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Localizing Efforts to Prevent Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Humanitarian Aid: Evolving Experiences of Power and Agency in Lebanon

The Empowered Aid initiative partnered with the Lebanese NGO URDA to address sexual exploitation and abuse by centering the lived expertise of Syrian refugee women and girls. By testing community-led recommendations, such as door-to-door distributions and female-led aid teams, the project significantly increased safety and satisfaction levels for female aid recipients. This feminist approach successfully shifted power to local organizations and affected communities, establishing a new model for accountability and knowledge production in humanitarian aid.

Empowered Aid Action Analysis Workshops Facilitation Guide for Women & Girl Researchers

This guide facilitates participatory data analysis for refugee women and girls, ensuring their lived expertise drives the "meaning-making" phase of research. By utilizing visual aids, role-playing, and movement-based activities, it removes literacy barriers and allows participants to validate findings and prioritize safety recommendations. This feminist approach empowers women and girls to act as co-producers of knowledge, directly shaping the policies and interventions designed to protect them from sexual exploitation and abuse.

Empowered Aid Action Analysis Workshops Facilitation Guide for Research Partner Staff

The Empowered Aid Action Analysis Guide provides a participatory framework for humanitarian staff to analyze qualitative data on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA). The toolkit uses a two-day workshop structure to transform research findings into visual tools and actionable safety recommendations, ensuring that refugee women and girls can lead the analysis regardless of literacy levels. By centering power-sharing and collaborative "meaning-making," it helps NGOs prioritize and pilot evidence-based improvements to make aid distributions safer.

Empowered Aid Research Reflection Workshops Facilitation Guide

The Empowered Aid Facilitation Guide provides a feminist, participatory framework for humanitarian teams to address power imbalances and sexual exploitation in aid distribution. By engaging women and girls as co-researchers, the toolkit uses reflection workshops and visual exercises to turn lived experiences into safer safeguarding policies. It serves as a practical roadmap for NGOs to build more accountable, transparent, and survivor-centered humanitarian responses.

Empowered Aid Particpatory Action Research Workshops Curriculum And Facilitation Guide Cover

The Empowered Aid Workshop Guide is a feminist training framework that equips refugee women and girls to act as "contextual safeguarding experts." Using low-literacy visual tools like Power Mapping and GBV Problem Trees, the curriculum deconstructs the power imbalances that lead to sexual exploitation in aid delivery. The workshop transforms participants into a proactive research team capable of identifying physical "hotspots" of risk through community mapping while ensuring immediate safety through established confidential referral pathways.

Empowered Aid Participatory Action Research Toolkit

The Empowered Aid: Participatory Action Research (PAR) Toolkit (2020) is a comprehensive set of resources designed to engage refugee women and girls as "contextual safeguarding experts." Developed by the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) in partnership with CARE (Lebanon) and the IRC (Uganda), this toolkit was created to identify and mitigate risks of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) within humanitarian aid distribution.

Empowered Aid Transforming Gender And Power Dynamics In The Delivery Of Humanitarian Aid

The Empowered Aid Lebanon Results Report (January 2020) reveals how aid delivery—specifically cash, shelter, WASH, and food—creates systemic risks for sexual exploitation. Syrian refugee women identified that "gatekeepers," including aid workers, landlords, and taxi drivers, often demand sexual favors in exchange for registration, home repairs, or transport. To strip perpetrators of this power, the report advocates for contextual safeguarding: a structural redesign of aid that centers women’s expertise, prioritizes female-led distribution teams, and provides safe transit and ATM literacy.

Pandemics and Violence Against Women and Children

Working Paper 528 (April 2020) identifies nine pathways where pandemics—like COVID-19, Ebola, and Zika—trigger a "shadow pandemic" of violence against women and children. Key drivers include economic insecurity, social isolation during lockdowns, and the de-prioritization of support services as health systems pivot to virus response. To mitigate these risks, the authors argue that governments must classify domestic violence services as essential, scale up gender-sensitive cash transfers, and integrate women’s safety into the heart of emergency planning.

Empowered Aid: Reducing Risks Of Sexual Exploitation And Abuse In Aid Distribution Uganda

The Empowered Aid Uganda COVID-19 Update (April 2020) emphasizes that the pandemic significantly worsened the risk of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) for refugee women and girls. As resources became scarce and movement was restricted, existing power imbalances between aid providers and recipients intensified. Critically, COVID-19 safety measures—like social distancing—disrupted the primary protective strategies women already used, such as traveling in groups or having "buddies" present during aid worker home visits.

Empowered Aid: Reducing Risks Of Sexual Exploitation And Abuse In Aid Distribution Lebanon

The Empowered Aid COVID-19 Update (April 2020) warns that the pandemic and its containment measures significantly heighten the risk of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) for refugee women and girls. As resources become scarcer and movement is restricted, existing power imbalances are exploited by those controlling access to health and aid. Crucially, social distancing makes traditional safety strategies—like moving in groups or having a "buddy" during home visits—nearly impossible to execute.