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UNHCR operations implement awareness-raising activities and prevention programming that aim to address the root causes of SGBV to bring effective behavior and social norms change through long-term approaches. Awareness raising is part of community outreach programming and includes training and capacity-building activities, as well as information sharing with people of concern. UNHCR operations continued to encourage women’s participation in leadership and management structures. Some examples of prevention, awareness-raising and advocacy initiatives organized by UNHCR are the following:
- 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence: UNHCR operations commemorated 2019’s campaign in collaboration with communities with numerous SGBV raising-awareness activities.
- UNHCR applies the methodology of key programmes that aim at reshaping social norms by addressing power imbalances and gender inequality with a community-based approach in different field locations. Models such as SASA!, EMAP (Engaging Men through Accountable Practice) and ZTVA (Zero Tolerance Village Alliance) have been implemented in 8 different field operations.
- In 2019, the Sexual and Gender Based Violence (SGBV) Trainer of Trainers (ToT), with a component on prevention, held two different cohorts (Global and Americas) with a total of 47 staff from 34 different operations participating. In Hama City, Syria, 15 SGBV coordinators, case managers and lawyers whose work focuses on engaging men and boys in SGBV prevention were trained.
- As of mid-2019, progress in mobilizing communities to be active in SGBV prevention and survivor-centred protection was improved in 27 refugee, 5 IDP, and 5 returnee situations, and was maintained in 16 situations.
- Through “Safe from the Start” initiative, UNHCR expands innovative multi-sectoral projects with a focus on SGBV prevention and risk-mitigation in numerous operations across all regions.
UNHCR supported a gender audit of the Global Refugee Forum and the processes leading up to it. The audit was led by refugee women from diverse backgrounds with the purpose of drawing attention to gender equality related challenges, including the scale of SGBV in refugee contexts as well as supporting integration of gender equality and measures to address SGBV concretely through the GRF pledging process and in the identification of good practices.
UNHCR also launched the PSEA Community Outreach and Communication Fund in collaboration with ICVA as part of the IASC HC’s Championship and RG2. UNHCR further increased capacity to run systematic sexual misconduct in recruitment processes using the UN “Clear Check” trackers for SEA and SH this detecting if one perpetrator tries to move from one organization to another.
Data collection and analysis: UNHCR uses the Gender Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS), an inter-agency initiative that enables humanitarian actors to effectively and safely collect and analyze SGBV incidents reported by survivors. This system informs improvements in response services, SGBV prevention and coordination. As of the end of 2019, GBVIMS was used by UNHCR operations in 21 countries, 19 of those as inter-agency initiatives. During 2019 and prior to the launch of the SGBV Policy, baseline assessments were conducted across 21 countries in six regions.
Research: In 2019, UNHCR has continued its engagement with the CERAH (Geneva Centre for Education and Research in Humanitarian Action) Steering Committee and with the Empowered Aid project on PSEA in Lebanon and Uganda, to produce knowledge that can be used to reduce power disparities in the distribution of humanitarian aid and mitigate risks of SEA. UNHCR collaborated with research and advocacy projects, such as All Survivors Project.
Dissemination of promising practices: In 2019, UNHCR released the report ‘Learning from experience to advance gender equality – promising practices in Asia’, which amongst other includes a promising practice on SGBV coordination in Sri Lanka.