Add Gender and Stir, Add Culture and Stir: The UNHCR's recipe for addressing sexual and gender-based violence in refugee settings

It contends that UNHCR's current approach of adding essentialised concepts of 'gender' and 'culture' to SGBV programmes is not effective at reducing levels of violence against female refugees. Such an approach isolates gender as the primary reason for sexual violence and overlooks a whole host of factors which may lead to women's vulnerability.

Evaluations of SGBV prevention and response measures in Dadaab and Kakuma refugee camps in Kenya highlight the need for SGBV frameworks to take into account the political, geographical, historical, cultural and social contingencies of the refugees in any given area (Giles and Hyndman, 2004, 21). This paper makes the case for the development of specific field-based programmes (Ward, 2002, 10) that are centred around more fluid definitions of 'gender' and 'culture' and do not rely upon myths about gender and culture.