2025 has been a year of system shock for humanitarians. Increasing crises – in number and severity – have come at a time of hugely diminishing resources to respond. This reality has required all humanitarians to make deeply challenging decisions about what to prioritize, from the Humanitarian Reset and changes to the cluster system to individual programmatic responses and staffing choices.

The IRC's analysis covers over 222,000 incidents across 38 countries of gender-based violence (GBV) reported to our Women’s Protection and Empowerment (WPE) programming by women and girls themselves over the last 12 years. The analysis was undertaken to gain insights into who is in need of and accessing GBV services, and to use evidence to determine how IRC and the humanitarian sector can best move forward in a time of upheaval.

From one of the largest longitudinal analyses conducted on GBV in humanitarian contexts, the IRC found:

  • 54% of women and girls reported that the perpetrator of violence against them was a current or former intimate partner, reaffirming what other studies have shown that intimate partner violence (IPV) is the most common form of violence experienced by women and girls in humanitarian contexts.
  • Almost 80% of survivors reported violence occurred in their home community or in the community in which they sought refuge, underscoring the need for systemic investments across the entirety of displacement;
  • 87% of GBV survivors received care or accepted a referral to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services, an indication of success in integrating these service types; however, for the 60% of survivors that sought access to livelihood programs, these programs were not available to them;
  • Less than 2% of clients identified as living with a disability and just over 4% of women accessing services were over the age of 49.

Data of this nature can help identify more precisely where to focus programming, but it also – when considered together with the current global moment of upheaval and humanitarian system change - calls on humanitarians to question if the current GBV response system is up to the challenge of the moment. To meet the moment, the analysis includes programmatic, policy, and funding recommendations that allow us to reach GBV survivors and those at risk at scale by strengthening the GBV prevention and response ecosystem through investments in:

  • Social services - such as case management, economic support, safe housing, and integrated services, including GBV and sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services;
  • Governance and management of where women and girls live – such as documentation, ensuring freedom of movement, and ensuring risk mitigation;
  • Community-led and localized responses that ensure community intermediaries, women’s groups, and community-based organizations can reach women and girls with quality care and case management.

To do this, we need to identify or create new ways to finance GBV prevention and response beyond traditional grants and other funding mechanisms and invest in, analyze, and use data to implement programming that works for GBV survivors and those at risk of GBV.

If we do not, we risk seeing a generation of girls who are worse off than their mothers and grandmothers while hastening the overall erosion of basic rights and protections that has been seen globally.

Available documents & links