Empowering survivors of gender-based violence: Insights from NGO-led one-stop centres

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Globally, women face discrimination and inequality due to prevailing socio-cultural systems. These gender-based inequalities have long-term adverse effects on individuals and societies. Violence against women and girls also continues to be pervasive, with the determinants being multilevel and intersectional.

In India, different forms of daily aggression against women and girls are overlooked, and typically accepted as norms. According to the National Family Health Survey 2019-21 (NFHS- 5), 29.3 percent of married Indian women aged 18-49 years have ever experienced domestic violence. The actual incidence is likely to be much higher, as many of these crimes are left unreported. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has recorded an increase in the incidence of crimes against women, with 445,256 cases reported in 2022 against 428,278 in 2021. According to the same data set, Maharashtra is the state with the highest observed rise in crimes against women, increasing by 10-15 percent since 2021; Mumbai has one of the highest numbers of reported cases of sexual harassment and human trafficking of women across cities.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has recorded an increase in the incidence of crimes against women, with 445,256 cases reported in 2022 against 428,278 in 2021.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has long recognised violence against women and girls as a global public health issue. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is also a global action agenda item under the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5).

In 2015, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, established One-Stop Centres (OSC), through the Nirbhaya Fund, to address the interrelated issues of violence against women. The centres are designed to provide survivors, in one setting, with different medical, psychosocial, and legal services. OSCs also facilitate temporary shelters for survivors, preferably in or near a hospital facility. At the district level, OSCs coordinate and converge with other initiatives, such as Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs), Women Helpline (WHL), Special Fast Track Courts (SFTCs), and District Legal Service Authorities (DLSAs). According to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, there are 752 currently operational OSCs in India, which have assisted 801,062 women between 2015 and 2023. However, these OSCs face challenges in ensuring the provision of critical assistance and support to women survivors of violence.

Case study: OSCs in Mumbai

Mumbai and its suburban districts have an estimated population of 13.1 million. The city has a high incidence of crime, alcoholism, gender-based violence, and structural inequality, as well as a large migrant population who live in conditions of poverty.

The Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) launched the OSC scheme in the city with two NGOs that work across Mumbai and its suburban districts—the Society for Nutrition,Education and Health Action (SNEHA) and Urja Trust.

The Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) launched the OSC scheme in the city with two NGOs that work across Mumbai and its suburban districts—the Society for Nutrition,Education and Health Action (SNEHA) and Urja Trust. Two OSCs were established—one at the King Edward Memorial Hospital (Parel) and the other at the Balasaheb Thackeray Trauma Centre (Jogeshwari)—which provide quality care and support to women and girls who are survivors of gender-based violence. Medical experts and OSC staff attend to survivors who visit the OSCs and facilitate the timely collection of samples for forensic testing. Survivors are not required to visit the police station to record their statements or file complaints. Despite limited resources and the rising incidence of violence, the OSCs have steadily expanded their reach.

Given the relationship between trauma and violence,  the OSCs also facilitate psychological aid through crisis counselling and extended counselling to the survivors. The OSCs also coordinate with public health officials, District Legal Service Authorities (DLSAs), protection officers, and the police (for FIR registration), and provide legal support. For survivors under the age of 18, they establish coordination with authorities under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offence Act 2012. More than half (58.4 percent) of registered cases involve domestic violence (see Figure 2), which raises significant concerns and emphasises the need to bolster prevention and redressal mechanisms and recognise domestic violence at the systemic and societal levels. Additionally, the rising number of reported cases of sexual violence against women and children necessitates coordinated efforts with the police, judiciary, child welfare committees, and social services to ensure effective and streamlined interventions.

Learnings, challenges, and the way forward

OSCs help institutionalise a systemic response to survivors of violence against women and children. The government must examine the system’s responsiveness along a continuum of ‘prevention and response’ interventions to address gender-based violence. While managing OSCs has always been difficult, the mandates and responsibilities introduced by recent policy amendments and the Mission Shakti guidelines have made the implementation of OSCs an even bigger challenge.

• Standardisation of implementation guidelines: Initiatives should not be singularly attached to individual partner organisations to locate policy, strategy, and practice within rights and state accountability frameworks. Instead, initiatives need to be standardised and supported institutionally through mandates, clear policy guidelines, and protocols to address the specific needs of the survivors.
  
