Listening and learning during the pandemic: Interview with Shruti Majumdar
The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) has kept in close touch with grantee organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic to find out how they’re coping and what support they need. We spoke to Shruti Majumdar, the UN Trust Fund’s Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, who has analysed information from 144 grantees in 69 countries and territories. During the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence, Majumdar explained the value in listening to women’s rights organizations before embarking on new data collection during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
What are we learning from women’s organizations serving survivors of violence and at-risk women and girls?
First, they have illustrated how the pandemic and lockdown measures exacerbated several risk factors of violence against women and girls globally. Specific forms of violence notably on the rise are sexual violence, online harassment and, in certain regions, harmful traditional practices.
Second, we are learning that survivors may be under reporting violations to formal authorities. However, women are reaching out to their local women’s rights organizations (WROs) and community-based structures. Through WhatsApp, social media, helplines, word of mouth or directly, women are seeking support from their local shelters, self-help group leaders, community health workers, faith leaders, community-based counsellors and paralegals.
This information has come directly from grantees we are in touch with. It’s important to note that embarking on a new data collection exercise however — remotely or in-person — to understand prevalence or help-seeking behaviours during the pandemic can pose considerable safety and ethical risks. It is important therefore to rely on women’s organizations who know what is already out there. These organizations, as first responders, already have a lot of textured and real-time data and we must get policymakers and researchers to listen to that and work closely with women’s organizations to unpack and act on that data. In short, the voices of survivors and grassroots women’s rights organizations have to be the starting point for policy, and ending violence against women and girls policies need to be tailored and extremely localized.
- What do women’s organizations say they need now?
They say that survivors and at-risk women and girls, especially those within marginalized groups, are concerned about their immediate needs, health and safety — and that’s where we see a lot of women’s organizations prioritizing their efforts. For example, grantees are reporting that women and girls with disabilities continue to be disproportionately affected in the context of COVID-19.
When it comes to programming, women’s organizations need flexibility to rapidly adapt on the front lines — whether that means shifting from primary prevention towards preventing violence from re-occurring, or finding innovative ways to disseminate COVID-19 prevention and violence prevention messaging to women and girls safely through virtual platforms and community radio.
- What do women’s organizations say they need to adapt?
As lockdowns continue indefinitely or are re-imposed, grantees are likening the situation to a prolonged crisis and want to build their emergency preparedness and resilience.
They need flexible and core funding — for salaries, health insurance, communication and transport — especially smaller and grassroots organizations, to build their capacity to adapt.
The lockdown has severely weakened civil society organization (CSO) capacity and threatens their survival. As women and girls are pushed into extreme poverty, the CSOs’ main focus shifts to keeping them alive. In addition, several of their premises have been diverted for COVID testing, their shelters and staff are overwhelmed, and several have had to close offices, downsize and lay off staff exactly when they are most needed.
- What are we doing with the information collected?
At the UN Trust Fund, we’ve been able to provide our grantees with flexibility to adapt to the crisis, based on their identified needs, and a cohort of grantees with additional core funds. It is enabling us to help our grantees to pivot quickly and adapt to the crisis. We are also exercising utmost flexibility to enable grantees to modify or delay project activities or reallocate budgets to respond to the crisis.
The UN Trust Fund has also launched a global Call for Proposals to fund projects specifically designed to support long-term interventions targeting women and girl survivors during the pandemic.
