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RHRC posts comprehensive bibliography of GBV resources online

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Coincides with 16 Days of Global Activism Against Gender Violence

For many refugee women and girls in conflict regions around the world, the current 16 Days of Global Activism Against Gender Violence will pass unacknowledged, even in the face of their heightened risk to multiple violations, including rape, domestic abuse, and forced prostitution.

A soon-to-be released report by the Reproductive Health for Refugees Consortium not only affirms that gender violence is endemic in conflict and post-conflict settings, but that the humanitarian community’s actions to address such violence is at best limited, and often non-existent. Of the 12 conflict and post-conflict countries profiled in the global overview, none have instituted sufficiently comprehensive programming to meet the needs of women and girls at risk of gender-based abuses.

"The humanitarian community must take increased responsibility in preventing and responding to gender-based violence," says the report's author, Jeanne Ward. "Some international and field-based initiatives undertaken in the last six years have improved our basic understanding of the nature and scope of violence experienced by women and girls in conflict settings, and have given us some models from which to base future projects, but research and programming still remains limited, inconsistent and uncoordinated, and as a result, women and girls are still being brutualized."

The Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children (WCRWC) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC), have taken the lead in an RHRC project to improve international and local capacity to address gender-violence among refugee and conflict-affected populations. The global overview is one outcome of the project. As the most comprehensive investigation to date of GBV in conflict settings, it identifies the various types of violence to which women and girls are often exposed, and also some of the responses to date by international and local organizations.

"All those doing gender-based violence work in the field are doing it with limited resources," said Ms. Ward. "Very few tools exist to assist the humanitarian community in identifying, measuring, or responding to the problem. Tools that do exist—like UNHCR’s guidelines--often don’t find their way to the field.”

As such, the RHRC has posted to their Web site a comprehensive bibliography of GBV resources, with links to articles, training, and advocacy materials that fieldworkers can download. In Fall 2002, after completing of a series of field tests of standardized instruments designed to assist in the qualitative and quantitative assessment of GBV, a Monitoring and Evaluation Field Tools Manual will also be made widely available by the RHRC to international and local GBV program planners and managers.

Editor’s note: For more information, please contact Christine Gordon, Media Liaison, Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children: Tel: (212) 551.0959 or Email:
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