The study was undertaken by The Equality Institute, and commissioned by the Government of Kiribati through the Ministry of Ministry of Women, Youth, Sport and Social Affairs (MWYSSA) and the UN Women Fiji Multi-Country Office (MCO) through the Pacific Partnership to End Violence Against Women and Girls (Pacific Partnership) programme, funded primarily by the European Union with targeted
support from the governments of Australia and New Zealand and cost-sharing with UN Women. Published December 2019

The Pacific region remains one of the most under-researched regions with respect to IPV, despite being home to countries with some of the highest rates of violence in the world. In Kiribati, the country with highest rates of violence in the Pacific, an estimated 68 percent of women aged 15-49 report lifetime exposure to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate male partner. Yet, there is little data on the effectiveness of primary prevention interventions to reduce IPV in the Pacific region.

From 2019 to 2022 the Ministry of Women, Youth, Sport and Social Affairs (MWYSSA) of the Government of Kiribati is implementing the Strengthening Peaceful Villages (SPV) programme in South Tarawa, with sustained operational and technical assistance from UN Women. SPV is an evidence-based community mobilisation programme, adapted from SASA!, that aims to prevent IPV and promote gender
equitable and non-violent social norms in South Tarawa. The intervention uses a multilevel, multi-stakeholder approach to address the imbalance of power between women and men in the community, and to reshape inequitable social norms around gender, power and violence.

The Equality Institute (EQI) has been contracted by UN Women to conduct an external impact evaluation of the SPV programme in Kiribati. The impact evaluation will contribute to building the global evidence base of ‘what works’ to prevent violence against women and girls in the Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) context.

The impact evaluation consists of three stages: baseline data collection prior to intervention initiation, midline data collection at the midpoint of the intervention, and endline data collection six months post-intervention. The primary aim of the impact evaluation is to assess the effectiveness of the SPV programme in reducing population-level rates of IPV in the target population, and to identify key lessons for what works to adapt the SASA! intervention framework in the Pacific. The secondary aims of the impact evaluation are to assess the effect of the SPV programme on community-level attitudes around IPV, men’s use of controlling behaviours in intimate relationships, women’s ability to negotiate sex within marriage, and community beliefs on family dynamics and parenting practices. This report presents the findings from the baseline study. This baseline study provides the pre-intervention assessment of key outcomes, against which change over time will be evaluated. (From the Executive summary). A 20-page evidence brief of key findings is also available. Record #6766