Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is now recognized as a serious and widespread global health issue. During a humanitarian crisis, the risk of such violence is heightened, often continuing after the early phases of a crisis – reports of gender-based violence (GBV) are common in camps for refugees and displaced populations. However, there is limited evidence on how to provide effective response services to survivors of violence in humanitarian contexts. One approach – comprehensive case management – builds on existing evidence from other fields and contexts (social work, legal, healthcare) as well as years of field experience by humanitarian agencies to improve survivors’ health and psychosocial outcomes.

In the Dadaab refugee camps, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and CARE International (CARE) have developed a comprehensive case management approach to address the needs of GBV survivors. Both humanitarian agencies implement programmes in Dadaab that aim to both respond to and prevent GBV. A cornerstone of this work has been to develop a broader implementation of traditional GBV outreach, community mobilization, and case management to include task sharing with refugees known as refugee community workers. These refugee community workers are trained by IRC and CARE to carry out specific aspects of outreach, service delivery, and referral support to assist national humanitarian staff.