Baseline survey for Improved Gender Based Violence Prevention and Response

The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has defined GBV as a “violence that is directed against woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately”, thereby underlining that violence against women is not something occurring to women randomly, but rather an issue affecting them because of their gender . GBV is significantly associated with mental health disorders, dysfunction and disability among the victims. It is a major reason for suicide, being one of the leading causes of death among Nepali women of reproductive age

Taking this human rights issue into consideration, with support from Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), UNFPA is implementing a three year ‘GBV Prevention and Response Project’ from Mar 2016 to Dec 2018, with the objective to influence attitudes and norms towards GBV and to strengthen the response of health and support services towards GBV in 30 VDCS of three districts of Nepal – Okhaldhunga, Sindhuli and Udayapur.

In undertaking this assignment, SW Nepal conducted the baseline study to collect data for the impact and outcome indicators of the project, as per the project’s log frame. Study focuses on gathering information related to perception and prevalence of various forms of GBV in the project districts, status of GBV survivors, role of community, quality, sufficiency and effectiveness of rehabilitation measures, etc. It also aims to learn the behaviour of boys and men in the household and in society through both qualitative and quantitative survey tools.

Intensive literature review was done for designing Qualitative and Quantitative tools; questionnaire surveys, Key Informant Interviews (KIIs), and Focus Group Discussion (FGDs). In case of questionnaires, the data was collected from 1600 sample households that was derived using Cochrane’s formula for sampling, with the help of mobile-based data collection system, Open Data Kit (ODK).