Outcome SLB_D_3.2

Women and Girls, especially from particular groups (with disabilities, rural, sexual and gender minorities) from target countries, who experience violence have access to quality essential services (health, social service, police and justice) to recover from violence

Women and girls across the Solomon Islands, have improved access to quality essential services to recover from violence. The national coordination body for GBV, the SAFENET has expanded across the Solomon Islands, reaching rural women and girls. UN Women has significantly contributed to the capacity strengthening of partners to ensure that services are strengthened and safe and of a high quality. This has resulted in the following: SAFENET members demonstrate increased capacity in how to use the SAFENET data template. The Malaita Christina Care Centre ( MCCC) demonstrated increase in knowledge on how to collect administrative data using the SAFENET data template. A total of 30 Participants representing GBV counsellors and SAFENET members from Honiara and 4 Provinces were engaged in a two weeks pretesting of the Regional GBV counselling training manual which consist of 3 modules and 20 sessions. Implementation of the Solomon Islands National Domestic Violence Counselling Guidelines (DVCC) began in Q1 resulting in the formal establishment of the DVCC, a ppointment of members of DVCC by the MWYCFA, DVCC committee members oriented to their roles and responsibilities as outlined in the DVCC TOR, Chair of DVCC committee appointed. Social Welfare Department Director is appointed as chair of the DVCC, DVCPO s members orientated to the application process to SAFENET for accreditation, Each DVCPO mapped out accreditation the requirements already fulfilled and where there are still gaps, timeframes were agreed on when to fulfill all accreditation requirements. SAFENET capacity Assessment conducted with 42 SAFENET members to ascertain the Honiara SAFENET ’s level of technical capacity. Overall score for this capacity assessment was 59%, a decrease of 10% to the 2020 data which is 68%. A number of new SAFENET members have joined the SAFENET meetings this year and are still not familiar with the whole safenet system

Women and Girls, especially from particular groups (with disabilities, rural, sexual and gender minorities) from target countries, who experience violence have access to quality essential services (health, social service, police and justice) to recover from violence

Progress was made to ensuring women and girls from the Solomon Islands have increased access to quality essential services. SAFENET 2022 data demonstrated how COVID-19 community transmission has impacted the number of new clients accessing SAFENET services, particularly in Honiara. The number of new clients registered in 2022 is 1,571, in contrast to the 3,165 clients registered in 2021. This approximate 50% decrease is consistent with the fact that most services were not operating in full capacity from January to June 2022. Despite the coordinated and well planned for response, COVID-19 brought many challenges to frontline service providers. Each organization had to adapt rapidly and move services online or implement thorough COVID-19 prevention measures. The Solomon Islands Police Force, for example, utilized their vehicles for COVID-19 response therefore de-prioritizing emergency transportation of survivors. Organizations faced challenges in obtaining vehicle passes to transport VAWG survivors to various services during lockdown as well as a lack of capacity to physically house survivors of violence and meet the case demand. Other essential services were disrupted, including the via court, health care and police systems. Health providers were focused on preventing and treating COVID-19 patients. The crisis centre SeifPles was at capacity and did not have sufficient space to accommodate survivors of violence, leading to a closure of their services. MWYCFA’s Department of Women personnel and resources were diverted to support broader national COVID-19 response amidst the state of emergency. As documented globally, resources and interventions for survivors of VAWG were deprioritized or re-routed to respond to the broader public health emergency. While SAFENET maintained a strong and steadfast commitment to providing services, capacities were stretched and efforts focused on supporting broader national priorities. It is widely accepted that GBV cases increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is supported by SeifPles data showing a comparatively high number of women calling the hotline number compared to previous years. SeifPles total genuine hotline calls for 2022 is 7,581. While this figure is the lowest for a calendar year between 2019-2021, the number of women calling the hotline service is 4,144 which is the highest compared to previous years. This might be due to the increased GBV cases during the COVID-19 period and increased awareness of services and rights in communities.