Humanitarian Innovation for gender-based violence response: lessons learned from Elrha's GBV Tech Innovation Challenge

This Learning Brief presents findings from Elrha’s Gender-based Violence (GBV) Tech Innovation Challenge, which ran from 2023 to 2025. Through a competitive funding call, Elrha’s independent Funding Committee selected four projects to support: one using virtual reality for impactful training; one using a chatbot to assist community outreach workers responding to disclosures of GBV; and two projects innovating to develop secure approaches to remote case management.

The Brief explores a central question: What does it take to design and scale survivor-centred technology in humanitarian crises safely, ethically and in alignment with global GBV standards? It distils insights from the projects, their teams and related stakeholders, as well as technical experts including members of Elrha’s GBV Technical Working Group. The findings are based on nine key informant interviews, two focus group discussions, and a desk review of progress reports, project documentation and relevant literature on technology and GBV in humanitarian emergencies.

The conclusion is clear: innovation in technology-based GBV programming must go beyond designing new tools. The priority should be building ecosystems that honour survivors’ expertise, strengthen community-led solutions, and ensure that every technological choice advances safety, dignity and rights.

The insights are relevant to GBV specialists, humanitarian innovators and designers testing new digital tools in crisis settings, researchers working at the intersection of technology and GBV, and humanitarian coordinators assessing how digital systems can function together without increasing risk. The findings also speak directly to funders shaping the broader innovation landscape — including bilateral and multilateral donors, philanthropic foundations, feminist and community-led funds, and mission-driven technology investors whose decisions influence which ideas are supported, scaled and sustained.

In addition to nine key lessons, the Challenge identified four overarching principles and four common values that consistently shaped safer, more inclusive innovation. These are summarised in the Brief and complemented by analysis of ethics and safeguarding considerations, an annotated bibliography, and snapshots of the four projects highlighting key enablers, learning points and additional values central to each innovation process.