Gender and Sexuality Programme (G&S)
Too many people worldwide are unable to enjoy their sexual and gender rights due to social, cultural, political and legal obstacles. This is even more true for individuals fleeing armed conflict or searching for safe refuge in a foreign country.
The Gender & Sexuality Programme works to ensure that all people can access and enjoy their sexual and gender being and rights, and to raise global awareness of the close relationship between violations of sexuality and gender, and patterns of forced migration.
The Gender & Sexuality Programme engages in the following activities:
- Provision of direct legal and psychosocial support to RLP clients (whether refugees, IDPs, deportees, victims and perpetrators) who are experiencing problems as a result of sexual and gender-based violence, or as a result of their sexual orientation or gender identity
- Documentation of the causes, immediate impact, and long-term consequences of sexual and gender-based violenceResearch of gender and sexuality dynamics at grass-roots level
- Analysis of how the legacies of conflict-related sexual violence inform transitional justice efforts
- Policy advocacy at local, national, and international levels that is informed by lessons learned from RLP’s research and direct service work
- Training of forced migrants, police, immigration, military, civil society, humanitarian workers
The work of the Gender & Sexuality Programme influences the research agenda of the Conflict, Transitional Justice & Governance Programme by, for example, focusing on issues around gender identities (particularly masculinities) in post-conflict recovery periods. We work with the Access to Justice Programme to advocate for the legal reforms needed to ensure that all survivors of sexual violence, as well as sexual and gender minorities, are able to pursue justice through formal mechanisms. We collaborate with our colleagues in Mental Health & Psychosocial Wellbeing Programme to develop best practice in responding to situations of harm and exclusion arising from sexual violence and/or discrimination.
