Project name: Tackling VAWG in times of conflict: responding to youth voices from South Sudan
Abstract
The project aimed to deliver evidence-based programme recommendations to facilitate the achievement of sustainable resilience among displaced young women and girls in South Sudan (aged 10-24, which is the upper limit of the UN definition of ‘youth’). The project was driven and implemented by an extremely experienced team consisting of academics, NGO staff, and development management professionals.
The project concentrates specifically on the experiences of violence against young women and girls. The research focused on understanding the intersections between young age and a range of vulnerabilities influencing young women and girls’ resilience to violence and general well-being. The research has enabled the particular contextual vulnerabilities to emerge revealing a range of factors including cross-cutting issues of gender discrimination, intermittent access to education and training, livelihoods, racism, cultural conflicts, and a general lack of youth decision-making power.
We know that girls and young women are highly vulnerable at times of conflict and post-displacement caused by conflict. However, understanding these vulnerabilities through a girl-centred approach is lacking in how protective programming is designed and implemented. This research has developed new innovative methodologies in taking such an approach adhering to ethics and safeguarding practice.
We have taken an innovative mixed-methods approach, combining art heritage techniques with quantitative and qualitative surveys and interview tools. The findings (given below) offer an in-depth insight into the ways in which varied categories of girls and young women understand and respond to their precarious positions post-displacement, and will help us to synchronise our participants’ voices to provide meaningful messages for the future.
The project methodology consisted of 4 strands:
Strand 1: Scoping study of South Sudanese displacement and humanitarian interventions in South Sudan and Uganda. This mapped relevant programming in the VAWG field, specifically focused on South Sudanese young people. As a part of this work, the strand implemented a detailed Systematic Review focused on drawing out the global evidence on what works to tackle violence against young women and girls.
Strand 2: Based on the scoping study we selected a range of completed programmes and conduct post-project evaluations to determine what has worked well, and what the key challenges have been in terms of building sustainable resilience to gender-based violence and preventing this violence. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used for this strand.
Strand 3: Thematic learning, drawing specifically on arts-based research methods. Our thematic learning took an innovative mix of approaches from within the arts and humanities designed to capture experiences of vulnerabilities. As a team, we have already designed and used such approaches which have proven to work well in sensitive contexts, including South Sudan and other countries.
Strand 4: The project designed and piloted new arts-based interventions focused on challenging the underlying social and cultural norms that legitimise violence. Based on the findings of strands 1, 2, and 3 we worked with young people in our sites of Yei and Nimule, to design and implement a new intervention to target violence against displaced young women and girls. This was supported by our Co-I Plan International, and led by the project’s partner The Likikiri Collective. The intervention is likely to continue past project end, and will be monitored closely to maximise further lesson learning.
Planned impact
This research project is action orientated and applied. Each of the four strands of research are geared towards generating key learning to support interventions to bring sustainable development to displaced young women and girls. The Strand 1 systematic review will identify key knowledge gaps, in addition to identifying where robust evidence on what works already exists. Stakeholder mapping is a key activity in the systematic review process and will help us to pinpoint where new evidence will support the work of organizations and governments on the ground. Our Strand 2 evaluations of ongoing interventions will help to create more evidence around what constitutes effective, cost-efficient programming for the development of young women and girls. Our Strand 3 thematic research will be informed by the evidence gaps, and lessons emerging from both these strands. The final Strand 4 will draw on the evidence of previous strands to design a new intervention as part of the action approach.
Our research will create an impact from the start because of our Learning Alliance approach with development partners who are key players in designing interventions to support displaced young women and girls. The project will also develop an impact network across the contexts in which it will operate. In South Sudan, we already have an active and engaged group of voluntary ‘Learning Champions’ including artist mentors, key humanitarian stakeholders, media professionals and academics. All our members have signaled their willingness to continue into this new project. We will expand this regional network, adding new key stakeholders in Uganda.
In essence, our Learning Champions will act as bridges between the research project and the constituents we are targeting at a community level. Likikiri will also continue to reach out and build important links at a community level through other organisations, building a channel through which more sensitive engagement between the grass-roots, government, development and humanitarian-development professionals may be achieved. A detailed community-focused communication strategy/approach will be developed in the early stages of the network, facilitated by our uptake consultant Jon Gregson who will work closely with our partners at community level.
We will also have an impact on the Humanitarian-Development sectors by feeding through our community of practice into pre-existing knowledge-sharing mechanisms. In our country contexts, a cluster system operates which works to understand and share learning across implementing agencies, including downstream national partners. Based on thematic areas of work and practical implementation areas within countries, these groups of implementing organizations meet to discuss the practical logistics and technical challenges of working in complex contexts. Significant dissemination of knowledge happens within these groupings, and as a project team, we have excellent access to them through the work of Plan International, Likikiri, and Forcier Consulting (for whom a member of our advisory group works).
