fbpx
Go to Blog
Sexual and Gender-Based Violence

Protection from Gender-based Violence for Refugees

Gender-based violence does not start with the conflict, though it increases in incidence and, often, in savagery. This year, the Women's Refugee Commission helped launch the Call to Action on Protection from GBV in Emergencies, a multi-stakeholder initiative that rightfully puts GBV on par with necessities like water and shelter.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is part of every humanitarian emergency. The abuse, rape, exploitation and trafficking of women and girls is exacerbated by conflict, flight and displacement, when family and community protections are weakened or destroyed.

The Women’s Refugee Commission identified a lack of prevention and response to GBV in humanitarian assistance more than 20 years ago, and while that led to a fully fledged sector of expertise, we see over and over that GBV is still not an issue prioritized in the immediate response to emergencies. The same reasons are always given.

It’s not a basic need. There are other more pressing priorities. There is no funding for GBV.

In truth, addressing GBV is lifesaving work and essential to protecting and promoting human rights. Moreover, there is funding. Tens of millions of dollars for prevention and response programming have been allocated over the years.

GBV is more complex than lights, locks and latrines – though such simple things far outweigh themselves in importance when camps are designed. The inequities and power dynamics at the root of GBV are present in a community long before a crisis occurs. So GBV does not start with the conflict, though it increases in incidence and, often, in savagery.

During flight, the unscrupulous take advantage of desperate women for sex in exchange for food or other goods, or prey on vulnerable girls. In displacement, the threat comes from both within and outside the community. Anywhere that people are not in control of their day-to-day lives, women and girls are targeted, their bodies the receptors for rage or bigotry.

It is not that the humanitarian community doesn’t know how to tackle GBV. The problem is that because prevention and response to GBV is everybody’s job, it ends up being nobody’s job. While it must be part of every decision made in the design and implementation of humanitarian response from the outset of every emergency, it lives everywhere and nowhere. Because it cannot be a standalone program, it gets sidelined.

We cannot continue to address GBV on an ad hoc basis for the world’s 60 million displaced individuals. The humanitarian community must take a radically different approach to policy, design and implementation of programming. Transformation this significant can only happen if strategies to prevent and respond to GBV are embraced by governments, international organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and at all levels.

This year, the Women's Refugee Commission helped launch the Call to Action on Protection from GBV in Emergencies, a multi-stakeholder initiative to ensure that GBV will be comprehensively addressed and prioritized across sectors from the very beginning of a crisis. In other words, GBV would be baked into humanitarian response – as important as getting water and shelter to people. An operational framework (Road Map) of time-bound (2020) and measurable targeted actions requires commitment from leadership to embrace and implement.

The Call to Action requires that new IASC GBV guidelines be implemented. The GBV guidelines provide detailed operational support for 13 sectors of humanitarian assistance, from livelihoods to nutrition.

We cannot allow the targeting and exploitation of vulnerable populations, particularly women and girls, simply because the challenges of addressing GBV in humanitarian emergencies are so great. As we kick off this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, we must remember that failure to take action represents a failure by humanitarian actors to meet our most basic responsibilities for promoting and protecting the rights of affected populations.

Sexual and Gender-Based Violence