Nova: Imagine you're a humanitarian worker setting up a refugee camp. You've got food distributions, water points, shelter, medical tents — all the essentials. But here's a question that wasn't being asked systematically until relatively recently: where are the locks on the latrine doors? And why does that question matter more than almost anything else you'll do that day?

Nova: Because a latrine without a lock, without lighting, located down a dark path — that's not just an inconvenience. For women and girls in a camp setting, that's a daily, repeated risk of sexual assault. And the startling thing is, for decades, the humanitarian system treated this kind of GBV — gender-based violence — as a specialist concern, something for the protection officers to worry about. Until one landmark publication changed the entire conversation.

Nova: Exactly. We're exploring the IASC Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action — a mouthful of a title, but arguably one of the most important documents in modern humanitarian response. First published in 2005 and comprehensively revised in 2015, this is the document that told every single humanitarian sector — from water and sanitation to shelter to food security — that preventing gender-based violence is your job too.

Nova: And I'm Nova. Today on Aibrary, we're unpacking this extraordinary set of guidelines — where they came from, what they demand, and whether the humanitarian system is actually living up to them.

Nova: So let's go back to the early 2000s. The humanitarian system is responding to a massive crisis in Darfur, Sudan. And a deeply uncomfortable truth emerges: humanitarian agencies are failing, at a very basic level, to protect women and girls from sexual violence. We're talking about things like — there were no locks on latrines, no separate facilities, food distributions were designed in ways that put women at risk, and nobody was coordinating across sectors to address any of this.

Nova: Exactly. And that's the environment that gave birth to the original 2005 IASC Guidelines for Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Settings. That first edition was a direct response to the failures in Darfur. Its core message was revolutionary at the time: humanitarian actors must assume GBV is occurring, regardless of whether they have hard data or reported cases to prove it.

Nova: That's the trap. GBV is chronically underreported — and still is. Survivors face stigma, fear of retaliation, shame. In the chaos of an emergency, reporting mechanisms barely exist. So if you wait for data, you'll wait forever — and in the meantime, women and girls are being harmed. The 2005 guidelines made it clear: the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. You act on the assumption that it's happening.

Nova: A lot. The revision was led by UNICEF and UNFPA, overseen by a task team of 16 organizations, and the process was extraordinarily consultative. They did multilingual surveys globally, interviewed over 200 actors, field-tested drafts in nine locations across eight countries — from Kenya and Jordan to Pakistan, the Philippines, and El Salvador. Over 1,000 individuals contributed. And the revised document is substantially different. For one, it's now called Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action. That word "integrating" is doing a lot of work.

Nova: Precisely. The 2005 version was narrower — largely focused on sexual violence in conflict settings, and aimed more at GBV specialists. The 2015 version explicitly says: this is a mainstreaming tool. It's for the WASH engineer, the shelter coordinator, the food security officer. It also broadened its scope — from only conflict settings to include natural disasters, and from focusing primarily on sexual violence to addressing multiple forms of GBV, including intimate partner violence, which research now shows is often the most common form reported in camp settings.

Nova: Exactly right. By 2015, the humanitarian architecture had transformed — the Cluster System was in place, the Transformative Agenda had reshaped coordination. The revised guidelines align with that architecture, mapping responsibilities across all clusters and sectors in a way that's far more integrated and actionable.

Nova: Let's get into the actual structure, because it's remarkably elegant. The guidelines are built around three overarching goals. First, reducing risk — implementing GBV prevention and mitigation strategies from pre-emergency through to recovery. Second, promoting resilience — strengthening national and community-based systems so survivors can actually access care. And third, aiding recovery — supporting local and national capacity to create lasting solutions.

Nova: So this is where it gets wonderfully concrete. The guidelines are organized across 13 thematic areas — everything from Camp Coordination and Camp Management, to Child Protection, Education, Food Security and Agriculture, Health, Housing Land and Property, Humanitarian Mine Action, Livelihoods, Nutrition, Protection, Shelter Settlement and Recovery, and Water Sanitation and Hygiene — plus Humanitarian Operations Support. For each one, there are specific, actionable recommendations.

