Successful Interventions Can Reduce Violence against Women

Women at the Women in Crisis drop-in center in Sierra Leone. Photo: Angela Walker/UNFPA

A new study by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows that community-based interventions aimed at halting violence against women can yield significant results. Rape in Mauritania, domestic violence in Mexico and Romania, child marriage in Bangladesh, and female genital mutilation or cutting in Kenya are just a few of the abuses explored in "Programming to Address Violence Against Women," which offers ten case studies that show how carefully targeted and planned interventions can actually reduce gender-based violence, the agency said. In the manual, the researchers point out that providing survivors with health care, psychological counseling, legal advice and human rights education, along with temporary shelter are necessary but not sufficient conditions to protect them from violence. They also need to become economically self-reliant if they are to break free of abusive relationships. One of the case studies discusses a successful campaign to assist sex workers in Sierra Leone. After Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, over half the population was left displaced and destitute. As a means to survive, many people have been forced into commercial sex, which leaves them vulnerable to HIV infection, and other potentially fatal problems. In response, a faith-based organization, the Women in Crisis Movement (WICM) is implementing a project to target women and girls between the ages of 15 and 38 who have suffered abduction, abuse, exploitation, and other forms of violence at the hands of warring factions. Recruited from commercial sex hubs, young women are offered sexual and reproductive health services. Participants and their dependents receive vocational training, literacy classes, meals, psychosocial support, advocacy information and education, free medical care, sensitization about sexually transmitted infections, and support in forming income-generating cooperatives. As a result, the prevalence of sexually transmitted infections and associated morbidity and mortality has been reduced, more women are gaining vocational skills, and previously stigmatized commercial sex workers are now socially active and productive members of society. Sierra Leone is only one example of many. "In many of these cases, the extent of violence against women was so prevalent and so entrenched that it first seemed impossible to budge the prevailing mindset," Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, the Executive Director of the UNFPA, said. "What we learned is that persistent advocacy targeting community leaders and the larger public can bring about huge changes in a relatively short time."