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Building a Women´s Local Network for Empowerment and Solidarity Policy Brief 7

This brief explores the local response to domestic violence through building local research capacity, with a focus on overcoming the barriers impending women to report cases of domestic violence.

Overview

Building a Women´s Local Network for Empowerment and Solidarity Policy Brief 7

This brief explores the local response to domestic violence through building local research capacity, with a focus on overcoming the barriers impending women to report cases of domestic violence. The brief offers policy recommendations guided by insights from various actors from the local community on their perceptions of domestic violence. To gain insight into the community perspectives, ARRD collaborated with 11 civil society organizations from the Jordan National NGO Forum (JONAF) Coalition and provided various training to prepare them to launch this research and build a common understanding of gender-based violence and how to address it.

According to the local perspective, domestic violence is seen as a sensitive topic often shun upon from discussion as women are supposed to preserve the cohesion of their families. This secrecy often deters women from reporting their cases and rather pushes them to deal with them internally within their family borders. Women are often subject to barriers hindering their capabilities of reporting their cases, these barriers include social norms, fear of retaliation, family cohesion, lack of awareness and trust in relevant stakeholders, and poor economic backgrounds.

The policy brief suggests the following main recommendations

Build new forms of solidarity that ensure confidentiality and safety and where domestic violence can be discussed and its risks mitigated.
Build a structure that supports women without stigmatization 
This brief comes as part of a series of Women Advocacy Issues policy briefs ARDD is producing within the framework of the project “Strengthening the Capacities of Women-led CSOs in Evidence-Based Advocacy and Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Agenda” supported by UN Women with the generous funding of the governments of Canada, Finland, Norway, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Cyprus. ARDD acknowledges the support of the women-led civil society partners involved in the project implementation and thanks to the representatives of the organizations for their meaningful contribution.