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End Gender-Based Violence

We work to protect the right of women, girls, and LGBTQ communities to access their full potential and live free from violence by supporting survivors, mitigating risks, and transforming beliefs that perpetuate GBV.

A HIAS staff member speaks with a woman and girl about HIAS' programs to address gender-based violence. | Ending Gender-Based Violence with Healing and Hope | HIAS

Learn how HIAS works to end gender-based violence against refugees and other forcibly displaced people. (SideXSide Studios for HIAS)

Overview

HIAS works with communities to reduce risk of GBV, increase support for survivors, and build partnerships with women-led organizations that promote and protect the rights of forcibly displaced women, girls, and LGBTQ people. We recognize the strength and resilience of all survivors and the diversity of experience and intersecting identities that confound one-size-fits-all solutions. HIAS centers the voices of survivors in our programs. This approach enables HIAS to:

  • Meet the safety, health, psychosocial, legal, and economic needs of survivors
  • Facilitate survivors’ access to appropriate care and justice
  • Empower communities to lead efforts that challenge beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors that perpetuate and condone violence against women, girls, and LGBTQ refugees

Strategies

Our programs to end Gender-Based Violence provide women and girls, LGBTQ people, and survivors of GBV with the tools and resources to find solidarity, build resilience, take back power, and heal. We also provide GBV prevention programming for men and boys to enable change that is lifesaving, transformative, and sustainable.

We accomplish this through three main strategies: risk reduction, response, and prevention.

  • Reducing the risk of GBV by providing women and girls with safe spaces, education, financial literacy, economic asset-building, and peer support.

  • Supporting survivors’ well being through case management, psychosocial services, and referrals to essential services and LGBTQ or women’s spaces.

  • Addressing the root causes of GBV through programs for men and boys to reflect on the norms that contribute to and condone violence.

LGBTQ Refugees

LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers face discrimination worldwide, including barriers to employment, education, safe housing, legal status, and health care. HIAS supports LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers to access their rights and rebuild their lives in dignity.

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Active work regions

Aruba
Austria
Chad
Costa Rica
Colombia
Ecuador
Greece
Guyana
Kenya
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Mexico
Panama
Peruvian flag
Peru
Ukraine flag
Ukraine
Venezuela

Impact

Economic empowerment is effective in stopping GBV.

A close collaboration in Ecuador between HIAS and UN Women promotes economic empowerment as an effective strategy to stop GBV.

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For more than half a year there has been a close collaboration in Ecuador between HIAS and UN Women on the Caminando project that promotes economic empowerment and women's rights as an effective strategy to eliminate gender-based violence, or GBV. UN Women promotes gender equality globally and works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls and the empowerment of women The pandemic has caused many new problems for women: loss of employment; increase in economic dependence; overload of home care tasks; and increased risks of GBV. Among the groups most seriously affected by the situation are migrant and refugee women. With the support of the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, HIAS and UN Women have put together this project to fuse the critical skills of GBV prevention and economic inclusion programming.

In Ecuador, HIAS and UN Women have worked closely on the Caminando project that promotes economic empowerment and women’s rights as an effective strategy to eliminate gender-based violence, or GBV. (HIAS Ecuador)

Resources

Sep 13, 2022

Waiting for the Sky to Close

Sep 13, 2022

As part of a partnership with HIAS, VOICE conducted a four-week rapid assessment of Ukraine and five bordering countries to assess the needs of women and girls affected by the war and the needs of WROs and groups responding to the emergency.

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Oct 18, 2022

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Group Psychosocial Intervention for Migrant and Host Community Women in Ecuador and Panamá: Protocol for a Multi-site Feasibility Cluster Trial

Oct 18, 2022

This study will evaluate the appropriateness, acceptability, feasibility, and safety of intervention and research procedures for a cluster randomized comparative effectiveness trial conducted in Ecuador and Panamá with migrant and host community women.

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