Skip to main content

Let's Talk Human Rights

Centering Advocacy against Gender-Based Violence in U.S. Foreign Policy

By Jamie Small

On December 12, 2022, the federal government released an updated version of the U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence (GBV) Globally. A launch event to commemorate the milestone was hosted by the U.S. State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, in coordination with the White House Gender Policy Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Hub. Capping off this year’s 16 Days of Activism to End Gender-Based Violence campaign, the Global GBV Strategy marks a critical way forward for global anti-violence advocacy. UD Associate Professor of Sociology and HRC faculty fellow, Jamie L. Small co-led the consultation, drafting, and revision processes of this update to the Global GBV Strategy while working as a Gender-Based Violence Advisor at USAID. The views expressed in this article are her own and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. government.

Below Jamie shares with us what this experience means and what she learned from the process: 

This is an exciting moment, tell us what this Global GBV Strategy seeks to achieve?

Agreed, this is an incredibly exciting moment! The U.S. Strategy to Prevent and Respond to Gender-Based Violence Globally is a flagship document for our federal government. Because of all their resources, governments have enormous leverage to shape how we address social problems and to encourage other big players, like corporations, to address gender-based violence. Of course, sustainable change needs to be led by local advocates and tailored to different social contexts. But having the symbolic and material resources of the U.S. government in the mix can go a long way in terms of fostering that local leadership. And it helps to ensure that gender equality and human rights are included in conversations on seemingly unrelated topics, such as national security, climate change, economic growth, and democracy.

This Global GBV Strategy identifies six guiding principles – human rights-informed, intersectional, inclusive, life course lens, survivor-centered, and locally led. These guiding principles were articulated repeatedly in many listening sessions that we conducted, and they’re also in the social science research on what works best to prevent and respond to gender-based violence. Ultimately, the Global GBV Strategy will guide diplomatic relationships, foreign assistance investments, and programmatic decisions. At the most basic level, the objective is to ensure that all people have the opportunity to live peaceful lives, free from gender-based violence, and to reach their fullest potential.

What was the process involved in shaping the GBV Strategy and what were the challenges or issues faced?

The process of developing the Global GBV Strategy was incredible. It was inclusive, thoughtful, and data-driven. We had a team of brilliant technical advisors from the State Department and USAID that was supported by gender experts throughout both agencies. Those teams, in turn, were supported by a working group that included all federal agencies dealing with foreign assistance dollars and programming. When driving such a big document forward, over many months, it really is an all-hands-on-deck kind of situation. 

But what made this process especially unique was that we consulted with over 450 individuals, who represented over 200 organizations globally. We heard from so many voices representing so many different populations and types of gender-based violence. They were powerful listening sessions, and although you don’t see that information quoted directly in the Global GBV Strategy, it did influence directly how we organized the document. Then, we had a team of analysts code that data to ensure that we captured all the themes. We wanted to build a comprehensive strategy that accurately conceptualized the global problem of gender-based violence – both the well-known empirical patterns as well as the data points that may not be as commonly understood.

What do you think is new and innovative about this U.S. approach to GBV?

If you compare this third iteration of the Global GBV Strategy to the first two versions (2012 and 2016, respectively), I think you’ll find a sharper focus on intersectionality and inclusion. While gender-based violence impacts everyone because of the stressors it puts on public health, economic, and family systems, it turns out that not everyone is actually equally likely to experience such victimization. Other types of structural vulnerabilities increase some people’s likelihood of experiencing gender-based violence, as well as barriers they may face in accessing services in the aftermath of violence. Youth, LGBTQI+ persons, and Indigenous women, among many others, all experience disproportionate rates of gender-based violence. Thus, we knew that we needed to bring an intersectional lens to the Global GBV Strategy to take the next step forward in ending gender-based violence.

We were also keen to make clear connections between gender-based violence and work across various sectors in the humanitarian and international development fields. For instance, preventing gender-based violence in refugee camps looks quite a bit different than it does when providing response services through schools, health clinics, or law enforcement. These are just a couple of examples, but we knew that we needed to make the structure of the strategy nimble enough to be applicable to many different contexts and for many different people. That’s not easy to do! But lasting change requires ongoing collaboration and sometimes unconventional partnerships. All people need to see themselves as part of the work and part of the solution.

What are your top 3 takeaways from the experience of co-leading the process?

First, the most inspiring thing that I saw during this year-long process was the vibrancy of gender equality and anti-violence activists from around the world. People are fighting incredibly hard to make the world a safer place – often without much fanfare and in increasingly difficult conditions. The rise of authoritarianism and political polarization, on top of the COVID-19 pandemic, make this work so much harder. But people are persisting: finding the resources, supporting survivors in their journeys, and connecting with allies. 

Second, we need more social scientists in the government. I’m a sociologist, and we also had lawyers, anthropologists, psychologists, engineers, and public health experts, among many others, working on this document. It was truly an interdisciplinary endeavor, and I believe that the strategy is better for that. The team’s scientific expertise enabled us to collect rich data during the consultation process, use rigorous analysis to make sense of the data, and organize the material in a way that was responsive to the scholarly research on gender-based violence.  

Third, it is possible to make positive change from within mainstream institutions. One of the big debates in feminist scholarship is whether or not change can happen from the “inside,” or if an insider position dulls one’s critical edge. While there are certainly some structural limitations to the insider role, there are also some advantages. Being able to shape such an influential document is one of them. Moreover, it was exciting to see the conversations throughout the process between government technical advisors, civil society advocates, frontline service providers, and academic researchers. Sitting at the nexus of these spaces really deepened my understanding of gender-based violence.

What do you hope happens globally and in the U.S. as a result of the launch of this new Global GBV Strategy?  

The Global GBV Strategy is one piece of a much larger puzzle, and it builds on long histories of feminist advocacy. Right now, there are already so many amazing activists – both inside and outside of government – working on gender-based violence prevention and response efforts. I hope that the strategy mobilizes a new generation of young people. We saw a lot of energy after the #MeToo movement several years ago, but we need to keep driving forward, even when the news cycle wanes. I also hope that this strategy helps make the case to Americans that gender-based violence should be a high priority for U.S. foreign policy and foreign assistance. It’s a non-partisan issue about which we should all care. Finally, I hope that folks start (or continue) to see how gender-based violence is so closely entwined with many of our world’s greatest problems. Until we understand those linkages, and how they cross over and through national borders, we cannot move forward.


Jamie L. Small, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Dayton. She researches the intersection of law, crime, and gender, with a particular focus on prosecutorial discretion in sexual assault cases. In 2020-2022, she was a Science & Technology Policy Fellow through the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her placement was at USAID where she worked as a Gender-Based Violence Advisor.

Previous Post

A new honor for Romero Award Winner David Morales

We congratulate the University of Dayton Romero Human Rights Award winner, David Morales for his receipt of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Human Rights Award this year in Washington, D.C. Morales received the Romero  honor from the University of Dayton for his ceaseless dedication to human rights and transitional justice in El Salvador.
Read More
Next Post

A new honor for Romero Award Winner David Morales

We congratulate the University of Dayton Romero Human Rights Award winner, David Morales for his receipt of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) Human Rights Award this year in Washington, D.C. Morales received the Romero  honor from the University of Dayton for his ceaseless dedication to human rights and transitional justice in El Salvador.
Read More