Key lessons

financial support from donors such as the Government of Australia. CSOs such as Eastern Highlands Family Voice, Bougainville Women’s Federation, Leitena Nehan and Nazareth Centre for Rehabilitation have been advocating for women’s human rights and violence prevention for decades. In the Highlands, the Kafe Urban Settlers Women’s Association (KUSWA), Kup Women for Peace, and the Human Rights Defenders Network work at the community level to defend the human rights of women and girls and protect them from GBV and SARV.278 In South Sudan, Steward Women, a women’s organization founded by lawyers, has campaigned for the ratification of the Maputo Protocol and pushed for key GBV legislation, while the Federation of Women Lawyers in South Sudan has also played an important role in legal reform, including producing briefs to support the passage of the above bills.

• Laws alone are not enough, and barriers to implementation can hinder the impact of legal reform on GBV.

There has been much global attention on passing new laws on GBV in the past three decades, and many countries have adopted legislation. However, the mere presence of laws does not always translate easily into changes in practice, and justice actors are often the slowest to change. New laws are only a small part of a larger process of reform that is needed to improve the lives of women and girl survivors of violence. • A multisectoral approach to legal reform is crucial for lasting progress.

All forms of GBV must be recognized as crimes, but criminal justice responses to GBV are inherently limited. Criminal justice is only one contribution to the multisectoral response needed to achieve justice for survivors and an end to violence against women.

• Rules of evidence and procedure must be survivor-centred. Discriminatory evidentiary or procedural requirements persist in all six contexts. For example, research informants mentioned virginity tests as one of the main forms of evidence for proving the crime of rape in Afghanistan.

• Legal reform and policies such as national action plans on GBV must have adequate funding and sustained monitoring to be successful. Continuous monitoring and assessment of legislative implementation is crucial to measure impact and identify gaps for further reform to achieve gender justice objectives.

• Open and inclusive approaches must be adopted for the formulation of laws, policies and strategies on

GBV, including clear strategies for consultation with civil society, particularly women’s organizations and movements. This underscores the necessity to recognize, support and promote the crucial role of women’s organizations and their movements in addressing GBV, including in legal reform.