Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is caused by gender inequality and other social inequalities. Prevention focuses on addressing these root causes through behaviour, attitude, and legal changes to reduce discrimination and address power imbalances.
Prevention is a shared responsibility and essential to eliminating SGBV in humanitarian settings and beyond. This page highlights resources that will support Red Cross and Red Crescent staff and volunteers to design, plan and implement proactive measures that address the root causes of SGBV, challenge violent norms, reduce risks and foster safe, inclusive environments.
Response to SGBV is critical and often lifesaving, but today’s violence won’t be sustainably reduced, if we focus only on supporting one survivor at the time after the violence occurred. We need to move from reactive response to prevention. To make violence stop, it is imperative to address the causes. SGBV is predictable and therefore preventable, which implies mitigating the risk factors and amplifying the protective factors.
Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is caused by gender inequality and other social inequalities. Prevention focuses on addressing these root causes through behaviour, attitude, and legal changes to reduce discrimination and address power imbalances.
Addressing SGBV involves responding to violence and its consequences to meet the needs of survivors, but also preventing violence through addressing the causes, contributing factors and risks
- Prevention interventions: aimed at stopping violence before it happens or reducing its frequency and severity (also called primary prevention) scaling up activities that promote gender equality or working with communities to address practices that contribute to GBV
- Risk mitigation interventions: aimed at detecting violence earlier, and preventing its occurrence (also called secondary prevention) e.g. ensuring that reports of “hot spots” are immediately addressed through risk reduction strategies, or that sufficient lighting and security patrols are in place from the onset of establishing displacement camps).
- Response interventions (tertiary prevention): aimed at meeting the immediate needs of survivors, and limiting the impact of occurring violence
Possible SGBV prevention interventions for the Movement could focus on:
- Strengthening relationship skills (including husband/wife and men/women, with focus in men and boys’ engagement in SGBV prevention interventions)
- Empowerment of women (in the education, employment, public and political life)
- Services for SGBV survivors ensured (link with response interventions)
- Reduction of poverty
- Enhance safe and protective environment
- Prevention of child and adolescent abuse (highlighting the link between child protection interventions and SGBV interventions)
- Transforming attitudes, beliefs and norms, including review and implementation of legal framework, change of social norms etc.
RESPECT Women - Preventing Violence Against Women (WHO, 2025): This framework, endorsed by multiple UN, bilateral and multilateral agencies, aims to support policy-makers with the latest evidence-based interventions across seven strategies reflected in each letter of RESPECT: relationship skills strengthened, empowerment of women, services ensured, poverty reduced, environments made safe, child and adolescent abuse prevented, transformed attitudes, beliefs and norms.
Gender-based Violence Prevention: A Results-Based Evaluation Framework (InterAction, 2021): The Gender-based Violence Prevention Evaluation Framework helps organizations measure and evaluate the outcomes of their GBV prevention work in humanitarian settings around the world. The companion guide to the GBV-PEF, the "Start Where You Are" Guide to measure and evaluate GBV prevention outcomes in conflict settings. The companion guide provides organizations with vital support and steps to overcome barriers related to risk analysis, project design and innovation in monitoring and evaluation.
Addressing Stigma Against Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence (ICRC, 2022): Although often overlooked, stigmatization is one of the key consequences of sexual violence, altering the life trajectories not only of victims/survivors but also societies at large. The ICRC has aimed to address knowledge and protection gaps by developing the Stigma Impact Model, which it outlined in its policy brief How Does Stigma Impact Victims/Survivors of Sexual Violence During Armed Conflict?. It serves as an analytical framework that can support actors addressing sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) to ensure their response accounts for the multifaceted impacts of stigma and minimizes secondary victimization, thereby bolstering community resilience.
In addition, this video on addressing stigma presents some of the harmful consequences of the 4 layers in which stigma operates: fear of stigma, individual, family, and societal. By choosing supportive practices over stigmatizing ones, we all help survivors, their families, and their communities to recover and thrive.
Community-Based Health and First Aid - Violence Prevention and Response Module (IFRC, 2018): eCBHFA is the IFRC's flagship community health programme and helps to build a sense of community and identify existing problems that can affect people’s health. This module is intended to help communities identify and implement local, sustainable solutions to violence through targeted activities that build on existing local programmes and systems.
