United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees

The UNHCR Sexual and Gender Based Violence Guidelines developed in 2003 are currently in revision to bring them in line with relevant internal and external guidance and policy documents such as the UNHCR Need to Know Guidance on Working with Men and Boy Survivors of SGBV, the Policy on the Protection of Personal Data of Persons of Concern to UNHCR, and the IASC GBV Guidelines.  The revised guidelines will be rolled-out in 2017.

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UNHCR has invested a substantial number of hours conducting training for staff and refugees on SGBV. By the end of 2015, UNHCR trained 228,325 persons of concern, 13,693 partner, government, and UNHCR staff.

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In 2015, UNHCR conducted 6,995 awareness raising campaigns on SGBV prevention and response and 2,188 community-based committees/groups were working on SGBV prevention and response.

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UNHCR is a founding member of the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System and sits on its Steering Committee along with UNFPA, IRC, IMC and UNICEF. UNHCR is working to strengthen and harmonize data collection on SGBV by implementing the GBVIMS in selected operations. In 2015, UNHCR provided technical support in data collection and analysis to 22 countries.

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The investment in SGBV and other protection learning as a whole builds UNHCR’s capacity to implement better protection for refugees and is a core element of improving sustainability of advances made in prevention work. UNHCR is in the final stages of developing an SGBV prevention and response web-based learning program mandatory for all staff, and a Training Package on SGBV Prevention and Response, designed as 18 stand-alone modules with extensive supplementary material to draw from.

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As part of the efforts to roll-out UNHCR’s updated strategy on SGBV, a total of 103 UNHCR staff, partners and government actors participated in regional workshops on SGBV prevention and response held in Tunis, Amman and Dakar in 2013, which focused on the development and implementation of country specific SGBV strategies, including monitoring and reporting on SGBV. Hide

Two Global Strategic Priorities of UNHCR for the coming two years will focus on SGBV by addressing provision of support to SGBV survivors as well as prevention and protection of SGBV survivors through community involvement. In order to strengthen its accountability, UNHCR also began focusing on joint monitoring and evaluation for the implementation of its three strategies on Education, Child Protection, and SGBV, as these three areas are complementary and often overlapping, and organized a seminar for protection and programme officers to this end. Hide

Between August and December 2013, UNHCR carried out a comprehensive review of the 2012 Participatory Assessments (PAs) in 42 different countries. This review looked at the process used in different locations to carry out PAs, the content of the assessments, and their outcomes in terms of strategic planning. With PAs being one of the elements of UNHCR’s participatory approach and AGD being a strategy to promote gender equality and respect for human rights which informs all stages of strategic planning, the review makes recommendations for addressing the identified weaknesses, mainly through a revision of the UNHCR Tool for Participatory Assessments in Operations. Hide

UNHCR carried several awareness-raising activities which culminated in the 16 Days of Activism Campaign, which focused on the theme Safety in School: Teachers and Students Unite to Make Schools SGBV-Free. Hide

UNHCR, as part of the Global Team responsible for the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS) provided technical support in data collection and analysis to 10 countries including missions to Jordan and Lebanon. Hide