Evaluating the communities care program: best practice for rigorous research to evaluate gender based violence prevention and response programs in humanitarian settings

Abstract

BackgroundGender-based violence (GBV) is a significant issue for women and girls in humanitarian settings. Innovative primary prevention programs are being developed and implemented with existing response programs to change harmful social norms that sustain GBV in humanitarian settings. Social norms are expectations of how women, men, girls and boys should behave, who should have power and control over behavior, and how families and communities value women and girls and support their rights and opportunities.MethodsThe United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) led Communities Care program is a primary prevention and response program designed from the understanding that within the context of conflict and displacement, there is an opportunity for positive change in social norms that support gender equity, and decrease GBV. The goal is to support communities in humanitarian settings to create healthy, safe and peaceful environments with quality response services for women and girls by transforming harmful social norms that uphold violence into norms that promote dignity, equity, and non-violence.ConclusionThis manuscript will highlight the use of best practices in GBV research to rigorously evaluate the Communities Care program in two diverse in humanitarian settings, Somalia and South Sudan.

Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings

“…Social norms are contextually and socially derived collective expectations of appropriate behaviors [14]. Families and communities have shared beliefs and unspoken rules that both proscribe and prescribe behaviors that implicitly convey that GBV against women is acceptable, even normal [15, 16]. This includes social norms pertaining to sexual purity, family honor, and men’s authority over women and children in the family.…”

Effectiveness of the Communities Care programme on change in social norms associated with gender-based violence (GBV) with residents in intervention compared with control districts in Mogadishu, Somalia

“…Even if specific individuals do not change their beliefs or attitudes, they may change their behaviour if they anticipate disapproval or negative sanctions if they do not conform to the norm. Families and communities have shared and unspoken rules that both proscribe and prescribe behaviours that lead to GBV or send messages that GBV against girls and women is acceptable, even normal 11 27. This includes norms pertaining to how individuals, families and communities value women and girls and support their rights and opportunities 11 27.…”

“…Families and communities have shared and unspoken rules that both proscribe and prescribe behaviours that lead to GBV or send messages that GBV against girls and women is acceptable, even normal 11 27. This includes norms pertaining to how individuals, families and communities value women and girls and support their rights and opportunities 11 27. Community leaders, institutions and service providers, such as healthcare, education and law enforcement, can reinforce harmful norms by, for example, denying that sexual harassment and GBV exist in the school or larger community, by not believing or blaming women and girls for the sexual assault they experience when disclosing to authorities and by justifying a husband’s use of physical violence as a means to discipline his wife, as correcting her behaviour is viewed as essential to protect the family’s reputation in the larger community 27…”

“…This can then lead to a shift in power relations in the family and community that challenges social norms related to gender equality. These circumstances can provide an opportunity to initiate primary prevention efforts, such as those that include engaging community leaders and members in dialogues about social norms that limit and advance opportunities for women and girls and what actions can be taken by the individual, family and community to change harmful norms 11 27. Acknowledging the potential of the humanitarian setting as an opportunity for primary prevention programming and recognising the need for capacity development of the response systems for GBV, UNICEF built on their work to end female genital mutilation using a social norms approach28 to develop the Communities Care Program: Transforming Lives and Preventing Violence (Communities Care) 29.…”

“…The Communities Care programme has two objectives that are implemented through separate but inter-related strategies: (1) to increase the quality, access and coordination of compassionate care and support of women and girls who experience sexual violence and other forms of GBV in conflict-affected settings by strengthening community-based response services across diverse sectors (eg, health, psychosocial, protection and education); and (2) to change social norms that maintain and tolerate GBV and catalyse community-led prevention actions 29. Communities Care is a theory-driven programme using a social norms perspective and a feminist-informed public health approach to GBV prevention and response that draws on the ecological framework 11 27 29. The ecological framework acknowledges the need to comprehensively address the multiple and interacting levels (eg, individual, family, community and social) of factors that cause and maintain GBV.…”