South Sudan Crisis: Why We Must Broaden the Conversation on GBV Data

When examining gender-based violence (GBV) in humanitarian crises, the discussion often turns toward how many cases there have been. Though “getting the numbers” may, at first glance, seem like the most logical and efficient way to understand any issue, placing too much emphasis on counting GBV cases can – for a number of reasons – actually be counterproductive. Focusing only on numbers not only fails to capture the true extent and scale of the GBV that is occurring, it can also expose survivors to further harm, lead to misinterpretations of the data, and result in other, more useful sources of information being dismissed or ignored.

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