Gender-Based Violence
Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in the world today. This program works on prevention, risk mitigation and response to Gender-Based Violence (GBV), and links its interventions with the promotion and protection of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR).
In 2024, more than
111.000
women and young people gained information and access to reproductive health services.
In 2024,
142.000
people received information and support related to gender-based violence.
Gender Based Violence (GBV) transcends social, economic and national boundaries, and increases drastically during conflict and other humanitarian crises. Our goal is for women and girls to live empowered lives free from gender-based violence.
Related Sustainable Development Goals
Key Challenges and Structural Barriers
A Global Epidemic
Globally, an estimated 30% of women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. Gender-based violence (GBV) is a widespread and devastating issue affecting millions globally.
Harmful Traditional Practices
Over 230 million girls and women have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C). This severe human rights violation disproportionately affects girls under 15, despite global efforts to end the practice.
Child, Early and Forced Marriage
1 in 5 girls in fragile settings is married before 18, about one girl every 30 seconds. Conflict, poverty, and insecurity drive these high rates, stripping girls of their rights and futures.
Health and other Human Rights at Risk
GBV undermines health, dignity, and autonomy. Survivors face risks related to unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions, traumatic fistula, STIs including HIV, and even death, often in silence due to stigma and discrimination.
Gender Inequality
The unequal opportunities and power imbalances between men and women contributes to GBV. Structural inequality, embedded in political, economic, and social systems reinforces interpersonal violence and limits women’s rights and opportunities.
Humanitarian Crisis and Compounded Vulnerability
Armen conflict, displacement, climate-related crisis, among others increase GBV risks. pre-existing social and gender norms often worsen, limiting women, girls and other vulnerable groups' access to essential protection and health services. Negative health and social outcomes related to gender inequality and GBV include unintended pregnancies, maternal mortality, HIV, among others.
NCA’s Strategic Approach: Save Lives, Build Resilience, Seek Justice
Save Lives: Survivor-Centred Services and Protection in Crisis
NCA delivers life-saving GBV and SRHR services in humanitarian settings to uphold dignity, safety, and agency for women and girls.
- Provide multi-sectoral GBV services: including but no limited to GBV case management, clinical care, MHPSS, multisectoral referrals.
- Establish women and girls safe spaces and mobile outreach for women and girls.
- Deliver SRHR services including family planning and adolescent-friendly care.
- Prevent harmful practices such as cild, early and forced marriage and trafficking during emergencies.
- Implement the Minimum Initial Services Package (MISP) for SRHR in crises.
Seek Justice: Advocacy for Rights, Representation and Reform
NCA advocates for legal and structural reforms to protect rights and promote gender justice.
- Influence laws and policies to prohibit harmful practices and discrimination.
- Support human rights defenders and the Women, Peace and Security agenda.
- Engage faith leaders in theological reflection and mobilisation for change.
- Promote women’s leadership in political, religious, and public spheres.
- Advocate for tax-funded social protection and accountability in service delivery.
Equitable Partnerships for Locally Led Development
Norwegian Church Aid builds equitable partnerships that centre local leadership in humanitarian response and development. As a core member of the Global GBV Area of Responsibility and the Call to Action on Protection from GBV in Emergencies, NCA works to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (GBV) from the earliest stages of crisis. We collaborate with local women’s groups, youth networks, faith actors, and civil society organisations to ensure that survivors’ rights and agency are upheld, and that prevention efforts address the root causes of gender inequality.
NCA’s GBV programming is grounded in trust-based partnerships that promote shared decision-making and long-term capacity strengthening. We engage faith-based organisations and religious leaders to challenge harmful norms and advocate for change within their communities. By investing in local actors and fostering inclusive spaces, NCA supports women and girls to live free from violence, access essential services, and realise their sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Innovation
Norwegian Church Aid continually seeks to improve the quality and choice of care for GBV survivors so that they can heal from trauma, reconnect with their communities, and be agents of social change. With support from Innovation Norway, this GBV innovation project sought to explore the use of virtual reality (VR) as a medium through which therapeutic interventions can be delivered to GBV survivors. To do this, NCA engaged in an innovation-friendly procurement process, resulting in partnerships with two private sector companies—Healium and Fornix—to develop and test two VR-based psychosocial interventions.
Result case
Prior to March 2015, Malawi did not have a human trafficking law in place and was rated a tier 2 country in the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA)8.
Why:
Trafficking in Persons (TIP) cases were addressed using other laws like the Penal Code, Immigration Act, Child Care and Justice Act and the Constitution of Malawi. In 2015, NCA collaborated with partners and the Ministry of Homeland Security to pass a TIP law in Parliament in March of that year. This was followed by the development of a National Plan of Action Against TIP (2017-2020).