  
• Audit: Independent social audits by government and NGO-implemented OSCs must incorporate survivor feedback on service provision. Furthermore, the number of OSCs needs to increase and their presence needs to expand in public health facilities such as tertiary and peripheral hospitals.
  
  
• Integration with Mission Shakti: Launched in 2022 by the central government, Mission Shakti is an umbrella initiative that integrates various existing and new schemes such as the OSCs, WHL, Shakti Sadan, Sakhi Niwas, and Nari Adalat—all designed to enhance women’s safety and security. The intent and efforts to streamline services at the state and district levels can help overcome operational challenges and avoid significant delays. This must be supplemented by overcoming structural issues, ensuring coordination among stakeholders, and establishing the clarity of public-private partnerships to enhance sustainable multisectoral response to gender-based violence.
  
  
• Regularisation of grant disbursal: Irregular and delayed grant disbursement to agencies/NGOs creates uncertainty and increased pressure to raise timely funds for staff salaries to prevent attrition. OSCs frequently encounter obstacles with staffing. The centres typically have 13 members: an administrator; case workers; medical, legal, and psychosocial support personnel; and other support staff. In the Mumbai region, NGOs mandated to run the OSCs have opted to recruit additional staff, giving them higher salaries, to ensure adequate quality of care and effective service delivery.
  
  
• Provision of adequate and safe spaces: Infrastructural issues in cities, such as limited space for temporary shelters and kitchens/pantries, significantly add to the challenges faced by OSCs. The government must allot adequate and dedicated spaces to OSCs in public hospitals to allow them to manage their functions seamlessly.
  
  
• Staff’s well-being and benefits: State policies must consider the welfare of individuals working in OSCs, including those related to paid leaves, employment benefits, and social-emotional well-being. As most of the staff comprise contractual workers, primarily women, a comprehensive policy that is compliant with labour laws and sensitive to staff welfare and morale will ensure their retention. In Maharashtra, the Women and Child Department, along with the Urja Trust, implemented a paid leave policy for all contractual workers in state and central schemes. Such measures must be scaled up nationally.
  
  
• Gender-responsive protocols: Specific procedures need to be in place to rehabilitate survivors, especially those with multiple needs such as HIV infection, mental illness, disability, pregnancy, or complex health conditions, to ensure that their needs are met and their rights protected. Since steps for further rehabilitation need to be mandatorily determined after five days of a temporary shelter at an OSC, strengthening the network with public-private partnerships for rehabilitating survivors on a long-term basis with institutional support can support women in need.
  
  
• Capacity building and training: Stakeholder knowledge must be increased through training on gender and gender-based violence as well as its consequences on women’s health, relevant laws, and support services while emphasising the role of service providers as responders under various laws. Such sustainable, multisectoral engagement can increase referrals, strengthen coordinated response, and augment effectiveness. With the targeted capacity building and training of personnel, OSCs can improve their oversight, monitoring, coordination, review, and corrective approaches.
  
  
• Extending OSC tenure: The annual renewal of OSC MoUs is a cumbersome and complicated process. To ensure long-term commitment and effective planning, the government must extend the one-year MoUs with implementing partners to three to five years.

Along with Mission Shakti’s sub-schemes, OSCs are central to promoting and facilitating alternative dispute resolution and holistic well-being as well as propagating gender justice in society and within families. They are also critical for the success of integrated efforts to ensure women’s safety, security, and empowerment. Therefore, in India’s rapidly expanding urban landscape, upscaling OSCs to widen their reach and improve effectiveness is paramount to the success of Mission Shakti.

Nikhat Shaikh is the Director of the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Children Programme at the Society for Nutrition, Education, and Health Action

Ankita K is the Head of Programmes at Urja Trust

• Gender
• Urbanisation in India
• GENDER ISSUES
• Urbanisation
• India
• crimes against women
• crimes against women
• Domestic Violence
• gender-based violence
• India
• legal support
• legal support
• Mission Shakti
• Mumbai
• One-Stop Centres
• One-Stop Centres
• psychological aid
• psychological aid
• Public Health
• rehabilitation
• sexual harassment
• violence survivors
• violence survivors
• Women

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