Engaging refugee women and girls as experts: co-creating evidence on sexual exploitation and abuse in humanitarian crises using creative, participatory methods

Humanitarian evidence is produced in settings of heightened power imbalances between research stakeholders. Yet evidence production processes often lack explicit reflection of who is shaping the questions asked and making meaning of the answers. This paper highlights our Empowered Aid program, which is participatory action research that seeks to mitigate sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) perpetrated by aid actors. Refugee women and girls in Uganda and Lebanon, as experts on SEA risk, are engaged co-researchers in generating evidence on how to make aid distributions safer.