The paper has been prepared for the Office of Development Effectiveness which will be conducting an evaluation of Australia’s development assistance towards EVAWG. This will be a ten-year follow up to ODE’s 2008 evaluation Violence against Women in Melanesia and East Timor. The evaluation will assess the effectiveness of Australian policy engagement and development assistance to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls since 2008. This paper on Australia’s policy commitments to EVAWG will inform the evaluation, particularly its accountability dimension.

The findings presented in the paper derive from a desk-based review of key documents: Australian aid policy and strategy documents, including current Aid Investment Plans and Aid Partnership documents; Australian domestic policy and strategy documents; and global and regional policy, strategy and legal documents. The analysis revealed the Australian Government’s strong commitment to promoting gender equality, empowering women and girls, and preventing and reducing SGBV, both within Australia and internationally. The documents reviewed consistently highlighted the unacceptably high prevalence of SGBV, globally. They position SGBV as inherently linked to, and resulting from, gender inequality. The documents describe SGBV as criminal, a significant human rights violation, a form of discrimination against women, and threat to development.

A major finding of this analysis is that gender equality and EVAWG have consistently been given importance in the policies of Australian Governments over the past decade. Documents reviewed also show that the emphasis Australia gives to promoting gender equality internationally has increased over the course of the last decade. This has been accompanied by a greater focus on EVAWG across the aid program. While EVAWG has been a consistent theme across Australian Government policies of the past ten years, Australia’s policy emphasis on EVAWG has shifted. The Australian aid program has evolved over the last decade from positioning SGBV as principally a health concern, to a justice and security issue, to a complex development challenge requiring a variety of interventions spanning many sectors and issues and involving a broad range of partners. Aid policy documents show the Australian aid program to now emphasise a comprehensive approach to addressing SGBV. The approach combines improving the quality of services and responses, access to justice, and prevention.

The documents reviewed contain numerous targets and commitments for EVAWG, cutting across a range of development issues/themes: gender equality, empowerment of women and girls and violence against women and girls; peace, justice and strong institutions; service provision; prevention; women and girls in conflict and disaster zones; disability-inclusive development; an integrated approach to EVAWG; global, regional and bilateral engagement with governments; research and reporting. The specific commitments are set out in the document; a list containing all targets and commitments is provided at page 16. Australia’s development assistance can then be cross-checked against this list to assess the extent to which Australia has met its commitments to EVAWG.