Erasing Barriers, Enhancing Safety : A Review of Systems and Strategies for Supporting Muslim Women and Girls Facing Gender-based Violence

This report was created as part of CCMW's GBV project, which seeks to address barriers to services and support for Muslim Women and Girls facing Violence by developing a strategy for systemic change.

In 2022, CCMW developed and published a 130-page guide (“the review guide”) detailing tools, strategies, and criteria for conducting the reviews. The guide is meant to be a resource for organizations that wish to conduct voluntary self-assessments of their policies, programs, and services at any point in time. However, to get a glimpse into the strengths and gaps in supports for Muslim women and girls and to begin a conversation about change, CCMW worked with 9 organizations (both mainstream and Muslim-serving) in Canada between 2022 and 2023 who used and applied the guide to review their policies, programs and services, and graciously shared the results with us.

In this report, we summarize the key findings from the review, as well as recommendations and best practices for supporting Muslim women, girls, trans, non-binary, and two-spirit people facing GBV.

About the author

Silmy Abdullah is a lawyer and an award-nominated writer based in Toronto, Canada. She practised immigration law for a number of years at the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario, focusing on the intersection of immigration, poverty and gender-based violence. In 2021, Silmy started her consulting practice, working with organizations on various gender equality, anti-racism and access to justice initiatives. Her debut collection of short stories, "Home of the Floating Lily," was a finalist for the 2021 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and long-listed for the 2022 Toronto Book Awards.

The guide was made possible through financial support from the Federal Department of Women and Gender Equality (WAGE).