Disaster Response South Sudan Project #27515

Preventing Gender-based Violence in South Sudan

by IsraAID

Preventing Gender-based Violence in South Sudan

Project Report | Feb 16, 2021
Joining a Women and Girl's Friendly Space

By IsraAID Staff | IsraAID South Sudan

Since 2011, IsraAID has been active in South Sudan working to combat and prevent extremely high rates of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (SGBV). IsraAID’s model establishes Women and Girls Friendly Spaces in communities, offering case management services integrated with psychosocial support programming, livelihood development opportunities, and regular communal activities to promote awareness of the key challenges facing women and girls in these contexts.

In order to ensure community ownership and long-term sustainability toward truly creating a culture of prevention, IsraAID established community emergency councils, trained by IsraAID staff, and tasked with leading community engagement to prevent SGBV: these councils are made up of key leaders from within the community such as chiefs, religious leaders, teachers, and more. In addition, the daily function of Women and Girl Friendly Spaces is led by community focal points.

In light of the current difficulties and context due to the COVID-19 pandemic, each and every program aspect is integrated with COVID-19 prevention messaging. In addition, daily programming at each space is conducted in line with local guidelines, in small groups, and in outdoor spaces.

PROGRAMMATIC UPDATES:

Over the last months, the IsraAID team has achieved the following:

Reached 3,258 people (1,784 females and 1,474 males) with key preventive messaging on both COVID-19 and SGBV. This included addressing the intersection of the two: the ways in which domestic violence and child marriage has increased as indirect consequences of the pandemic.
Trained 13 Community Emergency Council members in Urban Juba.
Provision of case management services for 129 survivors of SGBV—including psychosocial support, referrals for legal support, and some basic material items.
Follow-up training for 100 Community Focal Points on advanced case management and the critical importance of a multi-sectoral approach to SGBV prevention and response.
Ongoing, daily schedule of programming at each of our centers across South Sudan including activities such as: individual and group psychosocial support sessions; singing; dancing; handkerchief making; bedsheet knitting; basic literacy; bead making; and more.

These activities are ongoing on the ground, where additional support is urgently needed to ensure their continued implementation. Thank you for your support!

STORY OF IMPACT:

Achol is a 14-year-old girl living in Lemon Gaba, where she lives with her uncle after becoming displaced from Malakal in the 2016 crises and her father being imprisoned.

In February 2020, Achol’s uncles married her without her consent to a 40-year-old army officer who was believed to be a rich man by the family and agreed to pay a high dowry.

Achol experienced severe abuse through her husband, including physical assault, insults, economic violence & sexual violence, until her husband died after a few months of marriage. Achol had nobody to take care of her. She decided to join the psychosocial support sessions facilitated by IsraAID at the Women and Girl’s Friendly Space. According to Achol, she benefited from the psychosocial group sessions which include activities like bedsheet making, social gathering, individual sessions, tea talk session, music, dance, and drama. The activities and the sense of community she experienced at the WGFS gave Achol confidence and enabled her to develop positive coping mechanisms. Encouraged through the other women, Achol started a tea place to generate an income. She benefited from IsraAID’s business skills training and in- kind support.

Achol expressed her appreciation for IsraAID for empowering women and girls who experienced Intimate Partner Violence. She continues to operate her small tea place and is hoping to join school in 2021.

*names have been changed to protect the individuals’ identities.

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Oct 19, 2020
IsraAID as the Lead Agency on Sexual and Gender Based Violence

By IsraAID Staff | IsraAID South Sudan

All Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) have the right to life and adequate protection from violence, exploitation and abuse. It is the responsibility of the humanitarian community to ensure these basic needs are met and also ensure that IDPs live in dignity. Decades of armed conflict and displacement and the COVID-19 pandemic have placed women and girls in extreme vulnerability in South Sudan, where sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) continues to prevail in IDP communities. SGBV cases, including sexual violence, denial of resources and services, physical violence, and emotional violence continue to be reported, and increasingly so due to COVID-19-induced restrictions.

IsraAID South Sudan has been working in communities in Juba since 2011 in partnership with government and community-based organizations. IsraAID is the lead agency on Gender-Based Violence in Central Equatoria State since August 2013. Because IsraAID places strong emphases to work with national partners, it has gained significant trust among communities, national service providers and partners.

Our sustainable model, which focuses on local ownership, both in emergencies and stabilized settings, ensures that national partners, service providers and communities themselves lead the prevention and response activities in the areas of operation. Thanks to SGBV prevention and response services provided by IsraAID in 2019-2020, IDPs in Mahad and Don Bosco communities have gained confidence and courage to report SGBV cases, while survivors continuously seek assistance. We intend to strengthen community-based structures, including community emergency councils and non-professional community-led services with the purpose of enabling community-led prevention and referral to be carried out in the absence of IsraAID and other organizations. It is expected that the experience and skills acquired by members of the community-based structures will be used in the IDP sites as well as their home communities.

After years of coordination and leadership, IsraAID is increasingly being requested to play an active and leading role in other locations. Over the past few years, IsraAID has gained tremendous respect and support from communities, local partners, state and local authorities, religious leaders, police, legal organizations, international agencies and GBV sub-cluster members. IsraAID South Sudan has a team of technical experts which includes international and national specialists, trainers and social workers (Gender Advisors, Police advisors, legal advisors, PSS advisors, and social workers/community mobilizers) who have been and continue to be trained to provide the best quality of services to communities, and to also train other service providers, thus creating a multiplier effect over time.

Thank you for your continued support, allowing us to develop a strong team of technical experts.

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Jun 23, 2020
The Effect of COVID-19 Lockdown on Gender-Based Violence

By IsraAID Staff | IsraAID South Sudan

As parts of the world begin to emerge from COVID-19 lockdown, IsraAID is focused on continuing to provide recovery support. Many vulnerable communities lack the resources and access to transition back to normalcy, including locations where protracted refugee crises are ongoing. IsraAID South Sudan is hard at work offering direct service delivery to assist refugee, host, and IDP communities to promote proper hygiene practice, offer psychosocial support to those most acutely affected, and help communities adhere to health guidelines.

Since March, South Sudan has had significant restrictions on movement to limit the spread of the virus. Borders and schools were closed, community gatherings were also ordered to stop, and a nighttime curfew was set. This prevented the virus from reaching the country until the beginning of April. At over 1000 active cases, the country began to re-open in May.

Home isolation and high levels of stress have caused the rate of domestic abuse and other forms of Gender-Based Violence (GBV) to skyrocket. Even before the pandemic, 65% of women and girls in South Sudan were survivors of GBV; amid the current realities, this is expected to dramatically increase. For both men and women, it may have been harder to find a good source of income amid government restrictions, which increases the stress levels at home and among family members, in addition to the direct stress of limited resources. There has also been less connection and communication between women and girls, and their usual support networks, which makes it more challenging to ask for support, or for others to pick up on any concerns. As such, IsraAID’s teams:

Transitioned activities at Women and Girl Friendly Spaces to accommodate health guidelines - by increasing the number of sessions to allow for small participant groups.
Promoting awareness of GBV issues among men and boys, calling on them to help lead the charge in ending these harmful practices.
Purchasing phone credit to provide remote case management for survivors of GBV, in light of increased demand and limited physical access to beneficiaries.
Continuing home visits as an essential service amid increasing cases of domestic violence
Distributing hygiene items to communities with limited access, to ensure higher levels of prevention even in remote, under-resourced areas.

Due to less restrictive government regulations, we are now able to increase our work with the community, and are hoping that we can soon return to our pre-COVID-19 programs at full capacity.

Thank you for your support of these critical programs!

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