United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women
220 East 42nd Street, 21st Floor New York, NY 11226, USA
https://www.unwomen.org/en/trust-funds/un-trust-fund-to-end-violence-against-women
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.
Areas of Focus
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.
In Kosovo (under Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)), Medica Kosova is implementing a small grant from the UN Trust Fund to implement a project whose aim is to protect the legal rights, including property rights, of women who have experienced gender-based violence during and after the armed conflict, and to improve institutional responses to gender-based violence. Medica Kosova is also providing monitoring and advocacy training for women’s organizations and is working with those organizations to identify shortcomings in the implementation of the national strategy against domestic violence. Thus far, the project has assisted 17 survivors of gender-based violence in obtaining legal support and starting the process of registering their properties. Another nine women, who have obtained official status as survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, have expressed an interest in following the legal procedures to register their houses and farms. In addition, 19 women have applied for the status of survivors of conflict related sexual violence and will be enrolled in the reparations scheme that provides them with a monthly lifetime pension.
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. The grantee adopted a holistic approach to developing participatory needs assessments, awareness-raising and training workshops and communications campaigns, all focusing on rights, interculturality, gender and aging. The project was also aimed at raising awareness among local officials and advocating for gender- and age-sensitive public policies. As a direct result of the project’s implementation, older women are now part of community surveillance committees and the municipalities’ round table on poverty reduction. In addition, four emblematic cases of violations of women’s rights were reviewed and, to date, one case has been decided in favour of the survivor; the remaining three are pending decisions.
A project implemented by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) with funding from the UN Trust Fund in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya is working to address gaps in the medical-legal process in order to improve responses to sexual violence against women and girls. The programme has been actively engaged in the two countries, both of which have endured widespread, conflict-related sexual violence and were being investigated for mass crimes by the International Criminal Court.
In December 2017, the Kavumu Case was concluded with the conviction of 11 men for crimes against humanity for the rape of 37 toddlers and young girls over a three-year period in the village of Kavumu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was a landmark case because a sitting government official was stripped of his immunity and was found guilty for crimes that he and his armed militia committed and because it was the first time that survivors/witnesses were afforded innovative means of protection in court in the country. PHR helped to coordinate the investigation and provided technical assistance to clinicians and police investigators that led to the arrests of militia members.