Conflict and Crisis Policy Guidance
Women and Girls are at a greater risk of violence during periods of conflict and crisis — an issue that requires policy reform.
Our policy briefs detail recommendations and solutions to prevent and end this specific type of violence.
Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict and Crisis Settings
- No Safe Place: A Lifetime of Violence for Conflict-Affected Women and Girls in South Sudan
Based on evidence collected with conflict-affected women and girls in South Sudan, the No Safe Place policy brief adds a new dimension to the picture of violence against women and girls in conflict: Women and girls experience multiple and compounding forms of intimate partner violence that are exacerbated during times of conflict. This is in addition to conflict-related, non-partner sexual violence.
Based on this finding, we make several policy recommendations:
- Dedicated funding should be immediately available at the onset of a crisis to ensure specialized services are available for survivors of violence against women and girls.
- Funding should also prioritize longer-term programming on violence against women and girls, including in pre-crisis development and resilience strategies.
- International actors should recognize intimate partner violence as a specific and significant concern within the humanitarian agenda.
Read the full policy brief to read about the rest of our policy recommendations and to learn more about our research in South Sudan with conflict-affected women and girls.
- Intersections of Violence Against Women and Girls With State-Building and Peace-Building: Lessons from Nepal, Sierra Leone and South Sudan
This policy brief is based on evidence we collected alongside our partners as part of the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls program in Nepal, Sierra Leone and South Sudan. It explores the relationship that state-building and peace-building have with violence against women and girls. The primary finding from this research emphasizes the need for state-building and peace-building to more effectively institutionalize approaches to address violence against women and girls.
We make several policy recommendations based on this finding:
- Addressing gendered dimensions of conflict and violence against women and girls must be integral to state-building and peace-building processes.
- Donors must ensure sustained funding is maintained, and that this funding addresses multiple forms of violence against women and girls across state-building and peace-building processes.
- Justice for survivors should be mainstreamed in state-building and peace-building outcomes.
- Women’s participation must be prioritized in state-building and peace-building.
Read on to see the full list of policy recommendations and learn more about their application in the contexts of Nepal, Sierra Leone and South Sudan.
- Responding to Typhoon Haiyan: Women and Girls Left Behind
This policy brief is based on an analysis of the prevention and mitigation of violence against women and girls in the emergency response activities and programming implemented in response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
Several key findings emerged, which are applicable to other emergency settings, include:
- Violence against women and girls and the needs of women and girls were not consistently taken into consideration at every stage of the emergency response.
- The understanding and interpretation of international guidance for violence against women and girls (specifically, the Inter-Agency Minimum Standards for Gender-Based Violence in Emergencies Programming) varied, resulting in inconsistent application and monitoring.
- Although experts on violence against women and girls were consulted and did strengthen the response at certain points, they were unable to influence the wider humanitarian response overall.
Continue reading to learn more details about the emergency response to Typhoon Haiyan and the lack of violence against women and girls mitigation and response programming.
- What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict and Humanitarian Settings?
This evidence brief provides an overview of the evidence on violence against women and girls in conflict and humanitarian settings, including:
- The prevalence, forms and drivers of violence against women and girls in conflict and humanitarian settings
- Recent research on effective and ineffective interventions that aim to address and prevent violence against women and girls in conflict and humanitarian settings, which includes primary and secondary interventions as well as a review of multi-component interventions
- The knowledge gaps that exist and recommendations for addressing these in the future
Want to learn more about policy change to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls?
- Adolescent girls: Policy considerations to address adolescent girls’ specific vulnerabilities to violence, health outcomes and service needs
- Immigration and migration: Policy considerations for immigration reforms that prevent and respond to violence against women and girls