Gender-based violence (GBV) increases during every type of emergency – whether economic crises, conflict or disease outbreaks. Pre-existing toxic social norms and gender inequalities, economic and social stress caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to an increase of GBV in particularly at the IDPs camps where the most vulnerable people are living in.
There has been an increase of gender-based violence since the outbreak of COVID-19 and this can be attributed to the lockdown and containments measures that put people to stay indoors and resulted women and girls to stay at the home with their abusers.
Hawa Feminist Coalition carried out series of public awareness campaigns, focusing on raise of domestic violence amid the COVID-19 health crisis. 3,000 posters were printed out that delivered a vital message urging people to act to support women and girls experiencing domestic violence during the pandemic. These posters are distributed through the social media platforms or placed at the public places where they were highly visible to the people to read and understand the message fully.
These messages were distributed in IDPs camps of Bosaso and Garowe as well as distributed online through the social media platforms reaching up to 20,000 online users.
Hawa Feminist Coalition also mobilized its volunteers and delivered awareness messages in IDPs camps and also interacted with the women and girls there and encourage them to come forward and report the GBV cases to the Police or designated hotline.
Hawa Feminist Coalition will keep fighting until these violations are stopped.
