Quick reference national coordination and governance guidelines

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 1. LAW AND POLICYMAKING

Laws and policies based on best practices and international standards and norms are essential in guiding the formal and informal processes that underpin coordination and governance of coordination. They should also be informed by evidence and lessons learned through the direct experience of coordination.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

1.1

Laws and policies that address violence against women and girls

• Ensure all laws and policies on informed understanding of gender equality and non-discrimination.

• Ensure responses to violence against women are based on a victim-centered approach and human rights standards of victim safety and offender accountability.

• Address all forms of violence against women while ensuring that responses are tailored to specific forms of violence.

• Ensure a participatory/inclusive approach to law and policymaking by incorporating knowledge and feedback from victims /survivors, NGOs and others working directly with

victim/survivors and perpetrators.

• Create and strengthen government agencies and organizations and other structures that have a role in responding to violence against women.

• Incorporate the experience of national and local coordination initiatives into national policy-making.

1.2

Laws and policies for coordination of Essential Services at the national and local level

• Establish a legal and policy framework for coordination based on best practices that incorporates a common understanding of violence against women that can be adapted to country needs.

• Develop and/or update national action plans to specify mechanisms and budgets for coordination of Essential Services.

• Require cooperation among agencies that address violence against women.

• Identify specific coordination responsibilities of individual agencies, including women’s organizations.

• Require appropriate information sharing among agencies that prioritizes offender accountability and confidentiality for victims/survivors.

• Define responsibilities for providing financial resources

• Prohibit mandatory reporting of individual cases between coordinating agencies except in cases of immediate danger, child victims or special vulnerability.

• Require sufficient availability of police and justice services, social services and health care services to meet the needs of victims and survivors.

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 2. APPROPRIATION AND ALLOCATION OF RESOURCES

 Coordination and governance of coordination require adequate resourcing to ensure they have the technical expertise, systems and processes, and authority to carry out the required functions and actions.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

2.1

Adequate funding and other resources for coordination and governance of coordination

• Provide adequate financial support, personnel, expertise, and technical support at the national level to coordinate policymaking.

• Provide sufficient resources to national local level for providing, coordinating and funding

of services and effectively implementing laws and policies.

• Prioritize funding and resources for NGOs and civil society to enable their leadership in providing and coordinating services.

• Fund research to monitor and determine effectiveness of coordination mechanisms and outcomes of coordinated service delivery.

• Provide guidelines for estimating cost of coordinating services.

• Establish mechanisms to ensure timeliness of funding.

• Ensure wide participation and transparency in budget allocation process.

• Track resource expenditures to promote accountability.

• Where key resources are not yet in place, provide specifically for mobilization of resources.

2.2

Coordination among relevant policymaking entities at the national level

• Promote a common understanding among all providers of essential services of the causes and consequences of violence against women and girls.

• Integrate violence against women and girls issues across all relevant policy areas including creating and strengthening public sector entities dedicated to women’s rights.

• Identify and address barriers to effective coordination at policymaking and implementation levels.

• Align public education messages.

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 3. STANDARD SETTING FOR ESTABLISHMENT OF LOCAL LEVEL COORDINATION

Standards assist in creating consistent mechanisms and processes that support the accountability of coordinated responses. They are important in clarifying the expectations required of coordinated systems, and the stakeholders involved in coordination efforts.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

3.1

Standards for creating local coordinated response

• Participants’ agreement on a common understanding of violence against women and girls.

• Agreement on primary goals: victim safety, offender accountability, agency accountability.

• Role of victims, survivors and their representatives as leaders and/or primary informants to the process without creating a risk to their safety.

• Agreement that state institutions and not victims/survivors are responsible for addressing violence.

• Basic requirements for formal protocols/MOUs for local coordination, including collaborative relationships, coordination of services.

• Roles and responsibilities of agencies and persons involved in coordinated response.

• Standards specific to the needs of girls.

• Commitment of resources to coordination by participating agencies.

• Efficient use of resources by avoiding unnecessary duplication of services.

• Participation of all critical parties.

• Role of victims/survivors and their representatives as leaders and/or primary informants to the process without creating a risk to their safety.

• Participation by underrepresented or marginalized groups.

• Identification of community champions, supporting and strengthening their efforts.

• Promotion of community awareness of violence against women and girls and availability of Essential Services.

3.2

Standards for agency accountability for coordination

• Use strategies and interventions that are safe, effective and based on best practices.

• Define roles of participating agencies.

• Conduct internal and external audits to ensure agency accountability in implementing coordination.

• Include broad stakeholder involvement.

