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The COVID-19 global pandemic negatively transformed social, religious and economic life globally. Countries implemented national lockdowns among other measures to mitigate against the spread of the pandemic. Zimbabwe is among the countries that pronounced a national lockdown. The national lockdown accelerated the already existing gender-based violence (GBV) scourge. GBV manifested in various forms especially by people that are intimate partners to the victims. The new environment caused by COVID-19 has proven that intimate partner violence (IPV) remains one of the key causes of GBV. Written from a public pastoral care perspective, this article examines the COVID-19 pandemic national lockdown in Zimbabwe and how it provided a convenient environment for the acceleration of IPV. The church is caught unaware, and its role is barely visible as a key microcosm of society. in a view of this, the following three questions emerge: first, what does it mean to be church in a real GBV situation caused by COVID-19?; second, what public pastoral care roles could the church frame to mitigate GBV by IPV in the COVID-19 situation?; and third, how could such public pastoral care responsive roles impact the broader community by not being exclusively church based? The article seeks to address these questions by, first, providing the introduction and background to COVID-19 and GBV in Zimbabwe. Second, it discusses IPV as a key form of GBV and its implications on COVID-19 national lockdown environment. Third, it analyses what it means to be church in an environment of COVID-19. Fourth, it proposes some public pastoral responsive care roles by the church with a transformative impact on the broader community and provides a conclusion.

Homelessness is an important risk factor for gender-based violence (GBV), particularly among youth, and disproportionally affects women and girls. Survivors of GBV experience enduring and severe physical, psychological, and sexual health problems. Although key elements in service delivery for survivors of GBV have been identified, little is known about outcomes of community-based programs aiming to assist homeless and unstably housed youth experiencing GBV. This longitudinal study aimed to quantitatively evaluate changes in mental health and well-being outcomes in female identified youth experiencing GBV and homelessness, 12 months after enrolment in a community-based, trauma-informed, brief group psychoeducation intervention. Standardized survey measures were administered at baseline, 6 and 12 months for 70 participants, recruited between February 2017 and April 2019, assessing quality of life, psychological distress, traumatic symptoms, substance use, resilience, victimization, and sense of mastery. Linear mixed models were used to examine longitudinal changes in quality of life as well as secondary outcomes among study participants. After 12 months, quality of life increased significantly among participants (p = 0.009), and the 12-month victimization score was significantly decreased relative to baseline (p = 0.05). Changes in other outcomes were not statistically significant. Findings suggest that community-based brief group psychoeducation interventions may be a promising approach to improving outcomes for this disadvantaged population.

Background: In low-income and middle-income countries women and girls with disabilities are more likely to experience violence than those without disabilities. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and disabled people’s organisations (DPOs) can help to address this. However, in countries like Botswana we know little about the preparedness of NGOs and DPOs to increase inclusion in and access to programmes addressing violence.Objectives: To explore the capacity and preparedness of NGOs and DPOs to ensure that women and girls with disabilities can participate in and access programmes addressing violence.Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken using interviews with 17 NGOs and DPOs in Botswana to understand the organisations’ level of and ability to deliver programmes addressing violence against women and girls.Results: Both NGOs and DPOs lack elements of universal design and reasonable accommodation, and thus are inaccessible to some people with disabilities. Some programmes address violence against women but lack skills and resources to accommodate people with disabilities. In contrast, DPOs work with people with disabilities, but lack focus on violence against women with disabilities. Participants identified opportunities to fill these gaps, including adaptation of policies and structural changes, training, approaches to mainstream disability across programmes, development of disability-specific interventions and improved networking.Conclusions: Botswana’s NGOs and DPOs are well positioned to address violence against women and girls with disabilities, but need to increase their accessibility, staff knowledge and skills and disability inclusion. Training, resource allocation and participation of women with disabilities in NGOs and DPOs is needed to drive this change

