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No More Violence: A Gender-relational Approach to Building Community Resilience and Responses to Violence Against Women and Girls
Read more...Tajikistan | International Alert
International Alert will work with Tajik NGO partners to build a multi-component project to address underlying factors that condone and contribute to domestic violence in Tajikistan. The project will work to develop economic and business opportunities for women, but will also work with the wider community, including men and influential community institutions to begin wider conversations to shift social norms and gender stereotypes that contribute to an environment that condones violence against women and girls.
Part 1: Social empowerment
Zindagii Shoista is a workshop series designed to help promote harmony within families and reduce violence. By considering wider family dynamics when working with local communities, it aims to create a socio-economic environment that enables women to enjoy greater protection from sexual and gender-based violence, with a focus on violence against women and girls.
Part 2: Enabling economic empowerment through income generating activities
Zindagii Shoista: Enabling economic empowerment (EE) through income generating activities (IGAs) is a workshop designed to promote families’ understanding of managing household budgets in order to strengthen household economies. Part 2 of the Zindagii Shoista manual, focusing on enabling EE through IGAs, complements the Zindagii Shoista intervention (Part 1) designed to promote gender equity and harmonious partner and family relationships, with the aim of reducing violence against women and girls in Tajikistan.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is widespread throughout Tajikistan, with half of all women experiencing violence at the hands of their husbands or in-laws. Young married women aged 18-24 are especially vulnerable. In response, International Alert and its partners, Action, Development and Prosperity (ATO), Cesvi, Farodis and Women of the Orient worked with the South African Medical Research Council to develop an innovative family-centred social and economic intervention tailored to the specific Tajik context with the aim of combatting VAWG. The approach sought to address the reality of young women marrying into strong extended families and facing violence from their husbands and/or in-laws.
This evidence brief reveals that the intervention successfully reduced the number of young women experiencing violence from both their husbands and in-laws by 50%. The mental health, livelihoods and food security of participating families also significantly improved. These findings support global evidence that gender transformative social change interventions combined with empowerment interventions can have a significant impact on reducing VAWG. Such approaches can also have positive impacts on people’s emotional wellbeing, family dynamics and economic security.
This report presents the evaluation results of a project to curb levels of VAWG in rural Tajikistan, where around 60 per cent of women experience sexual, physical and emotional violence. Baseline research found that drivers include gender norms, social pressure, poverty, food insecurity, mental health issues, and alcohol and substance abuse. The project worked with 80 families across four villages, running weekly sessions to improve behaviours, relationships and communication, and also strengthening , livelihoods and financial management skills. Grants were given, in the form of livestock and equipment, to aid income generating activities, and the report outlines the success in reducing violence and making relationships stronger and more equitable.
Gibbs, A., Corboz, J., & Jewkes, R. (2018). Factors associated with recent intimate partner violence experience amongst currently married women in Afghanistan and health impacts of IPV: a cross sectional study. BMC Public Health, 18(1), 593.
Details of a three-year project currently running across four villages in two districts of rural Tajikistan. The project is working with family units, addressing IPV and domestic violence, and also the impact of disability in experiences of VAWG. Includes research findings and the impact of the intervention.
This presentation, given by Henri Myrttinen, International Alert, looks at the ongoing work of a three-year project taking place in four villages in two districts of Tajikistan, featuring 271 beneficiaries. The ethnic Tajik and Uzbek villages are all affected by circular out-migration. Findings indicate among the highest levels of VAWG in the What Works consortium, caused in part by male labour migration (Russia, less to Kazakhstan), structural food insecurity (esp. women), low income levels, very high levels of economic precarity and living on debt, and substance abuse.
Zindagii Shoista: Living with Dignity, Tajikistan
Firuzah is a 44-year-old married woman from Tajikistan. She had a difficult time adapting from economic dependency when her husband was deported from Russia, where he worked as a labour migrant, and lost his job.
When Firuzah’s husband lost his job and could no longer provide for the family he became nervous and stressed. Although she understood it was hard for him and tried to be there to support him morally, she found herself navigating a number of difficult family issues, and they quarrelled a lot.