• Identify barriers to safety and services and unmet needs, based on victim/survivor feedback.

• Monitor the coordination of responses by the police and justice sector, social service and health care sector.

• Follow up on cases to learn outcome and improve responses (including review of fatalities to reduce risk of future homicides).

• Create inter-agency tracking system to facilitate information sharing among agencies

and follow the progress of a victim/survivor through the system.

• Adopt and enforce ethical conduct for staff members and volunteers of participating agencies.

3.3

Systems for the recording and reporting of data

• Agree common terminology for all recording and reporting.

• Require each agency to maintain data for monitoring and evaluation.

• Obtain consent of victims and survivors before recording personally identifiable information (PII).

• Protect confidentiality and privacy of victims and survivors when collecting, recording and reporting PII.

• Allow access to PII only to individuals and entities with demonstrated need.

• Keep PII data secure.

• Anonymize data used for monitoring and evaluation purposes.

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 4. INCLUSIVE APPROACHES TO COORDINATED RESPONSES

 Coordinated responses must ensure that they take into account the diversity of experiences and needs of women and girls experiencing violence in the design and monitoring of coordinated responses and by encouraging their participation in such activities.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

4.1

Mechanisms for participation

• Understand how violence against women and girls affects different communities in diverse ways (especially women and girls who suffer multiple forms of discrimination) at all levels of policymaking and coordination.

• Develop mapping/inventory models to identify marginalized and vulnerable groups.

• Include representation of marginalized and vulnerable groups in all stages of policymaking and coordination (planning, policymaking, implementation, monitoring and evaluation).

• Ensure voices of young women and girls are heard with attention to particular vulnerabilities they face.

• Tailor strategies aimed at the specific issues experienced by different groups.

• Acknowledge and address potential risk of participation by victims/survivors.

• Analyze data to identify vulnerabilities of specific groups.

• Adopt processes for identifying unintended consequences to ensure accurate assumptions and process development.

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 5. FACILITATE CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT OF POLICYMAKERS AND OTHER DECISION MAKERS ON COORDINATED RESPONSES

 Institutions, organizations and their personell will require support and training to ensure effective coordination efforts. Joint or cross sectoral training can be effective in assisting that professionals across different sectors gain a shared understanding of violence against women, and have access to contemporary evidence about effective responses.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

5.1 Capacity development

• Provide resources and guidance for organizational and financial stability, program quality and growth.

• Provide training for national and regional policymakers on coordinated response to violence against women and girls. 

• Include or combine capacity building on coordination with other on-going capacity-building initiatives, including across sectors.

5.2 Multi-disciplinary training standards and cross sectoral training

• Where feasible, give victim/survivor representatives a leadership role in developing and carrying out training of all systems actors and service providers.

• Base training on common understanding of violence against women and girls, common definitions, and how intervention from each sector contributes to enhancing victim/survivor safety.

• Teach techniques of effective coordination.

• Require training to be regular and ongoing to ensure that new knowledge and best practices are incorporated into responses to violence against women and girls.

ESSENTIAL ACTION: 6. MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF COORDINATION AT NATIONAL and LOCAL LEVELS

Monitoring and evaluation provide opportunities to understand and learn how coordinated systems are functioning. Sharing the findings of monitoring and evaluation allows coordinated responses to be improved and for stakeholders to participate in and make decisions about improvements.

CORE ELEMENTS

GUIDELINES

6.1

Standards for monitoring and evaluation for national and local levels

• Set realistic short, medium and long term goals.

• Use qualitative and quantitative indicators of effectiveness of coordination.

• Set up systems for measuring achievement of goals.

• Include baseline data, where possible, in measurement systems.

• Analyse outcomes of coordinated response.

• Identify barriers to successful coordination and possible solutions.

• Incorporate lessons learned into future policies and practices.

6.2

Sharing and reporting good practice and findings of monitoring and evaluation

• Identify best practices and lessons learned.

• Identify problems and possible solutions.

• Apply information learned from local monitoring and evaluation to inform national agenda.

6.3

Transparency whilst maintaining confidentiality and minimising risk

• Make guidelines, standards and policies widely available.

• Use lay language in guidelines, standards and policies.

• Make guidelines, standards and policies available in all languages used in the community.

• Make results of monitoring and evaluation of coordinating process available to the public.

• Make findings on impact of coordination on marginalized and vulnerable groups available in a way that is accessible to those groups.

• Identify extent of problem in regularly published reports: For example, availability of victim and survivor services, victim/survivor use of services, how perpetrators are held accountable.