For Equality Africa, with support from Concern Malawi, hosted the 3rd edition of the annual Strengthening and Harnessing collective voice and action to End violence against women and girls Summit (SHE Summit) on the 9th December 2021. The summit, brought together community, government, civil society and private sector actors to reflect, strategize and work towards one bold goal: ending violence against women and girls by 2030. Convened under the theme, “From 16days to 365 days: Reimagining financing and accountability for EVAWG”, the 2021 Summit sought to ask critical questions on financing and accountability for EVAWG and propose alternatives that democratise funding and shift power to the grossly underfunded community level organisers and movements who need the most support. 

The summit was timely as it came against the backdrop of increasing cases and incidence of violence against women and girls globally. Evidence shows that when crisis hits, violence against women increases. The Covid19 pandemic has exacerbated all forms of violence against women and girls and has slowly begun erasing decades of efforts made towards advancing gender equality and women’s rights. However, all Covid-19 responses to date, from the global actors and donors fail to acknowledge this correlation; despite the many speeches on the need to prioritize the safety of women and girls, action falls notoriously short. In 2018, only 0.12 percent of all humanitarian funding went toward programming to prevent and respond to GBV, and as of October 2020, only 0.5 percent of the Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19 was dedicated to GBV prevention and response;  less than 1 percent of funding barely constitutes an afterthought. 

The first plenary session, on “Re-imagining financing for EVAWG ” sought to answer the critical question, “Where is the money”? This plenary interrogated the global funding stream, focusing on key strategies that need to be adopted to ensure that financial resources trickle down to women and girls in grassroots organizations that are already doing tremendous work to eliminate violence. 

The second plenary session was titled “Re-imagining accountability for EVAWG financing, programming and policy” and it focused on crowdsourcing African solutions to the accountability challenge, looking at best practices from various African countries such as Zambia and South Africa.

The SHE Summit came up with the following Solutions and Recommendations

1. Domestic funding is key, African leaders need to make commitments to ensure adequate domestic budget allocation is made towards ending violence against women and girls and that it trickles down to women led grassroots organizations
2. Donors need to adopt a human rights-based approach in prioritizing integrated support for SRHR and re-construct funding policies to be more flexible 
3. Donors to make sustainability a reality by ensuring long-term support to grassroots organizations e.g. 5 year grants, to allow for comprehensive planning, implementation as well as documentation
4. CSOs need to invest in building tracking mechanisms and dashboards that show how donor money for EVAWG has been disbursed and how it is being utilized
5. Create open spaces for dialogues with donors to be interrogated on their funding mechanisms and to propose changes that benefit grassroot organizations movements 
6. At national level, CSOs must establish a strong relationship with line ministries to put in place accountability systems to track commitments such as the Generation Equality Commitments
7. Collective efforts are essential in establishing ways to decolonize aid systems to meet the needs of grassroots as opposed to changing grassroot mobilization tactics and systems to align with global aid requirements 
8. Donors should acknowledge and recognize diversity of underfunded organizations and movements 
9. There is a need for strengthened coordination amongst grassroot organizations to work together in mobilizing resources to support their activities, they can form consortiums for example
10. Capacity building is key, efforts should be made to build the capacity and expertise of grassroot organizers to effectively deliver their programming 
11. The private sector is key in funding for EVAWG, grassroot organizers can leverage on this sector to finance their interventions 
12. Development workers and the government need to begin re-strategizing and re-programming to adequately address the ever-changing context in relation to violence against women and girls. 
13. Governments must allocate adequate resources to the ministry of gender to show commitment towards ending violence against women and girls 
14. Power dynamics in all institutions should be analysed to inform who to approach as allies to help push the agenda forward 

Social justice campaigning strategies that you have used which can be adapted for sustained organising, education and advocacy to ensure accountability for EVAWG financing and programming  

1. Societies must define accountability and clearly spell out what it looks like for them and ways to achieve it