Informing humanitarians worldwide 24/7 — a service provided by UN OCHA

Chad

Violence against women and girls and resilience: Links, impacts and perspectives from the Chadian context

Attachments

Executive summary

This report explores the links between gender-based violence (GBV), and the resilience shown by survivors, their households and the wider community.

The purpose of this study is to explore two main questions:

  1. How does violence against women and girls (VAWG) impact the processes of social change required to build resilience?

  2. How can resilience programmes address VAWG?

Context

Many development programmes that aim to increase people’s resilience are designed to help those affected by disasters and climate change, and they often target women. Indeed, contextual analyses conducted by development actors often reveal socioeconomic inequalities that disproportionately affect women that lead to wider problems of insecurity to which mostly women and girls are exposed. This justifies gender-sensitive approaches that many non-governmental organisations (NGOs) attempt to implement in an effort to reduce the vulnerability of the most marginalised and to build resilience in fragile and crisis-affected areas.

However, the recognition of gender considerations in programming does not systematically integrate issues of violence perpetrated by household and community members on a daily basis. Violence is not only a violation of human rights but also a continuous manifestation of unequal power relations that negatively affect both the physical and psychological health of those who suffer from it, as well as their ability to develop livelihoods. This report questions the extent to which VAWG limits the resilience of survivors, as well as their families and communities; it also questions the role that resilience programmes should play in better promoting gender equality.

Methodology To answer these questions, this research – based on the Chadian context – draws on a combination of secondary data from the 2014–2015 Demographic and Health Survey, which documents the nature and extent of violence against women in Chad, as well as qualitative fieldwork and analysis that explore how violence affect the resilience of survivors and those who live with them.

For this, qualitative tools were used to collect primary data, in accordance with recommendations established by the World Health Organisation in terms of ethics, participant safety and quality of information. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in two regions of Chad, Sila and Bahr el Ghazal, as well as in the capital N’Djamena with national and expatriate staff from NGOs and UN agencies working on resilience and protection, including those who work for local and regional authorities, and members of village associations. In-depth interviews were also conducted with villagers and survivors of violence. Finally, several focus groups were conducted with women’s and youth groups.

Results VAWG is a daily risk, and it is not a problem that exists only in times of conflict and crisis. The most reported forms of violence are early (child) marriages, physical and sexual violence perpetrated by relatives, polygamy and associated discrimination against women (homelessness, risk of divorce) and the denial of resources and opportunities for women.

Discrimination against women and girls, and associated violence, has multiple effects on the livelihoods of survivors:

• Human capital: The health of survivors, especially adolescent girls, is severely affected by violence, particularly within the context of extremely limited health services in Chad. Social norms that prevent women and girls from accessing care when they need it also affect the health of their children and, in general, exacerbate their vulnerability during times of stress.

• Financial capital: Violence affects the household, whose economic resources are strained by the additional expense of covering medical care, and limit the physical and/or mental capacity of survivors to fill their domestic tasks and/or engage in productive activities. This shortfall increases the vulnerability of households by limiting their resources in the event of a crisis.

• Physical capital: Unequal access of women to education, training, information, land ownership or control of the family budget limits the physical capital of the home that would allow all members to better protect themselves or adapt in times of crisis.

• Social capital: Survivors of sexual violence and unmarried pregnant women face rejection by their families and communities, which affects their ability to save or access financial support. Household abandonment by the head of the family affects the social capital of the rest of the household, and men who emigrate in search of new livelihoods also disengage from village institutions.

• Natural capital: The risk of violence that women and girls are exposed to when they move outside their village or camp to obtain water and firewood could potentially limit their access to natural resources, though testimonials do not confirm this hypothesis.

Moreover, these limitations represent a risk factor for VAWG, especially sexual exploitation, by increasing women and girls’ vulnerability. To sum up this vicious circle, violence affects the livelihoods of survivors while the lack of resources or capital increases the risk of violence.

VAWG also affects other processes of social change, by 1) limiting the opportunities for survivors to access knowledge and information; 2) repressing collective and forward-looking decision-making processes; 3) restricting learning opportunities, although findings show that women continue to innovate; 4) tolerating the impunity of the perpetrators of violence; and 5) supporting social norms that maintain unequal and discriminatory power relations.

Gender inequality, and even more so violence against women, can have problematic consequences for resilience-building – from precarious reproductive health to a low literacy rate, there are a number of institutional obstacles that prevent women from accessing the same opportunities as men and from exercising decision-making powers on an equal footing. This limits the resources women are able to mobilise in the event of a crisis but also those of members of the dependent household.

In the face of violence, there is a gap between the humanitarian response in emergency situations and the failures of the relevant institutions to tackle and respond to every day GBV. In times of crisis, the multi-sectoral response initiated by NGOs and UN agencies is based on well-established protection principles and processes that address and help prevent GBV. However, while the mechanisms put in place help refugee and internally displaced populations, they are not a sustainable response to the violence facing women and girls in local communities on a daily basis, because these are not the target population and because such mechanisms do not remain once humanitarian aid has left the area.
In this context, the role of civil society organisations in protecting survivors and providing psychosocial and legal support is crucial.

If, in the face of VAWG, there are only mitigating measures adopted – for example supporting survivors’ health or their economic capital – but no action is taken to respond to the underlying structural causes of violence and inequalities, projects will contribute only moderately to build the resilience of aid beneficiaries. This report examines the approaches used, or those that could be used, to build resilience and fight against the processes that promote exclusion and vulnerability:

• Access to reproductive health;

• The importance of women’s groups;

• The role of the authorities, including traditional and religious leaders;

• Large-scale awareness of VAWG;

• A holistic response to violence to help survivors;

• Gender mainstreaming in cross-disciplinary resilience programmes.