In recent years, the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, Sphere, and other humanitarian working groups established important guidelines for GBV in emergencies. Humanitarian practitioners have focused more attention on GBV in both emergency and development settings, and have made strides toward meeting survivors’ multidimensional needs, empowering women and children in particular, and decreasing their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse.

Reliable data is crucial to informing the humanitarian response to gender-based violence. The humanitarian community had not had a tried-and-tested approach for the collection, management and sharing of GBV-related data generated through service delivery. That gap hindered programming potential, inter-agency coordination and advocacy efforts. A robust GBV information management system now exists, and has been implemented in over 20 countries over nearly 10 years, the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System (GBVIMS). The GBVIMS initiative was originally launched in 2006 by UNOCHA, UNHCR, and the IRC. The GBVIMS Steering Committee now consists of UNFPA, UNICEF, UNHCR, IRC and IMC.