The ‘Gender Based Violence Study’ was commissioned by the Joint Consortium on Gender Based Violence in 2005. The study was commissioned in response to the conflict situation in Darfur, Sudan and was conducted by two external consultants. It was the first major project undertaken by the consortium.
The overall purpose of the study was to contribute to the development of the institutional capacity of Irish development, humanitarian and human rights organisations to respond to gender based violence, particularly in conflict environments. The main objective was to propose a framework of best practice that could be used by organisations when they encountered some of the serious human rights violations associated with GBV.
The study: outlines key concepts and definitions; examines GBV both as a weapon of war and in the context of wider structural gender inequality; and highlights the relevance of GBV to human rights law and international conventions such as the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. In addition to presenting a model of good practice, the study outlines the GBV related policies and practices of the members of the Consortium at the time and the policies and practices of some key international agencies such as Oxfam and Save the Children (U.K.).
