Engaging in this struggle, many donors have put addressing VAW generally, and in fragile and conflict-affected situations (FCAS) specifically, at the top of the development agenda and made it a major priority of international policy. But in practice progress remains difficult, not least due to entrenched resistance and discriminatory socio-political norms and gender relations that persist in many societies. The problem of violence against women therefore needs to be addressed from the perspective of the concrete socio-political
and cultural conditions that shape its particular features and the relevant context-specific dynamics of conflict, post-conflict patterns of violence and fragility. International efforts to support reform in the area of VAW in FCAS need to go beyond prescriptive approaches that focus on what access to protection, justice and redress should look like. We propose here an approach that engages with the specificities of the problem – paying attention to
context, and the concrete political-economy dynamics of the drivers of VAW – and takes account of the real options that women face in navigating the available security and justice chains to seek protection, redress and justice.