Impact Assessment of the Rural Response System to Reduce Violence Against Women in Ghana

The Rural Response System (RRS) was a strategy developed by the Gender Centre over a decade ago to deal with the major problems related to VAW including poor institutional response to VAW; high degree of tolerance of VAW in the Ghanaian society which is perpetuated by strong perceptions that domestic violence is a private matter; the general confusion about what constitutes violence and ignorance about the causes, consequences and mechanisms that perpetuate VAW [1]. It is generally acknowledged that to enable victims to take advantage of laws and policies for their protection, there is the need to have structures in place that support and enable them assert their rights. The RRS model uses multiple strategies (such as training, sensitization and awareness-raising, support services, networking and coalition building, advocacy) targeting multiple stakeholders including women, men, religious and traditional leaders, policy makers, state agencies etc. to ensure that women are empowered to become their own agents of change, with communities that support and uphold women's rights and a state where gender sensitive laws and policies are implemented.

The Rural Response System uses the strategy of trained community members known as Community-based action team, COMBAT to undertake awareness-raising on gender-based violence as well as providing support to victims of violence to access justice. The RRS is stressed as a community initiative facilitated by GC to ensure community ownership. The selection of the COMBAT, the criteria for their selection and their roles are done by the community members with the GC serving only as a facilitator in this process. Teams usually work as a group when undertaking community sensitization and awareness-raising but could also work individually as they are encouraged to use every opportunity, such as community festivals and meetings, membership meetings of social associations, religious groupings, meetings of family and friends to carry out this role. The sensitization will be an ongoing process and not a one-off activity.

Goal and Objectives: Our project goal is to reduce the prevalence of VAW and promote and protect the rights of women and girls. We will do this by increasing the visibility of VAW as a social issue, improving the public's knowledge and understanding of the negative impact of VAW on the status of women and girls; establish a community based response system for the support and protection of women and provide counselling services as well as work with state agencies to ensure effective response to victims; whilst sharing best practice and key lessons learnt with other stakeholders.

With regard to the RRS model/COMBAT, the specific objectives of the impact assessment will be as follows: To assess the impact of the RRS model/COMBAT in reducing VAW; To determine whether RRS model/COMBAT interventions are effective in enabling women in to reduce their exposure to intimate partner violence (IPV) and men to reduce their perpetration of IPV; To assess if the RRS model changes discriminatory social norms and gender roles which consider VAW acceptable; To assess the extent to which RRS has changed individual attitudes about gender inequality To assess state institutional response to reported cases of VAW ;To assess whether the RRS model facilitated a shift in power relations between men and women in the household/community to become more equitable.

Study Setting: This study will be carried out in 4 Districts located in the Central Region of Ghana. Two districts are along the Coast (Abura and Komenda) while the other two (Agona and Upper Denkyira) are inland districts.