UN Trust Fund

United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women

Item ID
{A10F4792-9D89-4F4B-8891-5AECD88A5BF5}
UNAgency ID
{67C6C016-204D-4BA2-BC9F-902694C2F346}
Background

The UN Trust Fund to End Violence Against Women (UN Trust Fund) is the only global grant-making mechanism that is dedicated exclusively to addressing all forms of violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund raises and distributes funds to support multi-year demand-driven projects to address, prevent and ultimately end violence against women and girls in three priority areas: improving access for women and girls to essential, safe and adequate multi-sectorial services; furthering the implementation of legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems; and promoting the prevention of violence against women and girls. Over the past 25 years, its grantees have impacted the lives of women and girls in every region, addressing complex and diverse forms of violence against women and girls through innovative projects driven by the demands of their particular contexts. In 2020, the UN Trust Fund supported 150 projects aimed at preventing and addressing violence against women and girls with grants totalling 72.8 million in 71 countries and territories across five regions.

In 2020, 242,599 women and girls directly benefitted from support that let to transformative changes in their lives by UN Trust Fund grantees. The projects provided life-saving services and empowered women and girls directly, including changing the lives of a minimum of 26,519 survivors of violence, 21,040 women and girls with disabilities and 11,747 refugee and internally displaced women and girls. In total, the UN Trust Fund grantees reaches 31,071,058 people in 2020, aiming to create safe and thriving environments for women and girls.

The work of the UN Trust Fund and its grantees in 2020 and 2021 continued to be marked by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic and the adverse consequences generated by measures undertaken to curb its spread. The UN Trust Fund responded promptly to the crisis by putting in place a 5-point action plan to assist grantees in adapting their interventions to the new context generated by the COVID-19 crisis. The UN Trust Fund subsequently consolidated essential data from Civil Society Organisations and Women’s Rights Organisations (CSOs/WROs) into two knowledge briefs providing key insights to inform partners’ advocacy, policy and funding decisions.

In response to challenges that were jeopardising current projects, and in some cases threatening institutional survival, in partnership with the European Union and the United Nations Spotlight Initiative (EU/UN Spotlight Initiative) an additional USD 9 million was allocated for immediate and ongoing support to 44 UN Trust Fund grantees in sub-Saharan Africa.

In addition, the UN Trust Fund launched its Strategic Plan 2021-2025, which is grounded in the right of all women and girls to live free of violence. It seeks to achieve this goal through global solidarity and partnerships that enable civil society organisations, especially women’s rights organisations, to deliver survivor-centred and demand-driven initiatives to help feminist movements grow globally.

The new Strategic Plan is based on extensive consultations with stakeholders, donors and grantees, who called for key details including:

Increased flexible funding and more grants that cover longer periods;

Opportunities to pilot and test innovative approaches to ending violence against women and girls;

Increased resources to support and build the capacity of civil society organisations and women’s rights organisations; and

More space for knowledge-sharing, learning and dialogue among grantees.

Resources

UN Trust Fund – Publications

http://untf.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications

http://untf.unwomen.org/en

URL

https://www.unwomen.org/en/trust-funds/un-trust-fund-to-end-violence-against-women

Mail Address

220 East 42nd Street, 21st Floor New York, NY 11226, USA

Areas of Work

The UN Trust Fund’s priority areas of focus include:

  • Improving access to essential specialist, safe and adequate services, including access to justice, for survivors for those at risk of violence.
  • Transforming social norms, a key factor in preventing violence against women and girls.
  • Ensuring more effective legislation, policies and national action plans that are shaped by women and girls in decision-making processes.
Agency Type
INTER-AGENCY MECHANISM
Title
United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women
Icon
UN Trust Fund

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In Peru, the organization Red Nacional de Promoción de la Mujer is implementing a project in the regions of Ayacucho and Huánuco aimed at reducing gender-based violence against older women who were victims of conflict-related violence in the 1980s and 1990s. The project has empowered more than 487 women, of whom 44 per cent were over 60 years of age, by increasing their awareness of their rights. Through peer-to-peer exchange workshops, the grantee reached more than 210 older women from various organizations and 286 men and other women, including students and youth groups.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

Training and capacity-building remained a key area of the UN Trust Fund’s work both online and in face-to-face workshops. For example, the fund has implemented 10 online training modules, developed in 2017, on how to ensure accountability for grants, in accordance with the Project Cooperation Agreement, including sessions on project design, monitoring and evaluation; financial and operational management; and ethics and safety. The course is open to new Trust Fund grantees and their implementing partners and is offered as refresher training to all current grantees.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In 2018, the UN Trust Fund published a technical annex to its Annual Report of 2017, providing an update on the results framework of its strategic plan, 2015–2020. As the first such report to be produced by the UN Trust Fund in its 20-year history, it involved the development of indicators, methods and systems to collect data, including input from, and in consultation with, more than 70 grantee organizations.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

Early and child marriage was the focus of a project implemented in Pakistan by the Sindh Community Foundation. The overall goal was to ensure that girls in 30 villages in three districts of Sindh province were better protected from being forced into early marriage. In the final evaluation, it was found that the project had increased knowledge and shifted attitudes towards the protection of girls from early marriage.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In Kenya, the organization Trócaire has implemented a project funded by the UN Trust Fund focused on adolescent girls and young women in eight informal settlements in Nakuru town to reduce violence against women and girls through empowerment activities, including training on fundamental rights, economic and vocational skills and fostering community-level gender-transformative behavioural change through community engagement and awareness-raising using the “SASA! Faith” methodology.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In a final evaluation of UN Trust Fund grantee, Mental Disability Rights Initiative, Serbia, it was found that a project it had initiated had been successful in promoting institutional and policy changes for women with mental disabilities and that a total of 110 women had increased their awareness of protection mechanisms as a result of their involvement in project-related activities.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In 2018, UN Trust Fund grantees were instrumental in advocating for new national laws and policies to protect survivors and bring perpetrators to justice. For example, in Ecuador, a project implemented by ACDemocracia was aimed at ensuring that women and girl who were survivors of violence in the Ambato, Pelileo and Baños territories had greater access to a more effective justice system. The project also aimed at promoting the application of normative frameworks and policies for the protection of women’s rights by influencing legislative reform and changing cultural norms.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

The UN Trust Fund cooperates closely with 24 UN organs and bodies through Regional and Global Programme Advisory Committees.

During the implementation and monitoring stage, the UN Trust Fund provides training to UN Women field colleagues on the reporting requirements for the grantees, as well as on EVAW programmatic and technical aspects of the grantees’ project implementation. 

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

In October 2018, the founder of the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denis Mukwege, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work with women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence. The hospital helped to pioneer the Panzi Foundation model of integrated rights-based psychosocial, legal and socioeconomic support provision in one-stop centres.

Mar 2018 - Jan 2019 | UN Trust Fund

The United Nations Trust Fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women is a global, multilateral grant-making mechanism that supports efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The Trust Fund, which was established in 1996 by the General Assembly in its resolution 50/166, is administered by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on behalf of the United Nations system.

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