The Inter-Agency Standing Committee has issued these Guidelines to meet the need for a coherent and participatory approach to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. It is a tool for field actors to establish a coordinated multisectoral approach to gender-based violence programming in emergency settings.
The primary purpose of these guidelines is to enable humanitarian actors and communities to plan, establish and coordinate a set of minimum multisectoral interventions to prevent and respond to sexual violence during the early phase of an emergency. They provide practical advice on how to ensure that humanitarian protection and assistance programmes for displaced populations are safe and do not directly or indirectly increase women’s and girls’ risk to sexual violence. They also detail what response services should be in place to meet the need of survivors/victims of sexual violence.
The guidelines are applicable in any emergency setting, regardless of whether the “known” prevalence of sexual violence is high or low. They draw from many guidelines, tools, standards, research and background materials and other resources developed by UN, NGO, and academic sources.
Three sets of activities are included in the guidelines: 1) overview of activities to be undertaken in the preparedness phase; 2) detailed implementation of minimum prevention and response during the early stages of the emergency; and 3) overview of comprehensive action to be taken in more stabilised phases and during recovery and rehabilitation.
Recommendations:
- It is important to remember that sexual violence is under-reported even in well-resourced settings worldwide, and it will be difficult if not impossible to obtain an accurate measurement of the magnitude of the problem in an emergency. All humanitarian personnel should therefore assume and believe that gender-based violence (GBV), and in particular sexual violence, is taking place and is a serious and life-threatening protection issue, regardless of the presence or absence of concrete and reliable evidence.
- The guidelines emphasise the importance at every stage of active involvement of local authorities and communities, in particular the leadership and participation of women and girls in all activities. This participation is fundamental to the success of coordinated action, and will allow strengthening of local capacity and enhance sustainability.
- They also emphasise the importance of multisectoral coordinated action and community involvement, and include guidance for maximising multisectoral involvement in all of the crosscutting functions. There must be coordination among and between sectors in order to implement the minimum interventions.
- During the Emergency Preparedness Phase, a number of actions should be taken that can enable rapid implementation of minimum prevention and response to sexual violence in the early stages of an emergency. Although emergency preparedness may be limited by many factors, preparatory action can be taken.
- Interventions in the early phase, Minimum Prevention and Response, are the main focus of these guidelines. For each action in this phase, there is a detailed outline of specific key activities to perform, responsibility for those actions, and key resources available to support implementation of the key actions.
- In more stabilised phases of an emergency, after the initial crisis and into recovery and rehabilitation, Comprehensive Prevention and Response will be needed. This will include widening the scope of interventions to address other forms of GBV that are occurring in the setting.
