Summary
This article presents the experience of Taalo Saan, a civil society organization in Djibouti that harnesses creativity, peer engagement, and leadership development to prevent gender-based violence and promote human rights. Supported by the European Union, this specific initiative aims to empower more than 700 young people (including girls, boys, and youth with disabilities) to challenge discriminatory norms, promote positive masculinities, and foster community-wide behavioural change. Through participatory workshops, artistic expression, and youth-led awareness sessions, Taalo Saan equips young people to become community focal points who disseminate prevention messages, support victims, and encourage dialogue in safe spaces. Evidence from the field shows significant shifts in awareness, confidence, and reporting, with young women gaining leadership skills and young men engaging as allies. The initiative offers scalable lessons for the IGAD region, demonstrating how youth creativity and co-creation can drive norm transformation and strengthen inclusive peacebuilding grounded in local realities.
- Context
In Djibouti, gender-based violence (GBV) remains a significant barrier to advancing gender equality and inclusive development, with implications for social stability and peacebuilding efforts. While the country has made significant legal progress by criminalizing GBV, deep- rooted social taboos, fear of reprisal, and stigma still prevent survivors from reporting cases or seeking justice. Practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM) continue to affect the majority of women and girls, with prevalence rates reaching 88 % in Tadjourah and 82 % in Dikhil, compared to 68.5 % in Djibouti-Ville. These figures highlight how violence remains normalized in both rural and urban areas, perpetuated by discriminatory norms and unequal power dynamics.
In this challenging environment, the Association Taalo Saan, a youth-focused civil society organization based in Djibouti-Ville, has positioned itself as a powerful driver of social change. Supported by the European Union through the project “Les jeunes comme acteurs de changement pour la promotion des droits humains et la lutte contre les VBG”, the association works to empower young people, girls and boys alike, to become agents of peace, equality and human rights. Its approach rests on a simple but transformative conviction: meaningful and lasting behavioural change can only occur if young people are given the tools and spaces to question social norms, express themselves creatively, and embody positive and respectful models of gender relations.
- Overview of the initiative
The project “Les jeunes comme acteurs de changement pour la promotion des droits humains et la lutte contre les violences basées sur le genre”, implemented by Taalo Saan with the support of the European Union, seeks to position Djiboutian youth, both young women and men, as key agents of prevention and change in the fight against GBV and the promotion of human rights. Through a combination of awareness-raising, leadership development and creative education, the project aims to transform social norms, promote positive masculinities, and strengthen community engagement for equality and peace.
This eighteen-month initiative began in April 2025 and is being implemented across Djibouti- Ville, Balbala and two regions, Dikhil, and Tadjourah, targeting more than 700 young people, including youth with disabilities. To date, over 350 young participants have already been reached through training sessions, community activities, and awareness-raising workshops.
The project adopts a peer-to-peer and participatory approach, encouraging young people to co-create content and lead awareness sessions in their own communities. This participatory dimension is essential to strengthening ownership, ensuring that messages are locally relevant and culturally sensitive. Young participants are trained on human rights, gender equality, consent, and mechanisms for reporting violence. They are then supported to become focal points and community relays, actively disseminating messages of prevention in schools, neighborhoods, and youth spaces.
An important feature of the initiative is the progressive development of pedagogical tools designed to adapt to different levels of literacy and understanding. These include interactive and visual materials that help address sensitive topics, spark dialogue, and encourage critical reflection. By combining participatory education and creative expression, through workshops, community sessions, and artistic competitions, the project creates a safe and inclusive environment where young people can discuss gender norms, question harmful practices, and build empathy across gender lines.
Beyond awareness-raising, the project also focuses on leadership and empowerment, particularly of young women. Dedicated workshops help participants gain confidence, improve public-speaking skills, and take active roles within their families, schools, and communities. Young men, meanwhile, are engaged as allies and promoters of positive masculinity, learning to recognize and challenge stereotypes that perpetuate inequality.
- Engaging young men and boys: Promoting positive masculinity
A central component of Taalo Saan’s work is the deliberate inclusion of young men as allies and advocates. Rather than portraying men solely as perpetrators of violence, the association challenges them to redefine masculinity around values of respect, emotional intelligence and shared responsibility. Facilitators note that boys often respond strongly to sessions on empathy and listening, especially when the discussions emphasize how rigid gender expectations harm everyone.