French Red Cross, Mesure de changement des représentations de genre parmi les membres des Clubs des mères, des Hommes Alliés et population plus large (French Red Cross, 2021): Technical note and measurement framework (2021) developed by the French Red Cross to assess changes in gender norms, attitudes, and behaviors related to violence, power, and decision-making among women, men, and hommes alliés involved in community-based programs (notably Clubs des mères and allied men initiatives).
SGBV Information, Education and Communication (IEC) Package (IFRC, 2020)
The PGI team at IFRC has developed a package of IEC materials to increase the knowledge of staff and volunteers, including managers, on their duties to address SGBV in the communities they serve. These IEC materials also target communities where IFRC and National Societies are intervening to inform them about available services and trigger dialogue, when and where relevant, about SGBV prevention. The package includes posters, stickers, a job aid booklet for frontline staff/volunteers, and more.
The IEC materials can be used in any context, including in situations of disasters and other emergencies.
Engaging with State Armed Forces to Prevent Sexual Violence: A Toolkit (ICRC, 2019): Based on a study into how the prohibition of sexual violence under IHL has been integrated into military doctrine in various countries, the ICRC has identified current practices and obstacles to its implementation. The toolkit is intended to help staff engage State armed forces in dialogue on preventing sexual violence, as well as support ICRC delegations develop key messages and inform their longer-term work in promoting respect for the prohibition of sexual violence at all levels. The toolkit includes practical and adaptable modules to better understand armed forces and the ICRC’s definition of sexual violence, and covers the various entry points for initiating dialogue on sexual violence.
Checklist: Domestic Implementation of International Humanitarian Law Prohibiting Sexual Violence (ICRC, 2020): This checklist is a resource that supports the domestic implementation of IHL rules prohibiting sexual violence. It also sets out the provisions of IHRL and ICL of complementary relevance, as well as a selection of other sources of law and policy that may, depending on the context, inform domestic frameworks governing sexual violence.
Voices Against Violence (UN Women)
UN Women, in partnership with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS), has developed a global non-formal education curriculum to engage young people in efforts to prevent and end violence against girls and women. It provides young people with the tools and expertise to understand the root causes of violence in their communities, to educate and involve peers and others in the community to work to prevent such violence, and helps them to to learn where they can access support, if they experience violence.
Girl Shine (International Rescue Committee, 2018): Girl Shine is a program model and resource package that seeks to support, protect, and empower adolescent girls in humanitarian settings. Girl Shine has been designed to help contribute to the improved prevention of and response to violence against adolescent girls in humanitarian settings by providing them with skills and knowledge to identify types of GBV and seek support services if they experience or are at risk of GBV.
IFRC Child Participation Toolkit (IFRC, 2018): This comprehensive toolkit equips National Societies with practical steps to engage children safely and meaningfully, enhancing the relevance, quality, and effectiveness of your programming. Grounded in the IFRC policies and key inter-agency standards, this toolkit provides essential guidance on running consultation processes with children, ensuring their voices are heard in every phase of program development.
Preventing Violence Against Women and Girls: Engaging Men Through Accountable Practice (EMAP) (International Rescue Committee, 2013): The IRC’s EMAP approach provides detailed guidance for accountable practice to ensure women’s leadership within primary prevention intervention efforts. The EMAP Guidance Package is intended to introduce practitioners to the model, key concepts, and guiding principles of the EMAP approach which engages men in prevention of gender-based violence against women and girls.
Change the Story Framework (OurWatch, 2015): Change the Story is an evidence-based framework to guide a coordinated and effective national approach to preventing violence against women. It goes beyond a focus on individual behaviours to consider the broader social, political, and economic factors that drive violence against women, and the social context of gender inequality in which this violence arises.
Building a World Without Violence: A WILPF Toolkit on Gender-Based Violence (WILPF, 2024): This resource explores the root causes of gender-based violence, its structural impact, and provides actionable tools for prevention and advocacy. This toolkit equips the user with insights and strategies to challenge harmful norms and create a safer, more equitable world.