Nova: Let's take WASH — water, sanitation, and hygiene. The guidelines say: ensure latrines have functional locks on the inside. Ensure they're well-lit. Make sure they're sex-segregated and located in areas that don't require women to walk long distances through isolated areas. Provide culturally appropriate sanitary supplies. These aren't vague aspirations — these are concrete, measurable actions. And the WASH sector wasn't historically thinking about GBV at all. They were thinking about water quality, about drainage, about handwashing stations. All crucial — but if the latrines aren't safe to use, women and girls are at risk every single day.

Nova: Shelter is another great example. The guidelines say: when you're designing shelters, ensure there are internal locks. Avoid communal shelters where unrelated families are housed together without privacy. Ensure that women are consulted in shelter design — because if you don't ask women what makes them feel safe, you'll miss obvious risks. Food security too: the guidelines warn that poorly designed food distributions can create risks — if distributions are at times or locations that force women to travel through unsafe areas, or if the process creates the potential for exploitation by those controlling the distribution.

Nova: That's the heart of it. And there's a companion tool called the Essential Actions Package, which distills all the "essential actions and minimum commitments" from each sector into a single quick-reference document. It's designed for the earliest stages of an acute emergency — when things are chaotic and you need the essentials fast.

Nova: Yes, and those TAGs are brilliant. Imagine you're a shelter coordinator in a sudden-onset emergency. You don't have time to read 300 pages of guidelines. But you can pull out the Shelter, Settlement and Recovery TAG — a slim, focused document that tells you exactly what you need to know about GBV risk mitigation in your sector. It covers the whole program cycle: assessment, design, resource mobilization, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. And each TAG includes a two-page checklist you can literally tear out and use as a daily reference.

Nova: Let's talk about why all of this matters in human terms. The statistics are sobering. Global estimates suggest approximately one in five refugee or displaced women experience sexual violence. Up to 65 percent of women in some humanitarian settings report experiencing intimate partner violence. And in displacement camps, intimate partner violence is often the most commonly reported form of GBV — not stranger violence, but violence within households.

Nova: Substantially. The hidden nature of GBV means that for every case that gets reported, many more go unrecorded. Stigma, fear, lack of trust in services, lack of awareness that services even exist — all of it contributes to a vast iceberg of unreported violence. That's why the guidelines are so insistent: assume it's happening. Don't wait for the data.

Nova: Right. Think about what happens after an earthquake or a major flood. Families are displaced into temporary shelters. Normal community protections break down. Economic stress skyrockets. All of those factors are known to increase the risk of GBV — including intimate partner violence. The 2015 guidelines recognize that whether you're responding to a conflict in South Sudan or a typhoon in the Philippines, the same principles apply.

Nova: This is one of the most consequential changes. The original 2005 guidelines, while groundbreaking, were often perceived as being for GBV specialists only — people with specific training in prevention and response. So a WASH engineer might have thought: "GBV? Not my department." The 2015 version explicitly rejects that. It's designed as a mainstreaming tool. The message is: you don't need to be a GBV expert to put a lock on a latrine. You don't need specialized training to ensure shelter designs are consulted with women. Basic protection against GBV is everyone's responsibility.

Nova: Exactly. And the revision process itself modeled this — the consultations weren't just with GBV experts. They brought in sector coordinators from every cluster, field practitioners from every region, national and local actors. Over 428 people responded to the global surveys alone, in four languages. This was a cross-sectoral effort from start to finish.

Nova: Now we have to talk about the hard part — because having excellent guidelines on paper doesn't mean they're being followed on the ground.

Nova: The evidence is mixed, and honestly, quite sobering. A 2022 scoping review published in the journal Conflict and Health looked at GBV coordination across 30 different emergency settings and found that GBV risk mitigation was consistently compromised by weak commitment across sectors, poor accountability systems, and limited engagement of affected women themselves. The review noted that GBV remains consistently under-prioritized and under-resourced.

Nova: Several things. First, funding. GBV coordination positions are often underfunded or not funded at all in many emergencies. Dedicated GBV coordinators can make a dramatic difference — when they're in place, service provision improves, funding flows more effectively. But too often, GBV coordination is someone's secondary responsibility tacked onto another job. Second, there's a persistent perception — even after the 2015 revision tried to address it — that GBV is a specialist issue. In the maelstrom of an emergency response, things like locks on latrines can be seen as non-essential rather than life-saving.