By integrating messages of positive masculinity in its awareness sessions and visual materials, Taalo Saan fosters reflection among male participants on how they can actively contribute to peace within families, schools, and communities. This aligns with the IGAD’s focus on engaging men and boys in preventive action and on transforming patriarchal norms that fuel violence. Through dialogue and creative expression, the initiative demonstrates that the path to gender equality is not a zero-sum game but a shared journey that strengthens social cohesion and collective security.
- Evidence of impact and behavioural change
Evidence gathered from field activities and focus groups demonstrates a clear transformation not only in awareness but also in behaviour and community engagement. Following the awareness sessions, many young participants have come forward to volunteer as focal points for Taalo Saan, eager to extend the message of prevention within their schools and neighborhoods. Others have begun attending the association’s regular activities, gradually forming a growing network of youth relays who act as intermediaries between the community and the organization. Increasingly, individuals approach these young leaders to report acts of violence or seek advice, knowing that Taalo Saan provides a safe and confidential space. In several instances, the association has worked closely with survivors and referred them to appropriate services and has even acted as a civil party in a case of harassment and blackmail, an unprecedented step for a youth organization in Djibouti.
Facilitating awareness sessions has also helped to break the silence and dismantle taboos surrounding GBV. By creating safe and respectful spaces for dialogue, these sessions allow participants to name and recognize behaviors that were previously normalized, to express emotions long repressed, and to collectively reflect on the difference between cultural practices and human rights violations. This process of naming and understanding violence is crucial: it enables communities to re-examine their beliefs, to challenge harmful norms, and to begin imagining new models of coexistence based on respect, equality and empathy.
At the same time, leadership workshops have given young women a stronger voice and greater confidence to speak publicly, assert their rights, and take decisions within their families and communities. These experiences have strengthened their sense of autonomy and their belief in their ability to influence change. Through this process, Taalo Saan has become more than a youth association: it is now recognized as a trusted community reference in the fight against GBV, bridging the gap between survivors, institutions, and the broader society.
- Key lessons and regional relevance
The experience of Taalo Saan provides valuable lessons for the IGAD region. First, art and emotion create safe entry points for addressing sensitive issues: drawings, short films and games help bypass resistance and open dialogue without confrontation. Second, co-creation ensures sustainability: when youth participate in developing tools, they internalize the messages and continue the work beyond project timelines. Third, engaging young men as part of the solution transforms the social narrative, showing that masculinity can be a source of protection rather than domination.
The initiative also highlights the need to continuously develop and adapt educational tools to the diversity of contexts and audiences. Because Taalo Saan works with communities that differ greatly in literacy levels, cultural references and exposure to concepts of gender equality, the materials must remain interactive, playful and accessible. Rather than static or academic content, the association favors visual and participatory formats that encourage discussion, imagination and empathy. These evolving tools are conceived not as finished products but as living instruments that grow through feedback and collective learning.
Above all, the initiative demonstrates that awareness sessions are more than information campaigns, they are spaces of transformation. By opening dialogue and helping participants to name, question and reframe their experiences, these sessions gradually pave the way for lasting behavioral and normative change. Finally, institutional partnerships with national human rights bodies, women’s organizations and regional councils reinforce credibility, policy linkages and opportunities for replication in other IGAD Member States.
This initiative directly contributes to Thematic Area II of the IGAD Regional Action Plan (2023–2030) on the prevention and response to SGBV. It advances prevention through youth- led awareness and norm transformation, strengthens evidence generation by documenting community perspectives on violence and masculinity, promotes inclusive peacebuilding by engaging both women and men, including persons with disabilities; and amplifies the agency of young people as peacebuilders and defenders of human rights.
By bridging the fields of education, art, and peacebuilding, Taalo Saan demonstrates how grassroots initiatives can feed into regional WPS frameworks with locally grounded evidence and innovative methodologies. The association’s experience shows that empowering youth to speak the language of equality, in words, images, and actions, is one of the most effective ways to build peaceful, just, and inclusive societies across the IGAD region.
Author: Iman Mohamed Idriss
Gender Specialist,
Taalo Saan
City: Djibouti, Djibouti
Year of Publication: 2025
