Key lessons

LGBTQI+ community, and a third monitors the Honduran Government’s compliance regarding their responsibilities to protect the rights of this community.

The Honduran Women Human Rights Defenders, who are part of a Mesoamerican women human rights defenders network, monitor human rights violations and attacks on women.351 A review of CSO capacity in the collection of data on GBV found that one of the main challenges facing CSOs is the lack of transparency and accessibility of official data.352

In Tunisia, a national observatory on violence against women was recently established by Governmental Decree 2020-126 of 25 February, 2020. The creation of this observatory is part of Tunisia’s commitments under its law on the elimination of violence against women. The national observatory for combating violence against women is a public administrative institution with financial autonomy and is placed under the supervision of the ministry responsible for women.

• Specialized police and prosecution units and specialized courts must be adequately resourced, closely monitored, and meaningfully embedded within the justice system to be sustainable and effective.

Specialized units that lack needed resources and stand apart from the regular justice apparatus will fail to become a useful tool of justice for survivors. • Greater effort should be made to draw the link between humanitarian and development needs, with access to justice for GBV survivors crucial to both sets of goals. Humanitarian apparatuses are limited in their mandate, often to acute humanitarian concerns, hindering their ability to address longer-term development needs such as access to justice.

• When survivors are seeking protection orders, they should be offered support throughout the process, including in the long term once the order has been served. This more holistic approach to protection orders ensures greater effectiveness and trust.

• Monitoring of the judiciary and government commitments on justice for survivors is needed to ensure accountability. The judiciary and government must be held accountable to their commitments to GBV survivors through a clear monitoring framework with appropriate indicators.

• Support should be available, such as through community paralegals, women’s organizations and other community-based accompaniment to empower survivors of GBV to navigate complex justice pathways in the formal and informal justice systems.

Empowering women is critical to engaging with CIJS.353 A range of good practices exist that show how GBV survivors can be supported to obtain protection or compensation from customary authorities or to refer their case to the formal justice system, when it has originated in the CIJS.