Browse by Theme: Gender Based Violence

Back in 2013, a senior UN policy-maker told CARE: “Gender isn’t summit-worthy.” Since then, concerted advocacy by hundreds of women and men has turned this around. CARE has played a leading role by co-convening the first global consultation with over 40 women from every region with the WHS Secretariat, and following up at the national level in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan and elsewhere. So what can we expect from the Summit, and what are the next steps?

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has just held its Annual Meeting in London, and I was lucky enough to participate in a panel discussion on their recently published Strategy for the Promotion of Gender Equality 2016-2020. A key focus of the discussion was how EBRD can best work with civil society organisations towards achievement of the strategy. There are many points to welcome in the strategy – but also many challenges to be faced...

People have a certain image of what constitutes an emergency. To someone you ask in the street they would probably imagine panic, chaos and people desperately trying to save their families. And that is true but not always the case, as emergencies get more drawn out due to long-standing conflict, like in Syria, or are slow-burning crises such as Ethiopia’s drought brought on by the climate impacts of El Nino. In these situations, emergency is embedded in everyday life – thinking about the safest route to go to the market or children dropping out of school becomes a part of daily life. And this is when it is not so easy to differentiate humanitarian and development approaches as short-term creeps into long-term.

Why is violence against women so prevalent? What is perpetuating and fuelling this trend of misogyny? Is society to blame? And, most importantly, how can we prevent gender-based violence? Advocacy intern Miski Abdi argues that GBV should have no place in a modern, egalitarian, democratic society.

Last week the House of Lords inquiry into the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative published their conclusions and called for the initiative to be put on a much firmer footing within UK foreign policy and in the international calendar. CARE was one of many who gave written evidence and we welcome the strong report. With key events this year and four years left of this Parliament, this is a good time for the government to re-commit to this agenda and redouble its efforts on human rights.

Remember one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in recent history? 11 years ago, a Tsunami killed over 230,000 people in Asia and Africa, and devastated large parts of Indonesia, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka. The latter country was in the middle of a bloody civil war, which had lasted almost 30 years. Sri Lanka was not a good place to be, despite the beauty of its landscape and its people. 

“Two God’s heads cannot fit in the same pot” says a Rwandan idiom used to justify why women cannot head households. The words we use to describe and talk about gender and violence matter. And yet, when it comes to designing research questionnaires or interventions, the power of language can be forgotten, in our haste to get a programme going. But the potential for real change perhaps lies in the tiny idiosyncrasies of local language, even though it often takes time to uncover such nuances.