Displaced communities and those that host large numbers of refugees face high risks of violence, including sexual exploitation and abuse, according to a new World Bank assessment.
The recently-launched study, Gender-Based Violence and Violence Against Children: Prevention and Response Services in Uganda's Refugee-Hosting Districts shows that identifying negative impacts that could result from project activities or risks already existing in the communities, and embedding preventive measures could provide better protection and response services.
The assessment was conducted by the World Bank-financed Uganda Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP), a flagship Government of Uganda project being implemented under the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM).
According to the DRDIP assessment, the most common causes of violence against women and children in hosting and refugee communities, include poverty, substance abuse, discriminatory gender roles, and widespread acceptance of violence, which are reinforced by social norms. Physical violence, for example, is a widely accepted form of "disciplining" women and children.
School violence and the absence of child-friendly and accessible services for reporting and responding to violence against children further increases risk for boys and girls.
In his remarks during the launch, the director, DRDIP, Dr Robert Limlim, said the report has created the sense of awareness to the stakeholders on the question of violence against children in the violent sphere Dr Limlim said while this has been common, it has not been given attention.
"This report is not just a report of its kind. It outlines numerous complexities and provides us with a level of clarity on what we should do. It is not a light issue. It is a big gap we had forgotten in the field of displacement," Dr Limlim said.
Adding, "When you read this report, you will be able to see the horrorful experience of the undignified life that could be avoided. It is so emotional, really, colleagues, because these are lives of suffering".
Dr Limlim further said DRDIP will incorporate gender based violence efforts in the programme.
"We are going to integrate the GBV work on our programme and ensure that we shall hire a gender-based violence officer to breathe energy to the team," Dr Limlim said.
Many survivors of GBV and violence against children who live in host communities face various barriers to access essential services— health, psychosocial support, justice, and safety—due to gaps in the existing referral systems, poor case tracking and weak coordination among duty bearers, the report notes.
"This mapping of violence against children and broader gender-based violence (GBV) services is providing an important evidence base for strengthening services and defining DRDIP's role in appropriately responding to the risks," said Margarita
Puerto Gomez, Senior Social Development Specialist and World Bank Task Team Leader. According to UNHCR, 81% of Uganda's over 1.4 million refugees are women and children, who are at high risk of gender-based violence (GBV), including sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA), rape, forced and child marriage, and intimate partner violence (IPV).
The assessment, which was led by the DRDIP-OPM, ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development in coordination with the UNHCR and development partners, provides several recommendations to strengthen protection against GBV and violence against children.
They include integrating GBV risk mitigation and prevention into the development response to forced displacement, strengthening and enhancing multisectoral services, including district- and local-level structures and scaling up evidence-based community violence prevention approaches to address GBV and violence against children risk factors aligned to district and community structures.
Measures could include grievance redress mechanisms, guidance, and tools to train local project stakeholders on GBV and violence against children risk assessment and mitigation.
Other recommendations include bridging the humanitarian-development divide between GBV and child protection programming, breaking conceptual "silent spaces" across GBV and child protection programming by, for example, training service providers to address multiple forms of violence and expanding existing programs to address common risks factors.
In line with the 2017 Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF), the report further recommends reducing the gap between the humanitarian and development responses to GBV and violence against children-related risks by deliberately aligning violence prevention and response interventions with national systems.
"GBV and violence against children services offered by humanitarian partners can generate parallel structures for the provision of services, which are not necessarily aligned with or integrated into local and national protection systems" the report states.
It adds: "Prevention programs are fragmented and low in scale, and efforts to address risks factors through the socio-economic empowerment of women and girls are limited. Despite their common risk factors, programming for GBV and violence against children continue to operate in silos, each with its own funding streams and actors. Refugee host communities face similar challenges. Compared with a national average of 51%, the 2016 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey showed that 64% of women aged 15 to 49 in the refugee-hosting West Nile subregion report having experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence perpetrated by their current or most recent spouse or partner. In response to the 2018 National Violence Against Children Survey, one in four girls and one in 10 boys reported having experienced sexual violence in the 12 months prior."
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