Ideas wall
- There is a need to engage with government in a constructive way.
- The existence of laws passed by the government is crucial:
o It opens a space for dialogue to demand improvements. o It is the basis to seek justice. o People do not want to be labeled as criminals and will refrain from adopting behaviors prohibited by the laws. o It generally creates an enabling environment for change.
- Governments need to be made accountable on the basis of existing laws (implementation gaps).
- Several challenges need to be addressed by governments such as the independence of the judicial or the accessibility of justice.
- Government are not monolithic and change can happen. We need to find different avenues and in-roads at different levels. Working with local government can often prove to be effective.
- Having the government passing a law is a starting point for civil society’s work, especially on calling for effective implementation of the law.
- Challenging laws and policy implementation requires us to collaborate with government and civil society.
- Strategies to end gender-based violence need to have governments involved from the start to ensure ownership and accountability (including monitoring of implementation).
- Remember that governments are composed of individuals who themselves have their own attitudes and who are influenced by families and communities.
- Legislation and policies are representations of social norms and can reinforce either positive or negative social norms.
- We expect change to come from political leadership and yet political leadership usually relies on/is enabled by change in society (“people’s permission”).
- We must work on the relation between governments, individuals, institutions and society when creating change.
- There is a difficult relationship to work on between tradition laws and government laws.
- Oxfam in Pakistan on working with government:
o Support government’s initiatives to have its laws prevail (on religious and tradition laws especially). o Deploy gender focal points at decision-making levels in government structures.
- The Bangladesh experience spoke about working with government – can learn from their experience, especially on services
- Expense of legal recourse
- Alternate dispute resolution and interaction with court system
Interrogations- There is a need to work on internal change before working on external change while working with government: should we working on capacity building related to violence against women to help overcome “tokenistic” agreement and remove internal blocks within governments?
- How do we engage with states (or do not), including militarized states?
- In what instances/contexts is it perhaps more effective to be confrontational (or not) when working with government actors?

Resources | Presenters
Joselyn Bigirwa. jbigirwa@oxfam.org.uk Marketplace. “Multi-stakeholder”
Joselyn Bigirwa_Multistakeholder program Uganda_P2PJoselyn Bigirwa_Multistak...holder program Uganda_P2P Laura Haylock. laura.haylock@oxfam.ca SVRI. “Conceptual framework”
Laura Haylock - Oxfam's Conceptual Framework on Changing Social Norms - SVRI and P2PLaura Haylock - Oxfam's C...cial Norms - SVRI and P2P Abul Hossain. chossain2019@yahoo.com Skills Building, “Psychosocial counselling”. Pumla Gqola. pumla.gqola@wits.ac.za Panel. “What do we mean by ANB”. Brigitte Topinanty. btdionadji@oxfam.org.uk Think Tank. “Theatre for advocacy with traditional leaders and government”. Saleema Munir. smmunir@oxfam.org.uk
Think tank. “Aligning formal and informal laws and norms”.
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