Page 37 - SCAT GBV Report - Addressing Gender-Based Violence - 2021

4. A WORD ON TACTICS
In briefly describing some of the tactics for operationalising the strategic pathways discussed in section two, it is important to note that LDAs are community-centred organising structures that aid ordinary people to better access legal advice and a range of support services, when facing rights violations. As multi-purpose organisations that are locally-led, they are frequently a driving force in the community on a range of development issues, and can be catalysts for social change. They work in close partnership with others operating in the local area in the public, private and civil society sectors, and navigate complex relationships with multiple stakeholders. As a convergence point for various role-players, LDAs bring diverse and sometimes opposing social actors into interaction and action around GBV. Their relationships with key role-players are both cooperative and adversarial, depending on what circumstances dictate, and they hold state service providers to account at the same time as directly assisting them to do their jobs. As a primary point of access to justice for marginalised groups in rural communities, these organisations also popularise rights-based understandings through public education and awareness-raising. Through rights education and legal advice, and by accompanying survivors in their encounters with the criminal justice system, together with advocating against system failings, LDAs play an essential role in enabling access to justice in rural communities. Crucially, they interact with the state, holding its power to account in order for rights and justice to be made real in rural areas. To do this vast ambit of work, they develop innovative ways of supporting those who are the hardest to reach i.e. the most vulnerable members within their communities, in contextually relevant and responsive ways.
LDAs use a range of tactics to tackle GBV at the level of individuals, households, leadership, state systems, and law and policy. These include:
• Education and awareness (informed by a human rights framework).
• Victim empowerment and support services (encompassing legal advice, psychosocial support, counselling, places of safety, food and shelter, clinic
access, etc.).
• Advocacy and mobilisation (towards access to justice and accountability and
focusing on both individual cases and wider anti-GBV campaigns and initiatives).
• Stakeholder strengthening (challenging discriminatory attitudes, ensuring those
with power and authority act in the interests of survivors, etc.).
• Wider social and economic development projects (food gardens, stokvels, youth
education, etc.).
These tactics are further supported by community knowledge building through which LDAs equip survivors and the community with information on the causes and consequences of GBV; their rights in respect to violence and unequal treatment; and courses of action available for legal redress and support. Although insufficiently tapped, LDAs are themselves rich repositories of knowledge about, amongst others:
• Localised dynamics of, and responses to, GBV.
• Systemic strengths and weaknesses of service delivery in and to rural areas.
• Context-specific constraints and obstacles to the realisation of rights and justice
for economically and socially marginalised populations.
• Social change strategies that are community owned and driven.
• How discriminatory gender and sexual norms and practices are, and can be,
challenged and changed at local levels.
‘Finish this Elephant’: Rural Community Organisations’ Strategic Approaches to Addressing GBV 37