What:
Prior to the passage of the anti-TIP law in 2015, there was a lack of national response and effective action to combat TIP in Malawi. In 2007, NCA commissioned an evaluation to understand the magnitude and nature of trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. This evaluation established that at least 2,000–5,000 children under 17 and 5,000–8,000 women were trafficked internally and across borders each year. In response, NCA and partners began the long process of lobbying the Malawi government to pass an anti-TIP law.
How:
Since the Trafficking in Persons Act was enacted in 2015, NCA has made significant contributions to the further development of the National Plan of Action (NPA) by supporting partners and the Ministry of Homeland Security to learn from other countries through exchange visits and financial support. The NPA has five priority areas including:
- Prevention of TIP
- Support and protection of victims
- Detection, investigation and prosecution
- Partnership coordination, sustainable financing and research
- M&E and reporting
Since the plan was developed, there has been progress towards the prosecution of human trafficking cases in Malawi. Additionally, NCA and partners have conducted sensitisation with community members and religious leaders, in addition to building the capacity of law enforcement agencies like the police, judges and magistrates, partner staff and community volunteers. Through this work, there has been an increase in reporting of TIP cases at the community level.
Resources
NCA has created multiple resources for assisting with GBV prevention and response. Please see the below list that includes a description and access to the resources.
This guidance supports NCA country offices and partners in integrating Women’s Rights and Gender Equality across all projects and programs, in line with NCA’s policies and commitments.
Gender analysis examines the roles, responsibilities, and power dynamics between women and men, considering factors like age, race, and disability. It informs project planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, ensuring interventions address diverse needs and do not perpetuate inequality or harm.
Many donors now require gender analysis in programme proposals. While it can be integrated at any stage, it is most effective during project design. At NCA, conducting gender analysis is mandatory once per project cycle, and existing analyses from other organisations can also be used to inform programming.
The Integrating Therapeutic Interventions into GBV Case Management (ITI) resource outlines 13 therapeutic techniques and 11 MHPSS symptoms most commonly seen among GBV survivors and aims to therapeutically deepen the GBV case management process by integrating these MHPSS tools into all levels of case management.
To strengthen the ITI resource, we have developed 3 additional ITI tools which include the: ITI Training Manual, ITI MHPSS Flyers, ITI Supervision Toolkit.
*All ITI documents that have been translated on the page are provisional.
Integrating Therapeutic Interventions in GBV Case Management (ITI)
ITI Training Manual
This is the training manual to accompany the ITI Resource.
ITI MHPSS Flyers
Here are 11 flyers of the most commonly seen MHPSS symptoms that GBV survivors experience.
ITI Peer Supervision Toolkit
The ITI Peer Supervision Toolkit: Learning to Take Care of Survivors and Ourselves, is a toolkit that provides caseworkers with:
- A peer supervision model to help manage difficult cases and increase capacity to offer psychological support.
- Case studies, activities and provocative questions that facilitate individual and group supervision sessions related to the specific psychological symptoms of GBV survivors.
- Video recordings which provide “live” explanations, clinical examples and demonstrations of techniques to manage symptoms taught in the ITI manual.
The ITI Peer Supervision Toolkit should be used together with ITI manual.
We Matter: A GBV Staff Care Resource
This resource outlines 25 staff care activities help GBV teams manage burnout and vicarious traumatization. This staff care resource is written for all GBV staff, not just for team leaders and supervisors.
It is recommended that this resource be used together with the I Matter: Self-Care Journal for GBV Staff
I Matter: Self-Care Journal/Cards for GBV Staff
The I Matter: Self-Care Journal for GBV Staff is a journal that GBV staff can use on their own, to manage stress and to avoid burnout
This journal explores: 1) The ways my work changed me, 2) The ways my work causes me stress & other strong emotions, 3) Finding balance and 4) Joy and meaning.
This journal can be used by either printing it out or saving it on your phone or computer. The journal was transformed into self-care cards for ease of use and is recommended to be implemented creatively alongside supervision and regular meetings. It is recommended that this self-care resource be used together with the We Matter: A GBV Staff Care Resource that provides staff care strategies for the workplace.
ENGAGE is a resource designed to prevent and respond to child, early, and forced marriage (CEFM) within existing Gender-Based Violence (GBV) programs, with a focus on humanitarian settings. It is built on a Theory of Change informed by a literature review of evidence-based interventions and consultations with key stakeholders, including adolescent girls.
