How we work

Our approach

The Global Survivors Fund (GSF) works through three core pillars:

Act

Supporting civil society organisations and survivor networks in co-creating interim reparative measures with survivors.

Advocate

For duty bearers to honour their responsibility to provide reparation, as well as influence international policy agendas to prioritise reparation.

Guide

Identifying and creating best practice through knowledge sharing, and by providing technical support to States and other appropriate stakeholders responsible for the development and implementation of reparation programmes.

Our work is carried out so that:

1

Survivors are agents of their own change

We act with survivors. Through the co-creation of interim reparative measure projects, survivors are a part of the decision-making process from the very beginning. Only survivors can identify what form of reparations they need, so they actively participate in project design and implementation. The co-creation process itself is reparative for survivors because they are heard and supported.

2

Survivors improve their social lives

A significant impact of interim reparative measures projects is that survivors improve their social status within their families and communities. They even report a decrease in stigmatisation.

3

Duty bearers take responsibility for their obligation to implement survivor-centred national reparation programmes

4

Survivors have tools to advance their rights

Our Global Reparations Study is designed to be a critical advocacy tool that can be used by survivors. In being produced through a multistakeholder collaboration involving the voices of survivors and local partners, it is an authoritative document that frames their experiences, expectations, and vision to realise their right to reparation. There is enhanced knowledge and capacity to implement survivor-centred reparations and redress programmes.

5

There is international acceptance of the moral and legal imperative to provide survivors with holistic reparations

Ensuring that the voice and insights of people who have lived through conflict-related sexual violence are heard at international conferences and roundtables is fundamental in making sure that policymakers begin to understand and consider the actual needs and perspectives of survivors in developing reparation programmes. We want the involvement of survivors to be a norm – rather than an exception – in advocacy.

“What I am most happy about is that normally we are invited only in the middle [of projects], but with this programme, we are invited from the beginning until the end. I feel this is justice.”

Survivor from Nepal