Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Shaping the future: Our strategy for research and innovation in humanitarian response.
Gender-based violence (GBV) in humanitarian settings is a life-threatening issue. It undermines dignity, causes pain, and is a threat to equality and development around the globe. We are exploring potential solutions to address humanitarian GBV through both our research and innovation programmes.
Globally, an estimated one in three women will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime.
There is growing recognition that people affected by crises can experience various forms of GBV during conflict, natural disasters and displacement. In these settings, existing support structures and prevention mechanisms are often compromised, while the risk of abuse and violence of all kinds increases, in particular for women and girls.
Despite this, the issue of GBV in emergencies has too often been overlooked during times of crises, or not considered to be a humanitarian need. Despite initiatives over the past ten years to implement GBV programmes in emergencies, the practical difficulties are complex and context specific.
In 2015, we realised the potential for innovation to improve humanitarian GBV was relatively unexplored and there was a lack of evidence as to what works.
We set about exploring this problem, beginning with the first ever GBV Gap Analysis: Opportunities for Innovation. This looked into the primary needs in humanitarian GBV where innovation could best support.
Since then, we’ve created new and targeted innovation approaches to tackle GBV and we’ve included the insights of people affected where appropriate and possible.
Our latest GBV Gap Analysis builds on the work of the original GBV Gap Analysis published in 2016 providing a further breakdown of how challenges, such as the need for quality GBV expertise or improved monitoring and evaluation of GBV programming, manifest across different types of GBV programming. With this adaptation, we aim to present a wider breadth of gaps experienced across humanitarian GBV efforts and to increase the relevance of this report for more actors, such as non-GBV actors working to mitigate risks of GBV.
Similar to the first Gap Analysis, this report identifies both operational and systemic challenges faced by the sector, continually acknowledging the complexity and diversity of needs across the sector in order to achieve its intended positive outcomes for women and girls in humanitarian settings.
Our HIF’s Technical Working Groups (TWGs) provide a greater depth of technical expertise in the thematic areas we focus on, including innovation for GBV in emergencies. Previously the GBV focus area has been guided by an Advisory Group, but we have now formalised its governance structure by building a TWG.
In November 2019, our HIF programme facilitated this transition to the TWG by convening technical experts who strive to represent the complex needs of innovation for GBV. The TWG members have varied GBV expertise such as: response, risk mitigation, prevention, in addition to gender, empowerment, women’s rights, health and protection.
Our GBV Technical Working Group (TWG) will help guide and inform our GBV work, from advising on exploratory pieces for the global community of practice, to refining our calls for innovation funding proposals.
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