Access to justice programmes should include VAWG survivors in decision-making from the design stage. This can be achieved by engaging with local women’s rights organisations led by or representing survivors. For many survivors, justice means more than punishing perpetrators. It is multi-faceted and subjective. For some, it may be linked to truth, recognition and dignity, for others it may be linked to collective healing, reparations, and accountability. Survivors are best placed to identify their priorities regarding justice and to understand whether and how different systems can support or hinder their ability to access this justice. Programmes should respect the voices of survivors, recognising them as experts in how to meet their own needs for justice.

All justice systems should be survivor-centred, putting the rights, needs and preferences of survivors at the forefront of service provision. In formal legal systems, discriminatory and obstructive procedures can dissuade survivors from accessing justice. For example, a procedural requirement to report VAWG within a particular time period may prevent survivors from accessing justice if they do not feel safe or mentally and physically able to report within that timeframe. Within informal justice systems, reconciliation efforts may violate survivors’ rights by forcing a survivor to marry the man who raped her or expecting her to return to an abusive partner for the sake of family unity and honour. However, there is increasing work on how informal forms of justice can be more accountable to women and their rights.

To support the development of survivor-centred formal and informal justice processes, programmes should consider the following activities:

Activities to support both formal and informal justice systems

• Support the establishment of referral pathways between justice systems and services to help survivors navigate these services efficiently.

• Support provision of legal aid and advice for survivors. This includes support to survivors to prepare them for providing evidence in court. This support could include the development of accessible guides to illustrate women’s options regarding justice processes to support them to make informed decisions about which justice routes to pursue. Advice could also be provided by training paralegals to work with women survivors at community level.

• Facilitate exchange and dialogue between existing informal and formal justice systems and gender-transformative justice systems within countries and internationally to promote learning.

• Support research into survivors’ ideas of justice to inform programmes that support survivors’ access to justice. It is important that programmes take a holistic approach to justice, that isn’t focused solely on punishing perpetrators, but also considers the needs of survivors and how to best support them to heal, reintegrate and feel safe within their communities. For many survivors, crimes of GBV can stop them from working for extended periods of time due to physical and/or emotional trauma. Financial support and/or reparation is an essential, but often overlooked, aspect of justice. In addition, memorials for women lost to crimes of GBV may also be considered an important part of collective healing and memory.

Activities to support formal justice systems

• Train staff working within all levels of the court system to take a gender responsive and survivor-centred approach. This is to ensure that judges, lawyers, police, court personnel and other staff treat survivors with dignity and respect and avoid behaviours that could trigger trauma responses in survivors.

• Advocate for the establishment of gender responsive and survivor-centred court processes. These could include dedicating a specific day where VAWG cases are heard, introducing judges who are trained in VAWG cases, ensuring VAWG survivors are accompanied by support workers, instituting safe spaces where survivors can wait, ensuring survivors and defendants have designated and separate times to leave the court, and enabling survivors to provide evidence in separate rooms or behind screens or in protected spaces, especially for child survivors.

• Support the establishment of mobile courts to support access for survivors in hard-to-reach areas.

• Work with universities and law students to improve their understanding and commitment to gender equality, ending VAWG, and non-discrimination.

Activities to support informal justice systems

• Facilitate dialogues with and provide training for traditional, religious and community leaders about women’s rights, the impacts of VAWG, customary and formal laws, referral and appeal pathways, gender-transformative approaches to justice, and survivor centred approaches to mediation, evidence collection assessment, and record keeping.

• Facilitate relationship building and coordination between informal justice leaders and existing survivor-centred VAWG response services.

Patriarchal social norms, practices and attitudes act as a barrier to survivors accessing legal and justice services. For example, families and communities may pressure VAWG survivors to stay silent or to use informal justice systems and to accept decisions that are not in their best interests. In cases of mediation, such decisions could include the expectation for survivors to apologise to the perpetrator and return to living with them, putting them at risk of further violence. Facilitating community discussions around the importance of survivor-centred justice mechanisms is key to creating an enabling environment for survivors seeking to pursue justice and services.

Fear of stigma and isolation within communities may also prevent survivors seeking justice. We can help strengthen women and girls’ voice, confidence and solidarity by facilitating discussions between them and within communities about VAWG and its impacts, what justice looks like to women and girls, and how to overcome barriers to justice.

We can support survivors to understand and claim their rights by conducting awareness raising campaigns. These campaigns should:

• Take a gender transformative approach, avoiding stereotypes about survivors as “victims”, and emphasising their agency.
• Ensure awareness campaign materials are inclusive of those with limited literacy, or sensory impairments.
• Protect those organising and engaged with these campaigns from backlash.

Programmes should work to reduce the financial costs associated with accessing justice, including travel costs, fees for medical examinations, hiring lawyers, engaging with police, attending court, and loss of income while engaged in formal justice processes. They could also offer online services to reduce the cost of travel to and from legal services. Within informal justice systems there may be expectations for families to pay back a woman’s dowry when women file domestic abuse complaints. These costs can make accessing legal and justice services prohibitive for survivors.

Programmes should also work to reduce the physical barriers to accessing justice. In many contexts, and especially in areas with large rural populations, or in humanitarian, fragile or conflict-affected settings with high levels of displacement, survivors of GBV face huge barriers to physically reporting GBV and accessing formal justice services. In these contexts, survivors may rely more heavily on informal justice systems. Programmes should draw on their gendered context analysis to identify the context-specific barriers to accessing services and consider ways to connect survivors in hard-to-reach contexts with legal and justice services.

Survivors of GBV are at high risk of backlash and violence from perpetrators, communities and families for reporting and seeking accountability for GBV abuses. For example, in Rwanda, women who testified in the Gacaca Courts were often subjected to harassment and threats, before, during and after they testified in the courts. Programmes can support survivors to access justice services safely by providing accompaniment for survivors accessing legal and justice services, conducting follow-up visits for survivors in their homes or safe houses, and funding women and girls’ safe spaces. Programmes should also work with women and girls in their communities to understand the context-specific protection risks faced by women seeking justice in order to identify ways to mitigate these risks. Read more on handling resistance and backlash.

Increasing women’s representation and leadership within formal and informal justice systems is crucial to ensure more empathetic, inclusive and effective responses that address the specific needs and experiences of women and girl survivors. Programmes can support women’s representation and leadership by:

• Working with local women’s rights organisations to identify opportunities to increase women’s representation and decision-making within informal systems.
• Promoting understanding at community level and among justice sector actors about the benefits of increasing women’s representation in informal systems to increase buy-in and reduce backlash.

Collecting evidence is often a key component of legal and justice proceedings related to cases of VAWG. It is essential that programmes working with the legal and justice sector to improve their evidence collection methods integrate strong data protection mechanisms into their work. Without strong data protection mechanisms, there is a risk that evidence gathered from VAWG survivors could be leaked, putting them at risk of further violence. This violence could come from both perpetrators, families and communities.