Nova: It is. But in the hierarchy of humanitarian priorities, food, water, and shelter tend to come first — and GBV risk mitigation gets treated as secondary. The irony is that many GBV risk mitigation measures are inexpensive and straightforward. A lock costs very little. Consulting women in shelter design doesn't require a new budget line. It's about awareness and commitment, not massive resources.

Nova: The 2015 revision process explicitly developed an implementation strategy and an accountability framework. The Global Reference Group was established to promote the guidelines and monitor their use. But the scoping review found that accountability systems remain weak. There's no strong mechanism to hold humanitarian actors accountable when they fail to integrate GBV risk mitigation. The Gender Marker and other accountability tools exist, but their application is inconsistent.

Nova: Yes. The guidelines emphasize the importance of national and local actors — but in practice, GBV coordination remains dominated by international organizations. Local women's organizations, which often have the deepest understanding of community dynamics and the most trusted relationships, are frequently sidelined or underfunded. Localization funding targets haven't been met. And over-reliance on international leadership and funding compromises sustainability — when the international attention moves on, the coordination structures can collapse.

Nova: So where does this leave us? The guidelines represent an extraordinary achievement — a globally endorsed, cross-sectoral framework for integrating GBV prevention and mitigation into every aspect of humanitarian response. But the gap between the document and the reality on the ground remains significant.

Nova: The research points to several things. First, dedicated, funded GBV coordination positions in every humanitarian response — not as an afterthought, but as a core component. When experienced coordinators are deployed early, the evidence shows they make a measurable difference. Second, genuinely inclusive coordination that brings national and local actors — especially women-led organizations — into leadership roles, not just as implementing partners. Third, multi-year funding for GBV prevention, not just short-term response. Prevention work takes time, and short funding cycles undermine it.

Nova: That's where the Thematic Area Guides and the training resources come in. The GBV Guidelines website hosts an online course, training materials, case studies. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for non-specialists to understand what they need to do. But beyond tools, there needs to be a cultural shift — where asking "does this intervention increase or decrease GBV risk?" becomes as automatic as asking about cost or logistics.

Nova: Yes. The creation of Regional Emergency GBV Advisor roles — REGAs — for deployment in Level 3 emergencies has been a concrete follow-up that's improved coordination. The roll-out of the GBV Information Management System has strengthened data collection and informed better programming. And there are field-level examples — in Iraq and Colombia, for instance — where systematic GBV risk mitigation in cash and voucher assistance programs has shown positive results. The challenge is scaling those successes and making them the norm rather than the exception.

Nova: It does. It says: you don't need to prove GBV is happening to act. You need to act because the conditions that enable GBV are present, and the consequences of inaction are devastating. That principle — that basic protection against violence is not optional, not a luxury, not something you get around to after everything else is sorted — is really the moral core of the entire guidelines.

Nova: Beautifully put.

Nova: So let's pull this together. The IASC Guidelines for Integrating Gender-Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action, first published in 2005 and comprehensively revised in 2015, represent a landmark effort to make GBV prevention and mitigation everyone's responsibility in humanitarian response — not just the concern of protection specialists. Built on three goals — reducing risk, promoting resilience, and aiding recovery — and spanning 13 sectors with practical, field-tested guidance, they are arguably the most important inter-agency framework for addressing GBV in emergencies.

Nova: What's striking is that the core insight of the guidelines — assume GBV is occurring, act now, don't wait for data — is simultaneously radical and profoundly simple. It demands a shift in mindset, not just in procedure. And that shift, from seeing protection against violence as someone else's job to seeing it as fundamental to every humanitarian intervention, is still very much a work in progress.

Nova: Here's a closing thought. Every latrine with a functioning lock, every well-lit path to a water point, every shelter designed with women's input — these aren't just technical details. They are daily acts of protection. They are the difference between safety and assault. And they are what these guidelines, at their best, exist to make happen.

Nova: Congratulations on your growth.