Historically, responses to GBV have focused on providing short-term crisis intervention services, oftentimes to the exclusion of long-term support. Yet, for many, surviving GBV is just the start of a long road to healing, recovery, and stability. Though providing crisis support is crucial and life-saving, South Asian survivors desperately need sustained wraparound services that enable them to move beyond survival. To ensure that survivors can achieve long-term safety and stability, they must have access to a wide breadth of services (employment and financial assistance, public benefits, housing, transportation, legal and immigration assistance, and mental health and medical services) at every point in their journey.

When South Asian survivors attempt to access support and services, they face numerous systemic barriers, including a lack of long-term support, lack of cultural responsiveness, language barriers, financial barriers, and technology-related barriers. Increasing rates of GBV during the COVID-19 pandemic further heightened these barriers, leaving many survivors without avenues for help.

These obstacles marginalize or exclude South Asian and immigrant survivors from accessing critical relief. While frontline staff at culturally-specific GBV organizations tirelessly advocate for survivors, the public institutions and programs built to support survivors (housing, healthcare, and the legal system) continue to fail them. Moreover, when survivors do not have access to the support they need, they are at risk of being further traumatized and even forced to stay in abusive relationships or environments.

To eliminate barriers to support, services and systems must be accessible, affordable, and tailored to the needs of South Asian survivors and their families.

South Asians in the US are a widely heterogenous and diverse group across many facets of identity, including but not limited to caste, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, religion, age, immigration status, geographic origin, and ethnicity. Due to power structures within and outside the South Asian diaspora, certain groups have been historically and systemically oppressed, including Dalits, Muslims, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, ethnic minorities, and more.

Survivors from these subgroups often experience GBV at the intersection of multiple oppressions, contributing to further discrimination, isolation, economic and social challenges, and lack of access to services.

To ensure survivors from these groups are not overlooked, there is an imminent need to break existing barriers to accessing support, increase outreach, and tailor services to the needs of these survivors. Without the knowledge and resources to serve survivors with intersectional identities and experiences, organizations risk causing additional harm by repeating oppressive practices and systems.

South Asian communities across the US often experience harm at the hands of the criminal legal system, which purports to help them. This harm is part of a wider pattern of violence caused by the criminal legal system that specifically targets communities of color, especially Black communities. For South Asian survivors, engaging with the criminal legal system has led to dangerous consequences, including deportation and criminalization, for themselves, their families, and entire communities.

To reimagine systems of justice, South Asian GBV organizations need resources and training to build and invest in new solutions outside the current legal system. In addition, organizations can follow and amplify pre-existing Black, Muslim, and Dalit-led transformative justice organizing efforts. With this investment, communities can support the development of survivor-centered and community-based programs that do not involve the police or require state intervention, including mental health services, restorative and transformative justice strategies, and community accountability and healing. Instead of perpetuating further violence, these solutions to address and prevent GBV must prioritize safety and care for survivors and their communities.

Traditionally, approaches to GBV have focused on interpersonal relationships, which has led to the direct services model that focuses on crisis intervention. However, GBV does not occur in a vacuum and often intersects with other forms of systemic discrimination and violence, including caste- and class-based oppression.

Across the sector, South Asian GBV organizations must shift from approaches that foreground the interpersonal nature of GBV towards a community organizing approach that addresses culture and structural causes of violence. Within South Asian communities, analysis and strategies for ending GBV must include eradicating all forms of violence and oppression.

South Asian GBV organizations are chronically underfunded, leaving them to operate with scarcity and hindering sustainable growth and scalability. Underfunding challenges are further compounded by restrictive funds, laborious grant applications, and funding requirements that strain the capacity of understaffed organizations.

To unlock sustainability and growth, organizations require multi-year, general operating grants and unrestricted funding that enable them to strengthen operations and infrastructure, increase staff salaries, and provide life-saving services to survivors. In addition to increased financial support, funding practices must evolve to center trust, equity, and respect for frontline organizations and their staff.

Many South Asian individuals who work on the frontlines of GBV work are primary or secondary survivors of GBV themselves. However, staff at all levels, from entry-level staff to Executive Directors, are often underpaid and undervalued, leaving them without livable wages, sustainable jobs, or career growth opportunities. These working conditions heighten the risk of burnout and lead to high turnover rates within organizations, leading to unfortunate consequences for survivors and communities.

Organizations and boards need funding and training to internally develop institutional cultures that support employees' well-being and professional development while providing adequate compensation and benefits. Simultaneously, organizations need resources to develop and practice anti-oppressive and liberatory values that uphold gender-inclusivity, caste equity, and anti-racism in the workplace.

GBV is rooted in systemic and cultural conditions that must be addressed and eliminated. However, most GBV services focus on responding to violence only after it occurs. In addition to providing crisis and intervention services to survivors, South Asian GBV organizations lead community education and prevention programming. Yet, organizational funding and resources to invest in prevention efforts remain sparse. Without the critical support for upstream and prevention work that addresses the root causes of GBV, cycles of GBV will continue endlessly across generations.

To effectively prevent and end GBV in South Asian communities, frontline GBV organizations need increased support to address interpersonal, cultural, and structural inequities and factors that lead to GBV.

Historically, those most impacted by GBV have been excluded from identifying and creating mainstream solutions to address and end GBV. Unsurprisingly, this exclusion of survivors, especially marginalized survivors, leads to developing programs and policies that do not center or meet survivors' and their families' needs.

To build long-lasting, meaningful change, those closest to and most impacted by issues of GBV must be the people guiding, creating, and leading the solutions. To do this, an investment in survivor leadership, particularly of survivors most impacted by racism, classism, ableism, and cissexism, through leadership development and resource redistribution is essential.

There are over 40 organizations currently working to address issues of GBV in South Asian communities across the US. Working independently has allowed organizations to be attentive to their local communities' needs yet has stunted collective reimagining and power-building possibilities.

By exchanging information, insights, and best practices, these organizations stand to grow from each other's experiences and expertise, leading to strengthened programs and workplaces. Moreover, collaboration and communication across intersecting movement groups are needed to build a cohesive movement for gender and survivor justice that combats patriarchy, racism, casteism, capitalism, and white supremacy.