CONCLUSION

Monitoring and accountability of justice systems is crucial to ensuring access to justice for survivors. This includes court monitoring, monitoring of the police units, and accountability for GBV commitments made by the Government (including through peace agreements). Rigorous monitoring of the courts and justice mechanisms is necessary to ensure consistent, fair application of the law, to root out corruption, and to increase trust. Funding for data collection should focus on women telling their own stories and building the evidence base through their own experiences.

Women and girls’ vulnerability to violence is exacerbated in complex contexts, where GBV is more common and more severe. Although globally, significant progress has been registered on national legal reform and adoption of new legislation on gender equality, a lot remains to be done in eliminating GBV, upholding women’s rights and ensuring access to justice for survivors in complex situations. This paper has outlined how, in the most difficult of circumstances, women and girls resist GBV through seeking vindication of their rights, justice and reparation. It shows the ways in which justice solutions have been found, so that justice systems can fulfil the function, described by the CEDAW Committee, of “[optimizing] the emancipatory and transformative potential of law” through effective access to justice.410 Greater evidence on what works to improve access to justice for GBV survivors is needed to adapt justice programmes to settings such as health emergencies, armed conflict, climate disasters or those in which organized crime is endemic. Furthermore, in these settings, there is a need to include a focus on accountability of key non-State actors and their role in justice for GBV survivors.

A survivor-centred approach is key to fulfilling the promise of justice in response to GBV, in all circumstances, including complex situations. In seeking access to justice, women and girls should be considered not just as victims of crimes, but as participants and cocreators of the institutions tasked with vindicating their rights, and agents in rebuilding their lives.