Strengthening IPV Response for Migrants and Refugees through Cash and Voucher Assistance

What is the humanitarian need?

The deteriorating humanitarian, economic, and political conditions in Venezuela continue to force Venezuelans into other countries, including Ecuador. An estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans have arrived in Ecuador since 2016.

Displaced and host women, unaccompanied children and adolescents and LGBTQI+ individuals face particularly high risks of discrimination and gender-based violence (GBV) before, during and after displacement. COVID-19 has exacerbated an already difficult situation.

Response services for refugee survivors of GBV, including Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), in Ecuador are limited and insufficient. As in many humanitarian contexts globally, humanitarian actors in Ecuador have yet to broadly leverage Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) to support survivors of IPV recover from violence.

What is the innovative solution?

CVA is an innovative form of assistance within IPV response in humanitarian settings. CVA has great potential to improve traditional case management approaches by helping IPV survivors access critical goods and services to facilitate their recovery. The integration of CVA has the potential to strengthen humanitarians IPV response services and support improved capacity for survivors recovery.

This project will improve humanitarians understanding of the specific dynamics of case management and CVA referrals for IPV survivors and identify how best to address their needs by including CVA in a package of response services.

Project implementation will be survivor centered, bringing together local service providers, international non-governmental agencies and actively involving women and girls in the co-design of CVA referral pathways for IPV survivors. Operational learning from these pathways will inform localisation approaches.

What are the expected outcomes?

This project will generate new evidence on how to most effectively integrate CVA into IPV response. It aims to strengthen the GBV and CVA communities of practice in designing and delivering comprehensive services in response to IPV in emergency settings.

The project activities and resulting evidence will contribute to local, national and global learning on integrating CVA within GBV case management to support survivors of IPV. This could then inform practice for a range of humanitarian stakeholders, including humanitarian and development professionals, national government agencies and international donors.

Capacity building for project staff will enhance knowledge and skills to directly monitor and evaluate GBV programming.