Lessons from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine
Why Preventing Gender-Based Violence Is Essential to Water Security: Lessons from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine
Gender-based violence (GBV) is pervasive across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Throughout the Arab States region, 37 percent of women and girls have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their lifetime, compared with a global average of 35 percent. This risk is particularly high as it relates to water. Across MENA, women and girls face heightened risks of GBV while collecting water. Because women are responsible for household water collection, water scarcity and insecurity require them to travel longer distances or take isolated routes, increasing their exposure to harassment, assault, and other protection threats. UNICEF’s regional analysis finds that these risks are particularly severe in conflict-affected and displacement settings, where damaged infrastructure, insecurity, and limited access to basic services make collecting water even more dangerous. In refugee-hosting communities in Jordan and Lebanon, for example, inadequate access to water and sanitation increases women’s unpaid care burdens and protection risks.
Despite its high prevalence in MENA and clear links to water insecurity, GBV is not a priority for policymakers and funders that are developing and financing water-governance and climate-resilience policies and programs. This failure partly reflects institutional silos: GBV is generally addressed by gender or safeguard teams, while water and climate initiatives are developed by separate technical teams.
A recent GIWPS policy paper, Beyond Security: A Plan for Women’s Water Security Policy and Governance in the Middle East, makes the case that water should be understood not only as a technical or environmental concern, but also as a gendered human security issue.
There are clear links between water scarcity and GBV, which is detrimental in its own right and also limits women’s participation in public life and decisions about water security. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle. GBV limits women’s participation in water and natural-resource governance and in shaping GBV mitigation, prevention and response efforts, leaving their experiences and priorities out of both. Poor or exclusionary resource governance—compounded by drought, displacement, and growing competition over natural resources—heighten women’s exposure to GBV, while programs and policies designed and implemented without women’s voices fail to address the risks they face, further limiting their participation and security.
Women’s absence from these conversations can weaken resource governance and conflict-prevention efforts, increasing the risk that competition over scarce water escalates existing tensions into violent conflict. Water security programs and policies designed and implemented without women’s voices fail to address the risks they face, compromising their participation and both individual and community security.
This article offers a positive example of what works: how to integrate GBV into water management.
The Al Murunah+ experience: integrating GBV prevention into water management in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Palestine
The Al Murunah program (“flexibility” in Arabic) offers an innovative case study example of a better approach, one rooted in integration rather than siloed. Funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and implemented by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the program operates in communities affected by conflict, political instability, and environmental stress across Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Palestine with the goal of strengthening water security and resilience. The program’s gender-transformative component, which focuses on household dynamics alongside community-level interventions, makes it unique. It recognizes that power relations and decisions between spouses about income, assets, and resources determine whether water and climate-resilience investments deliver equitable and lasting benefits.
Funders and implementers of environmental and climate-resilience programs may hesitate to integrate GBV prevention and risk mitigation in fragile and conflict-affected settings because they lack specialized expertise and fear that poorly designed interventions could expose survivors to retaliation, breach confidentiality, or create protection needs that programs are not equipped to manage. Emerging practice, however, suggests that integration can be undertaken responsibly when programs partner with GBV specialists and local women’s rights organizations, establish appropriate safeguarding and referral systems, operate long enough to build trust and address harmful norms, and receive dedicated staff and funding.
What Works to Prevent Violence: Why Households Matter for Water Security
Findings to date from Al Murunah+ indicate that GBV continues to be a key barrier to women’s participation in sustainable agriculture and water management. Women’s limited control over resources and household decisions, combined with social norms that restrict their public and economic roles, prevent them from joining water-user groups, adopting new practices, influencing household decisions, and fully benefiting from program interventions. Experiencing or fearing violence can prevent women from attending public meetings or entering other decision-making spaces. Even when women are present, it may deter them from speaking openly, challenging decisions, accessing resources, or pursuing leadership roles.
As a result, Al Murunah+ partnered with the What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale initiative to integrate a GBV prevention component that works directly with couples and opinion leaders. Together with GBV technical advisers and local women’s rights organisations, Al Murunah+ adapted an evidence-informed curriculum designed to reduce the risk of violence by:
- Strengthening joint household decision-making
- Addressing harmful norms around control of assets and income
- Building communication and shared problem-solving within households
The What Works to Prevent Violence: Impact at Scale initiative also partnered with opinion leaders to improve women’s access to community decision-making around water management and build support for their participation in sustainable livelihoods. When women can participate safely and meaningfully, water management can better reflect community needs and contribute to long-term peace and stability. This local insight is consistent with GIWPS research, which finds a strong correlation between women’s inclusion, justice, and security and national climate preparedness: countries where women are doing well also tend to be better prepared to respond to climate change.
