects: A major challenge in preventing GBV is built into the way international development and humanitarian work is done. Funding is often short-term (between 5-7 years) and awarded to larger organizations that agencies view as lower risk financially but aren’t necessarily locally based. Due to these funding realities, centering local voices and the needs of survivors is usually not the priority.
Terminology: Furthermore, the humanitarian and development sphere’s definition of GBV is inconsistent and confusing.
It’s a larger issue: Ultimately, GBV is rooted in and perpetuated by structural inequalities and power imbalances, so a major barrier to ending GBV is the continued lack of access to equality and human rights for vulnerable communities worldwide.
How we can move forward
Although preventing and responding to GBV is a mountainous challenge, the humanitarian and development community has several ways to move the needle forward. Importantly, strategies must be grounded in:
1) the local context and local voices to address the unique challenges faced by communities in addressing GBV; and,
2) sustainability and local ownership of activities so that interventions are not inherently short-term and mitigate harm.
A few strategies WI-HER has identified through our work include the following:
Centering the voices of survivors: Women and girls themselves must have an increased voice in the design of interventions. Additionally, non-female identifying survivors have been historically ignored in GBV prevention and response interventions—this must change.
A useful approach for centering local voices is WI-HER’s iDARE™ methodology. This methodology, rooted in behavior change theory, human-centered design, and improvement science, integrates local voices throughout an intervention and project lifecycle:
- Identify: Conduct community consultations (such as through focus groups, key informant interviews, and stakeholder engagement) to identify gaps and barriers at the local level that impact GBV.
- Design: Utilize findings from the “identify” stage to design culturally relevant and appropriate solutions to address GBV.
- Apply/assess: Develop relevant tools and data collection mechanisms that are aligned with local priorities. Apply interventions from the “design” phase, ensuring activities adhere to the Do No Harm principle.
- Record: Collect qualitative and quantitative data and record best practices and lessons learned through transparent monitoring and evaluation methodologies. Ensure local stakeholders and community members have access to all relevant data.
- Expand: Through further community engagement, scale up successful solutions that are endorsed by GBV survivors and local communities. Additionally, iterate the iDARE process again to design and apply changes and new solutions as necessary to achieve mutually agreed-upon goals for GBV prevention and response.
Sustainability: Importantly, considering sustainability from the outset can ease the negative consequences of short-term programs (inherent in humanitarian and development projects) while promoting in-depth coordination with the local community, ensuring community ownership of program activities. To learn more about how to do this, check out WI-HER’s Learning Brief.
Intersectional approach: Interventions must be rooted in an intersectional, trauma-informed approach, which takes into account the unique and varied experiences of survivors of GBV, including adolescents, gender-diverse individuals, and persons with disabilities. An intersectional approach is rooted in the lived experiences of survivors and acknowledges/integrates the social factors that perpetuate vulnerability to GBV. This is critical to intervention success and sustainability. Because GBV is a form of structural violence that is rooted in societal inequality, interventions must involve all community members, including people who hold power in that context, to create awareness and ultimately understanding about what GBV is and why it should be prevented.
Engaging men and boys: Relatedly, male engagement is a powerful tool to increase all community members’ access to services. It’s essential to conduct values clarification/sensitization activities with male community members so that they understand what GBV is; often, this isn’t openly discussed in communities, so this can be the first time people learn about GBV. These activities also create an opportunity to learn about the importance of prevention and response activities. Additionally, male community members may not have equitable access to healthcare, preventing them from seeking support as survivors themselves.[3] Male engagement is important not only to increase access for men and boys to healthcare services, including in cases of their own experiences of violence, but also to increase their support and understanding of women’s lived experiences of GBV and to increase the effectiveness of prevention and response strategies at the community level.
Train healthcare providers: To tackle the gap in health providers’ knowledge of GBV and ability to provide support to survivors, providers must receive comprehensive training on GBV as a public health issue. There have been successful interventions in this space through utilizing the WHO curriculum, as exemplified through a study on the provision of training to providers in Maharashtra, India, as well as WI-HER’s work through USAID IHP. This type of training will also help ensure that healthcare providers can make referrals to GBV survivors for further support. Training should include ensuring that providers have access to effective reporting mechanisms. For example, IHP added GBV-specific indicators to the national health data collection system so that policymakers could not only have an understanding of the state of GBV across Nigeria but also more effectively allocate funding to healthcare facilities to respond to survivors’ needs.
Conduct research and create reporting mechanisms: Successful locally-led GBV interventions must be rooted in local experiences and the socio-cultural context—this requires research. WI-HER has integrated research and community consultation in the “identify” phase of our iDARE methodology, and we recently applied this approach through root cause analyses in South Sudan through the END Fund’s Accelerate Resilient, Innovative, and Sustainable Elimination of NTDs Fund (ARISE).[4] Research that considers GESI at the community level must be conducted to inform GBV interventions so that activities can take into account the specific and unique needs of communities on the ground.
Conclusion
GBV continues to be a devastating challenge throughout the world, and its prevention requires long-term, community-driven societal and behavioral change. The good news: GBV prevention and response interventions in the humanitarian, development, and global health spheres have improved in recent years, largely thanks to community leaders sharing what they learn, including what works and what has failed. WI-HER is proud to be part of this ongoing conversation. As part of this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, we at WI-HER join the global community in calling for increased funding and research, as well as better-informed and sustainable projects to move the needle on GBV across the globe.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/tanzania/Duhweb-10.htm; Programs weighed domestic violence differently, resulting in gaps for instances of those types of GBV. Additionally, programs lacked consistent guidance and training for staff, resulting in the unequal and inconsistent treatment of survivors. Establishing protocols for survivor care, including screening, reporting, and referrals in healthcare spaces are essential public health measures. Furthermore, the underlying structures which enable and perpetuate GBV were not understood, and so early interventions were mainly “bandaids” and did not address larger items such as creating opportunities for survivors to persecute perpetrators through an amended judicial system, policy change, and/or interventions to address inequitable systems which perpetuated the disempowerment of women. (https://concernusa.org/news/causes-of-gender-based-violence/#:~:text=Harmful%20gender%20stereotypes%20and%20patriarchal%20cultures&text=Gender%20stereotypes%20and%20cultural%20norms,and%20women%20are%20their%20property). GBV often intersects with other social determinants of health, such as socioeconomic status, education, and access to healthcare.
[2] For a full and comprehensive review of the existing gaps in GBV prevention and response in the humanitarian and development fields, see ELRHA’s Gap Analysis of Gender-Based Violence in Humanitarian Settings: a Global Consultation.
[3] For example, WI-HER found through a rapid root cause analysis that in Kapoeta North and Awerial counties, South Sudan, healthcare facilities are gendered spaces and men and boys don’t access services as frequently as women, and will wait longer/until an issue is life threatening to seek support.
[4] For example, through ARISE, WI-HER’s research highlighted specific GESI-related challenges to providing mass drug administration (MDA) so that interventions to increase community members’ access to MDA can take into account peoples’ specific lived experiences. In this example, our research identified unique needs for nomadic pastoralists due to their high levels of mobility, as well as the needs of elderly persons, people with disabilities, and gender-specific needs. This demonstrates the utility of GESI-specific research to inform public health interventions.