A Conversation on Gender-Based Violence with Dr. Daniela Ligiero
By Peyton Temple
On Tuesday, February 26th, 2019, Dr. Daniela Ligiero spoke at Georgetown to an undergraduate seminar course, Conversations in Global Health. The conversation we had with Dr. Ligiero was engaging and personal. The CEO and Executive Director of Together for Girls, a global public-private organization that believes ending violence against children is fundamental to global health and inequality, Dr. Ligiero touched on quite a few difficult topics of discussion. Yet, the conversation was bright and inspirational. Dr. Ligiero’s focus is clearly on a hopeful future for non-violence, rooted in solutions to address these pressing global health issues.
Dr. Ligiero has held multiple positions over her career; from the U.S. Senate to UNICEF, she’s affected policy and equality initiatives for women and girls at every level. Dr. Ligiero is a doctoral graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, and used her doctorate degree in counseling psychology to work in the field with survivors of sexual assault and sexual violence. At the U.S. Department of State she helped to implement the strategy to end gender-based violence. Ligiero also spent time at the UN foundation, establishing crucial policies on gender integration. Ligiero stressed how important it was for her to unite her passion for both data and science and policy, with the goal of actually communicating ideas in academia to those making decisions for our country.
Today, at Together for Girls, Dr. Ligiero draws upon these experiences to focus on sexual violence against girls, uniting six UN agencies, the American and Canadian governments, and the private sector in the cause. Listed on their website, some of these partners include global health giants like PEPFAR, USAID, WHO, and UNICEF. When we spoke to her about the most pressing issues of global health today, she emphasized both the prevention of gender-based violence as a prerequisite for global health, and the future of the fight for gender equality.
When asked about her field today, Dr. Ligiero talked to us about, “attention to solutions rather than attention to problems.” She noted that the majority of our news cycle is devoted only to the problem, especially in the field of global health and in gender-based violence worldwide. Instead, Dr. Ligiero says, to address the most pressing problems that face us (sexual violence against girls, as well as gender inequality itself), we must turn to the problem-solvers.
Dr. Ligiero affirmed that gender-based violence is a crucial topic for global health; HIV prevention, mental health, and so many other critical health issues require interference in childhood. That successful interference in childhood violence, especially for girls, today, looks like solutions. It looks like implementing the data the academic world has provided policy-makers for years, in effective ways. In response to the question of whether or not we have solutions for preventing sexual violence on college campuses, Dr. Ligiero’s response was a firm “Yes.” It is just a matter of implementing the tangible solutions.
Dr. Ligiero’s career continues to shape the global landscape for preventing gender-based violence and policy worldwide on female sexual and reproductive health. We are so grateful for the insight she provided into the range of global health prevention, and for her wisdom on gender equality.
Peyton Tempel (SFS ‘20) is a Science, Technology, and International Affairs major concentrating on Global Health.
This blog was written by a student in Georgetown’s Conversations in Global Health course, which brings leaders in global health to Georgetown to discuss their careers and work.