Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA)

This 18-page case study shares the experience of the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) organisation. According to the case study, entrenched gender inequality is a major contributor to Swaziland's HIV prevalence rate, which in turn, hinders poverty reduction and national development activities. For the past ten years, the Swaziland Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) has been addressing the links between the HIV epidemic, gender-based violence (GBV), and human rights. Although SWAGAA was initially formed to provide counselling services to survivors of GBV, it has expanded its programmes to include outreach, working with media, and policy advocacy.

SWAGAA’s organisational mission centres on eradicating GBV and promoting human rights for all Swazi citizens. Strategies for achieving this vision include advocacy, services, and activities to improve GBV policy, prevent violence, and provide care, support, and access to justice to survivors of GBV. New programmes and activities that expand the reach of the organisation were developed in response to needs expressed by community members during baseline studies and community assessments - an approach the organisation uses to identify needs and gaps in services. Community assessments led SWAGAA to integrate HIV within all of its programmes. Assessments also pointed to the strong need for an increasing emphasis on engaging men and boys, preventing GBV, developing a referral network to increase the capacity to meet survivors’ needs, and implementing a more strategic response to GBV.  The case study identifies the following as what has worked well for the organisation:

• Engaging survivors: SWAGGA identifies critical factors of early success as deep passion for the cause, perseverance in the face of adversity, the role of survivors who spoke out about their stories, and the strong support of the media, nurtured through meetings, training, and collaboration.
• Engaging the media: One of SWAGAA's strategies from the beginning was engaging the media as partners, laying a groundwork that created a sustained relationship. Early in SWAGAA’s development, staff held meetings with the editor of each media house and took the time to learn how the media works. SWAGAA continues to work with editors to understand and appreciate the complexities of GBV, and provide training to help the media become more sensitive to the needs of those who survived violence. In turn, the media often alerts SWAGAA about reports of abuse. As the media prints newsworthy and important stories, SWAGAA acknowledges them with awards.
• Partnering with community leaders: All SWAGAA community programmes begin with a presentation and sensitisation on the issue to the chief's inner council. Official acceptance at this traditional level allows the programme to function and is typically the source for volunteers who staff the programmes at local levels. SWAGAA’s work at the community level, particularly school sensitisations, has promoted widespread awareness and education about GBV and children’s human rights, and provided SWAGAA with high visibility and virtually universal name recognition throughout the country.
• Engaging men as partners: Working with men to achieve a more gender-equitable society has been critical to SWAGAA's recent progress. SWAGAA uses a "man-to-man" approach, helping men reflect about their notions of masculinity and engaging them as partners in GBV prevention. Among the changes since SWAGAA began to proactively engage men is a more open stance within communities for messages about GBV.
• Multiple partnerships: SWAGAA works in close collaboration with civil society organisations, government, United Nations agencies, and donors to accomplish its mission and objectives. This is intended to increase efficiency or resource use, and helps SWAGAA maintain its close focus on supporting survivors of GBV.
• Expanding organisational capacity by building a broad-based network of providers: SWAGAA places a strong emphasis on developing a network of partners that can provide GBV services, including services to children, as a strategy to leverage its own capacity to serve all GBV survivors in Swaziland.

The case study identifies key challenges as sustainability of funding, slow policy response, limited internal capacity, and serving men as clients. The case study outlines several recommendations for other programmes, as well as for SWAGGA's own continued development:

• Use survivors’ voices to combat denial and to determine needs: Denial that abuse occurs among families in one’s own community is a global issue. Having women who can tell their stories can break this denial. In addition, including women who have experienced abuse among staff, board members, and volunteers is a good practice for programming and evaluation.
• Use assessment to determine needs: Situational analyses and baseline assessments help to identify what is already working and what is not, and specifies gaps that can be filled. Questions to ask include the following: What structures are in place to provide support and service to women? Who are the key partners? How can programmes coordinate services? How can the links between HIV and GBV prevention and services be improved?
• Develop a national coordinating mechanism for GBV: SWAGAA sees the lack of a national coordinating agency for GBV in Swaziland as a factor that limits the effectiveness and synergy of programming and partnerships.
• Advocate for a national budget for GBV: In Swaziland, the absence of a reasonable national budget for the Gender Unit, the National Children’s Coordinating Unit, and other government agencies tasked with addressing gender inequity limits the ability of these entities to do the work even with committed staff. A recommendation is to ensure a sufficient national budget specifically for GBV.
• Generate and use evidence: The international evidence base on effective interventions for GBV remains thin. A key recommendation is to incorporate monitoring and evaluation into all programmes. In addition, it is critical to identify funding to support an infrastructure with the capacity to support evidence gathering from the beginning, so that data can be easily collected, analysed, and reported, and the results used to improve programmes.
• Leverage cultural assets: SWAGAA’s ability to work so closely at grassroots levels and to gain the legitimacy and respect required to broach sensitive topics in communities is to a large extent related to its willingness to work with traditional leaders. Where appropriate, efforts to leverage key cultural assets such as the traditional sector to make them part of the solution can only strengthen and deepen programming.

Click here to read the case study online.