Four Lessons for Funders, Policymakers, and Practitioners
Funders and implementers of environmental and climate-resilience programs may hesitate to integrate GBV prevention and risk mitigation in fragile and conflict-affected settings because they lack specialized expertise and fear that poorly designed interventions could expose survivors to retaliation, breach confidentiality, or create protection needs that programs are not equipped to manage. Emerging practice, however, suggests that integration can be undertaken responsibly when programs partner with GBV specialists and local women’s rights organizations, establish appropriate safeguarding and referral systems, operate long enough to build trust and address harmful norms, and receive dedicated staff and funding.
Integrating GBV prevention into water-security efforts can include conducting GBV risk assessments during program design; training water-sector staff and facilitators in survivor-centered, do-no-harm approaches; resourcing GBV specialists and local women’s rights organizations to co-design interventions; establishing confidential referral pathways to health, psychosocial, legal, and protection services; and working with households and communities to address harmful norms. These measures remove a key barrier to women’s meaningful participation, strengthen community-level decision-making, and help build more inclusive and stable systems of resource governance.
Four preliminary lessons stand out for practitioners, funders, and policymakers from recent evaluations.
- Partner with GBV specialists and local women’s rights organisations: Safe and effective GBV prevention efforts require specialist expertise. GBV specialists bring technical expertise, while local women’s rights organisations help identify women’s priorities, assess risks, and ensure that programme design is grounded in local contexts. This is WPS localisation in practice: resourcing women’s organisations as leaders and designers of environmental peacebuilding, not just implementers.
- Address barriers at the household and community levels: Many programs aim to increase women’s participation, but fewer address the root causes of exclusion. Programs must address the household dynamics and community norms that expose women to violence or limit their decision-making. Participation becomes meaningful only when women can engage safely and influence decisions.
- Design for context, not assumptions: Mixed-gender activities were delivered in refugee camps, in small villages in the Nile Delta, and in other communities across Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Palestine, and proved feasible—even in some conservative settings—when programmes used trusted local facilitators and carefully managed social risks. Social norms should be treated as a design consideration, not a fixed ceiling on ambition.
- Building systems that can adapt: Standard MEL approaches do not transfer neatly to fragile and conflict-affected contexts, where connectivity is unreliable, access is constrained, and conditions shift quickly. Co-designed tools that work through outages, local research capacity, and regular reviews of the theory of change allow programs to adjust as conditions and evidence evolve.
A Call to Action for the 2026 UN Water Conference: Making GBV Prevention, Mitigation, and Response Core Water-Security Business
Programmes like Al Murunah+ demonstrate the feasibility of moving beyond simply recognising the links between GBV and water security, to addressing them in practice. The next step is to test, evaluate, and—where the evidence supports it—adapt and scale these approaches.
The December 2026 UN Water Conference in Abu Dhabi offers a rare platform to embed GBV prevention and WPS commitments into water financing, governance, and diplomacy. Governments, donors, and multilateral banks must use the 2026 UN Water Conference to ensure that water and environmental programs and policies are not only technically sound, but also safe, inclusive and transformative.
They should:
- Require GBV risk analysis and mitigation in water-sector investments;
- Resource partnerships with GBV specialists and local women’s rights organisations; and
- Ensure that WPS National Action Plans treat water governance as core peace and security business.
Look out for more resources on how to safely address GBV through climate and environmental programming on the What Works to Prevent Violence Impact at Scale initiative Evidence Hub—coming soon!
Sawsan Gharaibeh is a Regional Researcher, Gender and Social Inclusion at the International Water Management Institute and CGIAR. Naomi Clugston is a Senior Technical Specialist in Governance and Inclusive Societies and Gender-Based Violence at Social Development Direct. Gemma Ferguson is a Principal GBV Consultant at Social Development Direct.
This article is part of a series. GIWPS is engaging civil society networks, implementing NGOs, and local women to highlight pioneers on the frontlines who are developing and implementing localized and national solutions, policies, and programming at the intersection of gender, climate, fragility, and conflict.
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