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Safe to learn and safe to benefit- innovative approaches to tackle safeguarding and school-based GBV (SRGBV) in challenging contexts

Wed, March 13, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hyatt Regency Miami, Floor: Third Level, Pearson 1

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Background
Violence and SEAH (sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment) in and around schools are major factors driving the exclusion of girls and other marginalised children. Safeguarding and school-related Gender-based Violence rates are high in many countries and continue to increase. The challenge is particularly hard to overcome as it cuts across many complex social and structural issues. GBV and safeguarding challenges are driven by discriminatory and unequal gender norms and a lack of focus and rigour on creating safer learning environments; these systemic issues are held in place by social stigma and shame, and it is perpetuated by systems and structures that make reporting, responding and prosecuting very challenging. As such, responses must work at all these levels to shift and unlock solutions that can be sustained and affect change at scale. The 2016 UN Women Global Guidance on Addressing SRGBV (https://www.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2016/12/global-guidance-on-addressing-school-related-gender-based-violenceshows) shows that responses must work at multiple levels and across the system to effectively tackle the issue and protect children's rights to a safe and effective education.


Panel Discussion

The panel will be composed of implementing partners and experts with extensive experience delivering multi-year donor-funded education programming in challenging and high-risk contexts. They will offer insights from a practical field-based perspective. They will discuss the multi-sectoral approaches they have utilised to build safer learning environments for children whilst working to reduce the prevalence of safeguarding and GBV within programme-affiliated schools. They will also discuss how they have engaged stakeholders at all levels to provoke systems change and influence key stakeholders, including learners, communities, families, as well as regional and national education directorates and Ministries. The unique perspective of the Girls Education Challenge Fund Manager Safeguarding Team will also offer insights into the bold approach it adopted to ensure safeguarding was fully systemised across 41 different education projects operating in 17 countries to ensure that rigorous safeguarding standards were maintained. This model created a multiplier impact with many of its projects, including PEAS and Link Education going beyond the minimum compliance to influence wider stakeholders on safeguarding and GBV and increase the safety of learners. Finally, the panellists will reflect on practical solutions that have yielded positive results and lessons learnt on securing alignment amongst a wide stakeholder group to successfully scale and influence change so that systems-driven solutions can be adopted at scale to enable greater access to a safer education.

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