Attachments
1. Introduction
Addressing Sexual and Gender-based Violence (SGBV) is a topic in which SDC has amassed considerable experience over the last 15–20 years.
This document brings together and analyses the knowledge generated over these years. Early work on SGBV was largely conducted in humanitarian contexts, with activities in the Great Lakes region commencing as long ago as 2002. Work on the topic then gradually expanded into comprehensive and long-term programming, with a focus on fragile and conflict affected areas. Over this period, cooperation modalities have evolved. In the early phases, SDC support was mostly to specialist NGOs, particularly women’s organisations, providing direct care and services to survivors. This has now expanded to also working directly with State structures.
In the past decade, many countries have introduced new legislation tackling violence against women and domestic violence. This opened new entry points and cooperation opportunities for SDC, working also with governments and supporting legislative reforms and the implementation of new laws such as in Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mongolia, Nepal, and Tajikistan.
Today SDC is supporting programmes directly addressing SGBV in 12 different countries, with a financial envelope of over CHF 10 million per annum.
These countries are Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia Herzegovina (through Swiss NGO partners), Burundi,
DRC, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mongolia, Morocco,
Nepal, Rwanda, and Tajikistan. SDC also supports the UN Trust Fund to end Violence against Women.
Nevertheless, not all of this experience is readily traced, as much of SDC’s work on SGBV is integrated into sectorial portfolios (the SDC thematic domains), mostly on health (sexual and reproductive health and HIV/AIDS), and governance (rule of law, human rights). The visibility of SGBV work as well as exchange and learning among the different programs is limited. Consequently, the aim of this capitalisation exercise was to promote institutional learning to improve and guide SDC policies and strategies in addressing SGBV.
1.1. International Policies and Framework on SGBV
While SGBV was absent from international policy discourse over many years, it entered the policy agenda in recent decades and has variously been framed as a human rights issue, a peace and security issue, a development issue and a global public health issue (see reference list for SDC papers). The first internationally binding human rights document providing a legal framework for the elimination and prevention of SGBV is the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979). The Beijing Platform for Action (1995) identified SGBV as one of twelve critical areas of concern if gender equality is to be achieved. Since 1995 a UN Special Rapporteur has reported annually on violence against women.
Under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) victims of SGBV benefit from the general protection afforded to civilians; in addition, IHL includes a specific protection regime for women. To address the protection needs of refugee women more precisely,
UNHCR introduced the Guidelines on Prevention and Response to Sexual Violence against Refugees (1995, revised 2003). Further in 2015, the Inter Agency Standing Committee (IASC) published its revised guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action.
The year 2015 provided strong momentum for work on SGBV, with the new Agenda 2030 and the 15 year anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women and peace and security (2000). The latter demands the political participation of women in peace processes and the protection and prevention of all forms SGBV in conflicts.
Resolution 1325 and the subsequent resolutions specifically dealing with sexual violence in conflict (i.e. 1820, 1888, 1889 and 1960) were critical steps in bringing women’s rights in conflict situations into the international agenda. Earlier, in 1998, the Statute of the International Criminal Court recognised rape and other forms of sexual violence as war crimes when committed in armed conflict. The Rome Statue and the adoption of resolution 1325 were a response to the Western Balkan and Great Lakes wars in the 1990s. In both situations, high in-ternational attention was triggered by widespread reports of rape and sexual violence used as a weapon of war and for political ends, notably for ethnic cleansing and the terrorisation of the local population.
Historically, the use of rape as a weapon of war has always happened, in all wars. Despite the strong commitments under Resolution 1325, these crimes continue – notably being reported of late with reference to the conflicts in the Middle East, or in the protracted conflicts of Southern Sudan and the DRC