Somalia. March 2016.
Protecting Women and Girls Against Sexual and GBV.pdf
Program overview
Somalia has continuously experienced prominent levels of violence against women and girls, manifest in; sexual violations, female genital mutilation, physical abuse, and widespread discrimination. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) has been associated with harmful cultural practices, religious misconceptions, contextual vulnerability, and poverty. The project ‘Protecting Women and Girls against Sexual and Gender Based Violence, and Harmful Traditional Practices and participation of Women in Peacebuilding was a response to contribute to the reversal of the above trends.
Evaluation overview
The purpose of the SGBV component was to assess if and how programme outputs were achieved according to the OECD/DAC 5-point criteria which includes relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability.
Key findings and recommendations
The project through the two components has made substantial achievements in the 7 outcome areas, but with challenges in a few elements. On the SGBV component, the project has achieved an elevated level of awareness, reduced risks of women from SGBV and provided; economic, medical, and psychosocial reprieve to the SGBV survivors. The FGM/C component linked the FGM/C survivors to health services and further supported others for specialized surgical operations, and increased knowledge of places to seek help. Due to excessive costs, the need for more accessible health is still prominent. The faith and community-based structures organizations have been significantly influenced to transform behaviors and practices that uphold FGM/C. However, the increase of awareness raising on the harmful impacts of FGM/C has also elicited calls for its discontinuity, due to resistance from some religious leaders.
For programme improvement the following recommendations are made. There is a need to, amongst others, empower women and girls to stand up for their rights by mobilizing locally, to include men in support of women, make linkages to national support and appropriate networks and scale up the response in terms of programmatic efforts. There is also a need for appropriate policies backed by evidence from empirical and action research, proper community driven fatwa and lobby government for legislation and enforcement of laws.