“At the Root of COVID Grew a More Complicated Situation”: A Qualitative Analysis of the Guatemalan Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response System during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

A growing body of literature has documented an increased risk of gender-based violence (GBV) within the context of COVID-19 and service providers’ reduced capacity to address this vulnerability. Less examined are the system-level impacts of the pandemic on the GBV sector in low- and middle-income countries. Drawing on the perspectives of 18 service providers working across various GBV-related sectors in Guatemala, we explored how the Guatemalan GBV prevention and response system operated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings highlight that the pandemic reinforced survivors’ existing adversities (inadequate transportation access, food insecurity, digital divides), which subsequently reduced access to reporting, justice, and support. Consequently, the GBV prevention and response system had to absorb the responsibility of securing survivors’ essential social determinants of health, further limiting already inflexible budgets. The pandemic also imposed new challenges, such as service gridlocks, that negatively affected survivors’ system navigation and impaired service providers’ abilities to efficiently receive reports and mobilize harm reduction and prevention programming. The findings underscore the systemic challenges faced by GBV service providers and the need to incorporate gender mainstreaming across public service sectors—namely, transportation and information/communication—to improve lifesaving GBV service delivery for Guatemalan survivors, particularly survivors in rural/remote regions.

Intimate Partner Violence and Mental Health: Deepening Our Understanding of Associations, Pathways, and Prevention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

“…Findings presented in this Special Issue expand the evidence base on IPV and mental health in several important ways. First, findings highlight opportunities for practitioners and policymakers to prevent the mental health consequences of IPV earlier in the life course by demonstrating how IPV may mediate the relationships between earlier exposures—such as childhood trauma, HIV+ status, economic precarity, and pandemic conditions—and mental illness [ 27 , 28 , 32 , 33 ]. Second, the included analyses elucidate how certain attitudes or behaviors might serve to strengthen or otherwise modify the link between IPV and mental health, and how these interactions may vary by context.…”

Danger Zone or Newfound Freedoms: Exploring Women and Girls’ Experiences in the Virtual Space during COVID-19 in Iraq

“…The data analysis procedures described here are part of a larger, mixed-methods research study that was conducted in four countries: Iraq, Italy, Guatemala, and Brazil. The aim of the larger study was to understand women and girls’ experiences of safety and well-being as well as their access to and availability and quality of GBV services [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. The study also sought to understand service adaptations made by providers to promote continuity of service in the face of public health control measures.…”

“The pandemic only gave visibility to what is invisible”: a qualitative analysis of structural violence during COVID-19 and impacts on gender-based violence in Brazil

“…Each analyst read through their assigned transcripts, drafting analytical memos simultaneously. During this process the team considered previous codes included in a codebook that had previously been used in Guatemala for the same study [ 37 ]. The team reflected on how these codes did or did not apply to the Brazil data.…”