W omen Building Peace and Preventing Sexual Violence - UN Women

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5. Awareness raising and attitudinal change Two important challenges to gender-sensitive conflict resolution are the lack of access to information and entrenched gender biases in social attitudes. Many community members—both men and women—may be unaware of the gender dimensions of conflict, women’s human rights and SGBV violations, or may be unaware that they have access to conflict-prevention activities. This lack of awareness can contribute to attitudes that enable both conflict and SGBV. 20 A safe house, home to six women and girls in Timor Leste. (Annalise Moser/UNIFEM)
Increasing access to information and changing attitudes Communication initiatives are often among the most effective ways to enhance access to information and to change attitudes and behaviours towards gender-sensitive conflict resolution and combating SGBV. While radio and theatre have been used to this end for several years, new and innovative uses for these media are currently being explored. Incorporating listening groups or feedback discussions, for example, is crucial for reinforcing messages and actively involving the community, enabling participants to represent their views, identify common concerns and seek solutions that emerge from within the community. Women often have even more difficulty than men in gaining access to what little information there is about peacebuilding and security. Radio has proved to be an effective communication method for reaching women, especially among illiterate audiences. In Nepal, for example, Equal Access, in partnership with General Welfare Prathistan, trained rural women as community radio reporters. As reporters, these women collected stories from other rural women to create a radio programme entitled ‘Changing our World,’ covered issues relating to women’s human rights, peacebuilding, and violence against women and reached two million listeners. As part of this project, 60 community listener groups were set up to encourage grassroots leadership and changes in attitudes and behavior. The project not only increased the awareness of community members regarding violence against women, but also served as a catalyst for actual changes in attitudes and behaviours: after the programmes aired, there was a reduction of incidents of domestic violence in the communities and an increased reporting of incidents of violence to authorities. The project also created a pool of qualified and motivated women reporters. 34 Community involvement can improve support service programmes The extent of community involvement in a project has a critical impact on its success. One multisectoral project on SGBV within refugee camps in Tanzania found that success in fighting SGBV depended on the degree to which both men and women participated in the design and implementation of the programme. 29 Similarly, in its implementation of a project to support girls and women in Sierra Leone, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) found that extending the benefits of a project to the community and involving them in planning and implementation increased local support for the project and encouraged its sustainability. 30 Host communities were sensitized to issues such as gender equality, and they were involved in project planning and implementation: for example, community members contributed local building materials for project structures, distributed condoms and served as peer mobilizers in discouraging violence against women, child abuse and commercial sex. Free health and education services for the host community also encouraged their support of the project. Similarly, supported by the International Women’s Development Agency, Women’s Action for Change in Fiji uses theatre as a tool in challenging sexist attitudes and violence against women, against the backdrop of ethnic tensions of Fiji. 35 The play Another Way, for example, concerns a young couple: Priya, from a working class Indo- Fijian family and Jerry, an indigenous Fijian. Priya’s family expects her to marry an Indian man they have chosen, and the pressure and violence that accompany the resulting family conflict eventually lead her to end her life. The play was performed from 2005 to 2006 for approximately 2,000 people, in secondary schools and community centers in marginalized regions. Following each performance, the ‘playback’ method was used to explore issues raised in the play, inviting the audience to discuss alternate responses and to see that there is indeed ‘another way.’ Select male and female audience members 21
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Page 9 and 10: One example of successful coalition
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