Background.Women living in war-affected contexts face high levels of gender-based violence, including intimate partner violence (Stark & Ager, 2011). Despite well-documented negative consequences, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Garcia-Moreno et al. 2006; Steel et al. 2009), evidence remains thin regarding intervention effectiveness to mitigate consequences in these settings.Methods.This study used a two-armed parallel pilot randomized controlled trial to compare the impact of a group savings only (control) to gender dialogue groups added to group savings (treatment) on women's symptoms of PTSD in northwestern Côte d'Ivoire. Eligible Ivorian women (18+ years, no prior experience with group savings) were invited to participate and 1198 were randomized into treatment groups.Results.In the ITT analyses, women in the treatment arm had significantly fewer PTSD symptoms relative to the control arm (β: −0.12; 95% CI: −0.20 to −0.03; p = 0.005). Partnered women in the treatment arm who had not experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) at baseline had significantly fewer PTSD symptoms than the control arm (β = −0.12; 95% CI: −0.21 to −0.03; p = 0.008), while those who had experienced IPV did not show significant differences between treatment and control arms (β = −0.09; 95% CI: −0.29 to 0.11; p = 0.40).Conclusions.Adding a couples gender discussion group to a women's savings group significantly reduced women's PTSD symptoms overall. Different patterns emerge for women who experienced IPV at baseline v. those who did not. More research is needed on interventions to improve mental health symptoms for women with and without IPV experiences in settings affected by conflict.

This article addresses, from the perspective of social workers, the difficulties faced by battered women and socially excluded who are living in Valencia’s centers for women’s protection. The following information has been gathered with different research techniques, especially through the use of focus groups and interviews. The most important barriers to escape violence described by the interviewees can be classified as external and internal. The former include stunted social and family networks, the lack of economic resources, the existence of children and the absence of institutional resources. In other words, obstacles related to the social structure. The latter refer to the normalization of violence, the cycle of violence, emotional dependence and love, or the «family ideal». These difficulties are related to the psychological characteristics of individual women, resulting from the processes of socialization in the sex/gender system. En este artículo se van a abordar las dificultades que encuentran las mujeres en procesos de exclusión social acogidas en los centros de protección de mujeres de la Comunidad Valenciana para escapar de la violencia de género, desde el punto de vista de las profesionales que trabajan en los mismos. Esta información se ha obtenido con distintas técnicas de investigación, sobre todo, grupos de discusión y entrevistas en profundidad. Así, las barreras más importantes que subyacen en los discursos de nuestras informantes clave se pueden clasificar en externas e internas. Las primeras incluyen las raquíticas redes sociales y familiares, la carencia de recursos económicos, la existencia de hijas/os y la ausencia de recursos institucionales. Se trata de obstáculos directamente relacionados con la estructura social. Respecto a las segundas, comprenden la normalización de la violencia, el ciclo de la violencia, la dependencia emocional y el amor, y el ideal de familia. Se trata de dificultades relacionadas con las características psicológicas de las mujeres, resultantes de sus procesos de socialización en el sistema sexo/género.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is a key dimension which has brought attention across gender stakeholders in Tanzania regarding its prevalence. It is a phenomenon which we face every day from household levels to national levels. It is a topic on which there is a great misunderstanding and belief that, women and men are not equal because of patriarchy practices and societal structures. Such gender roles and patterns have placed women and girls vulnerable to the situation and practices in several communities. In Tanzania, GBV has been one of the thematic areas for various non-state actors such as civil society organizations (CSOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and donors collaborating to fight against the rampant phenomenon. The Women's Legal Aid Centre (WLAC) collaborating with the Norwegian Church Aid as among of the non-state actors took one of the significant steps introducing free legal assistance to help survivors of GBV and other gendered injustices. The organizations have been working through training paralegals to provide services to women and girls in rural areas and up country. The motives behind WLAC using the paralegals, it was noted that most of the survivors and victims of GBV and other gendered injustices are incapable of handling legal fees and are facing scarce number of lawyers for help. The study explores the roles and actual changes brought by the paralegals to women and children and how the communities perceive their presence on fighting GBV and other gendered injustices in Tanzania. This study was qualitative in nature conducted in Tanzania from June to mid-September in four regions namely Dar es Salaam, Mbeya, Iringa, and Manyara. The study involved different methods of data collection. Such methods include semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs), participant observations, and review of secondary data. The findings of this study showed that many beneficiaries had benefited from the paralegal services. Different views were reported on the presence of the paralegals in the community. The study concluded that the problem of GBV and other gendered injustices is a wide spread phenomenon in Tanzania which needs extra tackling initiatives. There is acknowledgement from different ways proving that GBV has severe harm to many women and girls. Therefore, paralegal services should be expanded and given formal recognition to provide legal assistance to many survivors of GBV and other gendered injustices in Tanzania. Master of Philosophy in Gender and Development GAD350 MAPS-GAD