Gender Integration

discrimination against women and gender non-conforming
people and increasing acceptance and adoption of
gender-equitable behaviors in families, resource distribution,
and decision-making.
• Engaging men and boys. Consider stand-alone programs
using existing models and good practices to engage men
and boys in opposing violence against women and other
gender-based violence and to support their adoption of
“positive masculinities,” such as sharing parenting responsibilities
and resolving conflict non-violently.
2. Response
Challenge: In contexts where widespread or systematic
human rights violations or abuses are ongoing, mitigate the
impact of those violations or abuses, regardless of our ability
to end them or “set them right.”
Opportunities:
• Consultations with human rights defenders. Conduct
listening sessions with women’s human rights defenders,
women-led organizations and women’s rights organizations
from diverse communities to hear about their experiences
and gather input on what forms of support might be
welcome and helpful, as well as what might be unhelpful.
Conduct listening sessions with transgender human rights
organizations, whose members often bear the “double”
stigma whether as trans men or as trans women. Conduct
listening sessions with LGBTI organizations or HIV/AIDS
service providers that focus on key populations—men who
have sex with men (MSM), transgender women, injecting
drug users, and sex workers, as well.
• Early warning systems. Follow good practices for addressing
gender-specific issues when planning, implementing, and
evaluating early warning systems to prevent atrocities and
prompt timely response.
• Technology. Ensure that women’s organizations and
women in community groups have access to and proficiency
with timely information and communications technology to
contribute to early warning systems and mapping of human
rights violations.
• Security. Provide training for women human rights defenders
and CSOs on digital security and other forms of security,
tailored to the distinct risks they face. Help ensure
that information related to evidence and documentation
collected about VAW and GBV is safeguarded, and that it is
only shared when individuals provide informed consent.
• Media. Facilitate media connections with women human
rights defenders and accurate, gender-sensitive reporting on
human rights violations and patterns of abuse.
• VAW and GBV. Support government and NGO hotlines,
shelters, health services, evidence kits, legal aid, and counseling
for survivors. Assist existing programs to offer services
in survivors’ own languages and to make services accessible
and appropriate for women with disabilities.
3. Remedy
Challenge: Focus on assisting individual victims to access justice
and efforts that help societies recover from past violations or
abuses. This may include both judicial and non-judicial measures
to provide redress to individual victims, and may play a
role in broader accountability and transitional justice efforts.
Opportunities:
• Supporting Women Human Rights Defenders
(WHRDs) and LGBTI activists. Support CSOs led by
women human rights defenders and LGBTI activists to
campaign for justice for survivors of rights violations and
for accountability of perpetrators, especially in cases of
entrenched gender discrimination and abuse by state actors.
• Strengthening governance and accountability. Support
training, exchanges, technical assistance, and technology and
systems upgrades to strengthen central and local government
institutions’ abilities to implement existing laws and
mandated programs for adult and children survivors of
gender-based violence and trafficking. Fund efforts to make
these services and programs accessible to and appropriate
for people with disabilities, especially in response to evidence
of patterns of abuse against women and girls with
disabilities.
• Funding legal aid and justice system monitoring. Fund
legal aid and access to justice programs with emphasis on
women, girls, and gender non-conforming people, especially
women with disabilities and rural and minority women, who
are likely to face compound and intersecting discrimination
and difficulties both accessing police and courts and understanding
the processes. Fund justice system monitoring
to document gender bias against women and gender
non-conforming plaintiffs, which remains widespread, and
support justice system reform based on the evidence.
• Developing programs to address women’s rights in
customary courts. Build on programs and research in
southern Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast
Asia that recommend: identification of customary laws
18 USAID | Gender Integration in Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) Programming Toolkit