The ENGAGE program includes three key components:
- Service Delivery: Targeting adolescent girls who are at risk of or have experienced CEFM.
- Community Outreach: Engaging caregivers, teachers, religious leaders, women, men, girls, and boys in social norms change activities to prevent CEFM.
- Capacity Building: Providing tools and training for staff and partners to deliver high-quality interventions and monitor program impact.
Implementation Guide This guide provides step-by-step instructions for assessment, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of the ENGAGE program.
Curricula: The ENGAGE curricula includes prevention and response activities tailored to specific community members to change harmful social norms and support at-risk girls of CEFM.
Learning Briefs: Each learning brief provides insights from implementing the respective curricula tools.
Training Package: The training package consists of four modules, each including a facilitator guide, workbook, and PowerPoint presentation to support initial training and ongoing capacity building.
- Module 1: Core training Module.
- Module 2: Facilitation Skills and Considerations*
- Module 3: Implementation of Service Delivery Components
- Module 4: Implementation of Community Outreach Components.
Promotional Videos:
A Toolkit for faith actors to engage congregations and communities to end all forms of gender based violence (GBV)
The NCA FAME toolkit includes the following parts:
Part A. Theory of Change: This outlines the need that we are trying to address through this program of work, the outcomes we expect and the range of activities that will be conducted to achieve this change.
Part B. Outreach work: This section unpacks the different themes and related activities which when undertaken will lead to the expected change outlines in the theory of change. This includes:
- awareness raising on all forms of GBV
- theoretical framework of social norms
Part C. Community conversation modules: The different themes are structured into conversation modules to be discussed progressively. Beginning with definitions of the key terminologies, the conversations utilise the contextual study of religious text methodology to unpack otherwise difficult topics. The conversations culminate with the development of individual and joint action plans and a reflection on the measurement of impact within the respective communities.
Part D. Community conversation facilitators’ guide: An interactive process will be adopted to bring together members of the community and encourage them to think, discuss and explore harmful norms that encourage inequalities and the different types of GBV affecting women and girls. These include religious, social, moral and legal norms, unequal power relations and harmful masculinities. This guide will be used to support these community conversations.
Community Conversation (CC) methodology is a 5-staged community driven behavioral change tool that recognizes and leverages the capacity of communities to influence change in their communities. Currently NCA uses this methodology in our norms transformation work related to FGM & CEFM. The model uses facilitation techniques and tools provided to them in the community conversation manual to encourage the community to discuss and brainstorm solutions for Female Genital Mutilation and CEFM in their communities.
The tool can be used by all stakeholders wanting to create change. The methodology has been extensively used and evaluated by NCA in both Ethiopia and Somalia. Although NCA has so far only used it in nexus and long-term development settings, parts of it can be used in work with transient communities to discuss issues facing their daily lives.
This facilitator manual provides training materials to support facilitators to deliver a 5-day training on how to provide first line support and clinical care to survivors of sexual violence and intimate partner violence – including women, girls, men and boys. The manual also includes training on how to prepare the health facility to provide care.
The main objectives of the training are for participants to:
- Demonstrate general knowledge of sexual violence and intimate partner violence as a public health problem
- Demonstrate behaviours and understand values contributing to safe, supportive services for survivors.
- Demonstrate knowledge and skills appropriate to one’s profession and specialty to respond to sexual violence and intimate partner violence against women, sexual violence against men and boys, and child sexual abuse; including providing first line support, conducting a history and examination, providing clinical care and treatment, and safe referral to support services
The NCA CSE Toolkit offers culturally sensitive, rights-based Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for adolescents, addressing misinformation, stigma, and restrictive laws that impact their sexual and reproductive health. Gender inequality and societal norms heighten their vulnerability to GBV, unintended pregnancies, and maternal mortality, especially among girls and young women. Designed to empower adolescents, the toolkit equips them with knowledge, skills, and support to improve health outcomes and promote gender-equitable relationships. It provides trainers with structured, age-appropriate lessons across eight key themes and is adaptable for both long-term and humanitarian settings, in and out of school.
Aligned with UNESCO’s technical guidelines for CSE, the toolkit consists of three comprehensive manuals:
1. The Trainers Instructional Guide: Provides an overview of CSE and serves as an introduction to its core principles.
2. The Trainers Manual: Goes into detail of the eight themes and provides detailed lessons plans for the age groups 9-12, 12-15 and 15-18+.
3. The Context Matrix: Offers deeper insights into each theme, allowing trainers and educators to access additional information as needed.
*The toolkit is also available digitally trough the learning platform FABO. Here, users can engage with interactive content, take quizzes, and assess their knowledge after each module.