Thank you very much.
I think the question of gender-based violence in the context of COVID has really been one of the most disturbing impacts of COVID, because it has existed, of course, as we all know, in all our societies, but COVID has shone a light on this and expanded our understanding. However, also, the lockdowns have increased family tensions and we've seen an exacerbation of an existing situation.
What do we do about it? Perhaps before I mention what one might do, one thing that has been so interesting is that within weeks of COVID we were getting reports from our call centres in many parts of the world, but particularly Africa and Latin America, where in one instance we were getting 10 times the number of calls on gender-based violence in these countries. It has been true all over the world. It's not particular.
It's a very worrying phenomenon. What do we do? At UNHCR, one of the things we're doing is developing call centres. We're massively or very significantly increasing call centres to give greater access to women to call in. We can then provide mechanisms for getting out to legal advice, to health centres, to psychosocial support where necessary and to other social services. We think that's one way of achieving it in the context of a COVID that continues.
As Peggy said, people need options, shelters, but perhaps what it comes down to ultimately is greater funding and stronger advocacy to ensure that this funding is in place, not just as a temporary measure but something that becomes a significant feature of the social safety net of all systems and includes women in the environment of a pandemic. This won't be the last pandemic. There will be others, and this is a continuing and societal problem.