Annex A
Gender—How is DfID addressing Violence Against
Women and Girls?
1. The International Rescue Committee welcomes
this year's Gender Equality at the Heart of Development publication,
which is valuable in restating the inter-relationship between
poverty and gender-based discrimination, and in setting out DfID's
commitments in these areas. The recently published Gender Equality
Action Plan 2007-09 also represents an important step forward
in ensuring effective mainstreaming of gender issues across DFID's
policies and programmes.
2. However, IRC believes that the Gender
Equality Action Plan does not yet go far enough. While we fully
endorse the need to ensure that gender equality is mainstreamed
throughout DfID's policies and programmes, we believe that the
challenges facing women and girls in the developing world will
not be adequately addressed without a commitment to much higher
levels of targeted funding, more work on developing effective
programming strategies and a commitment to using the UK's influence
to push gender issues at a global level.
3. In particular, much greater levels of
support are required for programmes that address violence against
women and girls, especially in contexts that are not usually prioritised
for gender-focused programming, such as humanitarian crises and
countries affected by, or recovering from, conflict. These situations
often suffer much higher levels of gender-based violence, with
higher levels of impunity for perpetrators and potentially catastrophic
effects on socio-economic recovery and development.
4. Violence against women and girls is a
critical factor in ensuring continuing under-development, poor
health and insecurity for millions of the world's people, especially
in the most vulnerable areas.
(a) Violence against women and girls profoundly
impedes post-crisis recovery. Women's health and socioeconomic
wellbeing is critical for sustainable development. Gender-based
violence entails costs to the country's healthcare and legal systems,
loss in production, emotional stress and other social costs which
constrain economic and social development. It perpetuates poverty
by reducing women's capacity to work outside the home, their mobility
and access to information, and children's attendance at school.
Countries that do not capitalise on the full potential of women,
one half of their societies, risk misallocating their human resources
and undermining their full potential.
(b) In a crisis or post-crisis situation,
violence against women often becomes self-perpetuating. The economic
status of poor women may necessitate that they engage in survival
activities such as trading sex for food, money or other items.
In turn, without access to land ownership, natural resource management
and the job market these women then remain destitute and vulnerable.
In a country recovering from conflict or other crisis it is especially
important to intervene early to help break this cycle.
(c) Countries affected by conflict are often
at particular risk of continuing endemic violence against women
and girls. As DfID's Annual Report 2007 notes, after many conflicts
men who have been demobilised continue to perceive their identity
and status as based on aggression, resulting in high levels of
gender violence, crime and insecurity that can threaten a fragile
peace. [7]While
congratulating DfID on the support it provides to demobilised
youth in countries such as Sierra Leone, the IRC's experience
in conflict-affected and post-conflict contexts suggests that
much more can still be done to target this problem directly.
(d) Violence against women negatively affects
maternal and child mortality and morbidity. It has also been shown
that abusive partners or cultural stigma can prevent victims of
violence from accessing healthcare, including prenatal care and
HIV/AIDS treatment. In contexts where violence against women is
particularly prevalent, the implications in terms of overall health
outcomes are potentially enormous.
(e) Violence against women negatively affects
children's health and development. Children suffer the consequences
of violence against women either during the mother's pregnancy
or during their own childhood due to neglect and/or the effects
of abuse.
(f) Violence against women is both a cause
and consequence of the growing rate of HIV infection. Failure
to address violence against women can therefore significantly
impede efforts to stem the spread of HIV.
(g) Violence against women and girls is a
grotesque violation of human rights in itself.
5. The IRC welcomes DfID's commitment to
addressing gender equality and, as part of this, to tackling violence
against women and girls. We also welcome the support that DfID
already provides to programmes working to combat gender-based
violence, both directly and indirectly. However, we believe that
much more can be done. The critical impact of violence against
women on developmental, health and human rights outcomes needs
to be much more broadly recognised. In order to do justice to
the analysis contained in Gender Equality at the Heart of Development
and in its 2007 Annual Report, DfID should ensure that all aid
programmes in humanitarian, recovery and other fragile contexts
are based on a comprehensive assessment of the extent and impact
of violence against women, and that targeted programmes are designed
and funded to mitigate it.
6. We also call on DfID to continue speaking
out about violence against women and to take the lead internationally
on developing programmes and policies to end it.
Sarah Hughes
Director
International Rescue Committee UK
4 July 2007
7 2007 Annual Report, the Department for International
Development, box 7.3. Back
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