Gender-based violence (GBV) is a global health and human rights issue. During emergencies such as pandemics, war, conflict, and natural disasters, the risk of GBV is higher amongst women, girls, PWDs, and minority groups. To mitigate this, there has been an increase in GBV response services by humanitarian organizations. For decades, Kenya has been affected by various humanitarian crises within its borders as well as outside its borders that have resulted in Kenya hosting over 498,000 refugees and asylum seekers in refugee camps such as Dadaab and Kakuma. In addition to refugees and asylum seekers, Kenya’s internal humanitarian crises have led to the internal displacement of persons over the years including forced evictions, post-election violence, displacement, drought, desert locust invasion, massive floods, and health pandemics among others. These usually limit access to basic social services for vulnerable populations and also create opportunities for gender-based violence against women and children, especially adolescent girls and persons with disability.
As part of the response to the ‘Call to Action Roadmap’ for enhancing support for the localization of GBV interventions in humanitarian crises, the Women’s Refugee Commission, (WRC) through HUSIKA Enterprise with support from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, initiated a participatory action research project aimed at understanding the role of local CSOs/NGOs in creating a gender-equitable, inclusive and place-based and owned response to GBV in emergency contexts in Kenya.
Women’s Refugee Commission Report
