Preventing Intimate Partner Violence: Towards a Framework for Supporting Effective Community Mobilisation

Abstract

Community mobilisation is a promising new strategy for preventing intimate partner violence (IPV) against women in low-income settings. However, little is known about the contextual factors (e.g. socio-economic, cultural, historical and political conditions) that enable the effective mobilisation of communities for IPV prevention. This paper draws from theoretical work of Campbell and Cornish (2010) on the relationship between context and community action in addressing HIV/AIDS to propose a framework for situating community mobilisation for IPV prevention in its surrounding symbolic, material and relational contexts. The framework is refined using empirical data from a case study of a gender-based violence (GBV) prevention intervention in Rwanda, including interviews with members of governmentmandated GBV Committees and focus group discussions with members of two village communities (n=35). A thematic analysis identifies various contextual factors needed to support community mobilisation for IPV prevention, including: broad symbolic understandings of what constitutes IPV; capacity to economically support women who choose to leave violent relationships; mechanisms for addressing the silence that often surrounds IPV; support from policy and government authorities; and opportunities to effectively challenge inequitable policy and legal frameworks. This framework is useful for policy-makers and programme planners interested in IPV prevention in and by communities.3

The ethics of researching intimate partner violence in global health: A case study from global health research

“…In following Hedgecoe's thinking of research participants as moral decision-makers we see that the women and men we spoke to had nuanced understandings of the social, cultural and economic factors that perpetuate IPV in their communities. Many were actively involved in trying to address these factors as part of community-based GBV committees (Mannell & Dadswell, 2017).…”

Intersectionalities of formality of marital status and women’s risk and protective factors for intimate partner violence in Rwanda

“…References to such leadership included being unresponsive or able to do 'nothing' on behalf of informally married women who experienced IPV, were denied access to property, or chased away from their homes. Mannell and Dadswell (2017) similarly found that community members rarely mentioned the risks associated with the strategy on behalf of GBV committee members to advise unmarried women to marry their abusers.…”

“…Informally married women are disadvantaged in a range of areas including access to property and custody of children, decision-making, social status, and institutional responses to their experiences of IPV. The elevation of formal marital status is so much the case that a proposed solution for informally married women can be to marry their abuser (Mannell and Dadswell, 2017), in order to be in a relationship protective of their rights. A more holistic women's rights agenda, which acknowledges and seeks to address such inequalities is urgently needed in Rwanda.…”

Indashyikirwa Women’s Safe Spaces: Informal Response for Survivors of IPV within a Rwandan Prevention Programme

“…A recent study conducted by the University of Rwanda with Oxfam (2017) found that 78.8% of women reported "fear of stigma" as the primary barrier to reporting violence, followed by because an "arrangement between families was made instead" (73.5%), or "feeling that it will change nothing" (65.2%). Given that Rwandan women's poverty and financial dependence on their spouses have been identified as significant barriers to women seeking care, the need to provide integrated health and psychosocial services that support women economically has been strongly emphasized (Russell et al 2016;Umubyeyi et al 2016;Mannell and Dadswell 2017). Supportive community responses to GBV survivors are especially important in Rwanda, given the evidence that men and women are overwhelmingly more likely to ask for help from their neighbors or family members when experiencing physical or sexual violence (NISR 2016).…”