End Violence Against Women and Girls

We help women and girls access their full potential and live free from violence by supporting survivors, mitigating risks, and engaging communities in change.

A HIAS staff member speaks with a woman and girl about HIAS' programs to address violence against women and girls. End Violence Against Women and Girls | 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 ensure women and girls are safe, healthy, and protected from sexual and physical violence. Our anti-violence programming for women and girls focuses on reducing the risk of sexual exploitation and violence, trafficking, domestic violence, and other types of violence experienced by forcibly displaced women and girls and other groups. We believe everyone has a role to play in keeping women and girls safe, so we engage entire communities — men, women, boys, and girls — in this work. These lifesaving programs ensure all survivors of sexual or physical violence can access services and improve their safety and overall wellbeing amidst extremely challenging circumstances.

This approach enables HIAS to:

  • Recognize the strength of all survivors.
  • Meet the safety, health, psychosocial, legal, and economic needs of survivors.
  • Connect survivors to lifesaving healthcare, psychosocial support, and justice.
  • Work with communities to challenge attitudes and behaviors that normalize sexual and physical violence against women and girls.

Strategies

HIAS’ life-changing anti-violence programs provide survivors of, and women and girls vulnerable to, sexual and physical violence with the resources to find support, build resilience, and heal. Our anti-violence programming focuses on three main strategies: risk reduction, response, and prevention. This includes:

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

  • Supporting survivors’ wellbeing through case management, psychosocial services, and referrals to essential services and safe spaces.

  • Addressing the root causes of violence against women and girls through family-based interventions and programs for men and boys to reflect on attitudes that contribute to or condone violence.

Impact

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 violence against women. (HIAS Ecuador)

Economic empowerment is effective in preventing violence against women

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

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Resources

Cultural and Gender-Aware Toolkits

These toolkits were designed to enhance service providers’ understanding of gender awareness and cultural considerations when supporting Congolese, Ukrainian, Somali, Afghan, and Ukrainian newcomers to the United States and providing gender-based violence prevention and responsive programming.

Working with LGBTQ+ Communities in Displacement

LGBTQ+ refugees and asylum seekers face disproportionate levels of violence and discrimination worldwide. HIAS supports LGBTQ+ displaced people to access their rights and rebuild their lives in dignity. Download this factsheet to learn more about our work with LGBTQ+ communities.

Waiting for the Sky to Close

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.

VOICE-HIAS Moldova GBV Report 

This report examines the GBV-related safety and protection situation of refugee women and vulnerable host community women, including elderly women, adolescent girls, disabled women, Roma women, and LGBTQ people in Moldova.

Snapshot: GBV and Forcibly Displaced Women in 7 LAC Countries

Infographics showing forcibly displaced women at the center of searching solutions to address gender-based violence.

Our Right to Safety (Executive summary)

Executive summary of report by UNHCR and HIAS placing forcibly displaced women at the center of searching solutions to address gender-based violence in seven LAC countries.

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Group Psychosocial Intervention for Displaced Women in Ecuador and Panamá

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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