Key Findings
The project has generated critical new evidence through innovative mixed approaches to better understand what works to reduce the violence suffered by young women and girls during protected displacement caused by conflict.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) surges during conflict and insecurity, and South Sudan has one of the highest rates in the world.
The two-year project engaged young people in arts-based approaches to better understand how violence has and does impact their lives.
It evaluated past projects designed to support young people into sustainable safe futures and then took the findings to create a new intervention that was trialed by the NGO Plan International across a number of sites in South Sudan.
Data was collected drawing on the following methods:
- Systematic Review
- Stakeholder mapping and interviews
- Story Circles
- In depth interviews
- Survey
Key Findings have been generated in relation to each and fed onto the overall project findings, which can be summarised as follows:
Conflict and resulting displacement make life fragile and precarious. Our research found that displacement takes different forms. In Yei, people have been displaced from other parts of South Sudan, many living in PoC camps. In Nimule, people are periodically displaced over the border to Uganda before returning to Nimule.
In both of our research sites, fragility triggered by displacement increased individual, household, and communal tensions which has a negative impact, increasing levels of interpersonal violence (IPV) and conflict rape.
Conflict and displacement trigger an increase in violence but the underlying cause is the high levels of normalisation of Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG).
The survey revealed an alarmingly high level of IPV and also normalisation of violence in the lives of women and girls. These findings evidenced the need to focus efforts on changing social and cultural norms that embed gender inequalities and legitimise violence. This key finding was also evident in the views shared during the stakeholder mapping stage.
The systematic review combined two literatures. Research from South Sudan or of South Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries, 18 qualitative studies, explained heightened violence in terms of gender inequalities deeply rooted in cultural norms, exacerbated by conflict and poverty. Displacement frequently led to overcrowded homes, insecurity, lost social capital, cultural differences and lost cultural heritage. Gender norms and bereavement (more common following conflict) made women more vulnerable in relationships and more generally. Pressures of conflict and poverty often led to alcohol abuse, psychological damage, stranger violence, transactional sex, forced marriage, and intimate personal violence.
The global literature included two sets of systematic reviews. The first set investigated the cause, prevalence, and experience of violence against women and girls, either qualitatively to understand the problem, or quantitatively to assess the scale of the problem. The findings largely concurred with those of South Sudanese populations. The second set evaluated interventions addressing violence against women and girls. This global evidence predominantly focused on interventions responding to violence. Prevention programmes for peacekeeping and justice systems sometimes introduced risks of stranger violence or victim blaming. Community programmes included safe spaces, training leaders and mobilising communities to enhance gender equality and protection. Programmes for individuals focused on equality education, reducing alcohol intake, soldier rehabilitation and victim support. Many prevention studies offered disappointing, unreliable or inconsistent findings.
The global literature addressing hegemonic masculinity (including gender roles, patriarchal norms, and gendered attitudes on IPV) with young people shows promising results. Evidence about addressing social norms among refugees supports:
- the active involvement of women in the design, planning, and implementation of preventative measures;
- community engagement strategies to raise awareness about sexual violence, transform harmful gender norms, and strengthen accountability within communities to reduce and prevent violence; and
- training and education interventions, which engage and teach refugees about sexual violence and the value of gender-equitable norms, are also effective in the prevention and response to sexual violence.
However, this ‘social norms change’ literature is still young, and very little looks at how norms operate in humanitarian crises, which emphasises the importance of learning from our surveys and story circles in South Sudan.
A truly localised and contextualised approach is not in place, this largely stems from a lack of data and utilisation of local knowledge. The story circle and systematic review both pointed to a lack of highly localised and contextualised responses. Most interventions still draw on a universal suite of activities that do not have a convincing rigorous evidence base behind them.
Activities that introduce dialogues on harmful norms and more positive behaviours are welcomed by local communities. If these dialogues are owned by young people, the impact can be transformative. The project took the story circle approach a step further. The approach began as a sensitive data collection tool but then developed into a process that saw young people working together to create a single narrative from the original circle transcript, translate it into a play and a radio drama and then perform and record it for dissemination in and across their communities. Audience groups confirmed high levels of engagement and follow-up research demonstrated that the dramas were remembered and triggered wider conversations. Whilst more research is needed to explore if these conversations then lead to positive shifts in attitudes, the medium-term impact looks promising (see below for plans for a further round of MEL).
Outputs
Project Legacy
