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Knowledge and Narratives
Justice beyond Jails Campaign
18 May 2026
Justice beyond Jails: Global Campaign Challenges Reliance on Policing and Prisons in Responding to Gender-Based Violence
Global | 18 March – 18 September 2026
Just Futures Collaborative and its partners – Athena Network,The Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), and International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW-AP) – reaffirm their commitment to Justice beyond Jails, a six-month global campaign challenging dominant responses to gender-based violence (GBV) that rely on policing and incarceration.
Despite decades of activism and more than 1,500 laws addressing GBV across 191 countries, progress has remained limited. According to the World Health Organization, rates of partner or sexual violence have declined by only 0.2% annually over the past two decades. At the same time, investment in prevention remains critically low: in 2022, just 0.2% of global development aid was allocated to programmes addressing violence against women, forcing over a third of women’s rights organisations to suspend or shut down essential services.
“More policing and prisons have not delivered the safety, accountability and justice to meet the needs of people who have been harmed through gender-based violence," said [Susana T Fried, Just Futures Collaborative]. “For too long, we've measured progress against gender-based violence by the number of laws passed and people imprisoned — while rates of violence have barely moved. Justice beyond Jails is a call to invest in what actually works: communities, survivors, and the conditions that make safety and accountability possible”
The campaign draws attention to the limitations of punitive legal approaches, which often treat violence as isolated incidents while overlooking the structural conditions that enable it. Evidence and lived experience show that these systems too often fail to prevent harm and, in some cases, deepen it — particularly for people facing discrimination, including migrants, sex workers, queer and trans people, and those living in poverty.
Many people who experience violence do not turn to formal systems. Fewer than 10% of those who seek support report to the police, often due to fear, stigma, and lack of trust. For those navigating multiple forms of marginalisation, barriers to safety, care, and accountability are even more pronounced.
Justice beyond Jails highlights community-based, feminist, and accountability-centred approaches that respond to harm while addressing its root causes. The campaign brings together an interactive storytelling tool, webinars, learning sessions, publications, and a global digital campaign to create space for reflection, dialogue, and cross-movement learning.
The campaign also draws attention to the growing weaponisation of GBV narratives by anti-gender and anti-democracy actors, who use these narratives to justify exclusion and roll back rights. Justice beyond Jails seeks to shift the conversation — focusing on approaches that strengthen safety, justice, and freedom.
Media are invited to engage with the campaign and request interviews with organisers and partners.
For more information, visit:
https://justfuturescollaborative.com/justice-beyond-jails
ENDS
Media Contact:
Pauline Nyakara Muhonja
pauline@justfuturescollaborative.org
Download the release here