BREAKING THE SILENCE: Small Grants for Youth-Centred Advocacy to Address Sexual Violence against Children in Conflict
BREAKING THE SILENCE: Small Grants for Youth-Centred Advocacy to Address Sexual Violence against Children in Conflict
Today, children are ten times more likely to become victims of conflict-related sexual violence than they were 30 years ago. Yet, investigations and prosecutions of sexual violence against children are not prioritised and chronic under-reporting means that child victims of sexual violence remain invisible and perpetrators remain unpunished.
Supported by Oak Foundation, Legal Action Worldwide (LAW) is proud to champion and foster the influencing efforts of civil society organisations, especially child, youth, LGBTQI+ and human rights organisations, to help combat impunity for sexual violence against children and to raise the voices of children themselves to demand a world without child sexual abuse.
For this purpose, LAW has made available small grants to two civil society organisations. The grants will serve as a catalyst to generate new advocacy initiatives, or bolster existing ones, aimed at breaking the silence around CRSV against children within communities, local and national governments, the justice sector, or in society more broadly.
The grants will seek to:
- Recognise, the importance of, and support advocacy efforts on increasing access to child-centred support and justice processes for child survivors of sexual violence.
- Strengthen child survivors’ and other key actors’ influencing skills and capabilities to drive changes in communities and beyond, towards a supportive, safe, responsive, and inclusive legal and justice environment for child victims of sexual violence.
- Foster the creation of safe and accessible platforms for children and adolescents to carry out initiatives aimed at holding governments and justice bodies accountable on sexual violence against children.
- Promote creative ways to advocate and raise awareness for accountability and justice for child victims of sexual violence.
After a highly competitive process, LAW is proud to announce that the following projects will receive Small Grants to break the silence around CRSV:
1. PROJECTOR: Empowering LGBTIQ+ Youth Advocates in Ukraine
PROJECTOR is an independent, non-profit organization defending the rights of behalf of Ukraine’s LGBTIQ+ community, people with HIV/AIDS, and victims of domestic violence since 2019. The organization documents war crimes, represents clients, conducts advocacy, runs trainings, and provides psychosocial support for survivors. PROJECTOR employs attorneys, legal experts, psychologists, and media professionals.
The funded project will empower LGBTIQ+ children and youth to become advocates within their communities and beyond. The project will (i) create safe spaces for LGBTIQ+ youth, (ii) run legal and advocacy trainings for LGBTIQ+ youth, (iii) run an advocacy campaign to increase LGBTIQ+ youth awareness of human rights and justice processes.
2. Living Hope Foundation (LHF)
Living Hope Foundation (LHF) is a women led NNGO registered with RRC Juba, Wau and Warrap. LHF exist to provide holistic protection and empowerment to women, girls and youth to be able to realize their own potentials and demand for respect of their rights. LHF work to envision “A Just society with Respect, Protection and Promotion of children’s Dignity and Rights with a special focus on adolescent’s girls and youth to ensure advocacy platforms are provided”.
The funded project has the objective of building children’s and youth capacities to advocate against lack of action to sexual violence among children and youths in South Sudan.