Attachments
KEY ACTIVITIES
GBV Facilities in the Camps 48 GBV Facilities
Ensuring free access to services, safe spaces and facilities for community engagement in the refugee camps is paramount.
UNHCR monitors 48 service points across 19 camps, providing GBV case management, psychosocial services, and diverse prevention activities. Facilities such as women and girl safe spaces, integrated service centres and community centres provide safe, confidential, and comfortable environments for women, girls, men and boys to seek support. For GBV survivors identified to as high risk, UNHCR monitors an emergency safe shelter and 15 community-based safe shelters where they are able to stay until sustainable solutions can be found for them.
SASA! Together Community-Led prevention activists and leaders 841
SASA! Together (‘start, awareness, support and action’) is a four-phase community mobilization approach to prevent violence against women through creating lasting social change. The ‘start’ phase identifies leaders, activists and institutional allies, and deepens their capacities to facilitate difficult community discussions about GBV. The ’awareness’ phase builds on the learnings of the first phase and encourages community members to interrogate both men’s power over women and the community's silence. In Cox’s Bazar, SASA! is now in this second phase with 841 trained activists and leaders applying SASA! tools to mobilize their communities for change.
Under SASA!, institutions are strengthened by identifying allies to transform organizations from the inside out, helping to prevent GBV in the workplace and beyond. Currently, 61 health workers from 15 health service providers who have been trained in SASA! methods work with facility staff to shift institutional culture in 29 health facilities.
SASA! Together is currently implemented by UNFPA and UNHCR (15 camps).
Male Engagement Activities 242 Male Role Models
The male role model (MRM) approach engages men and boys in GBV prevention though activating male role models as agents for change. After training in the MRM approach, the role models conduct outreach sessions, leading community members in debates on the impact and consequences of GBV-related topics — i.e. polygamy, child marriage, toxic masculinity, dowry, and intimate partner violence, which is responsible for 84% of all GBV incidents reported in the camps.
Currently, MRM is implemented by UNHCR and partners in eight camps and Bhasan Char. As of 31 March, 242 role models, including ten in Bhasan Char, are actively engaged in community outreach to prevent GBV. The outreach sessions have been demonstrated to positively influence building healthy family relationships, gender equity, and equal gender divisions of family roles.