Search

The UN Trust Fund adopted a new strategic plan, guiding its grant‐making for 2010-2015. Implementation of the strategic plan will be aided by a high-level steering committee bringing together heads of UN agencies and representatives of Member States.In response to its 15th Call for Proposals, the UN Trust Fund received a record number of 2,574 applications (51 come from UN Country Teams) for total value of $1.2 billion, signifying an increase of 56% in the number of applications and 40% in the amount of funds requested from the previous year, numbers which indicate an unmet demand for resources to address violence against women on the ground.One third of the UN Trust Fund’s 80 active grantees are focusing on primary prevention. Nearly half of UN Trust Fund grantees engage men and boys as change agents to promote healthy, non-violent models of masculinity. In December 2010, the first White Ribbon Campaign was launched in the Middle East to mobilize men and boys to advocate for legislation on domestic violence. Male university students took the lead in crafting messages for a public sensitization campaign that garnered the support of 128 MPs for a bill on the Protection of Women from Family Violence prior to parliamentary debates on this legislation.One third of the UN Trust Fund’s active grants employ strategies to provide services to women and girls survivors of violence, including marginalized and hard‐to‐reach populations. For example in the Kandal Province of Cambodia, the UN Trust Fund supports a model of community-based support for sexual assault survivors, through increasing survivors’ access to coordinated health, counselling, and legal services. In the region of Puno in Peru, where the indigenous population suffers from the highest rates of intra‐family violence in the country, the UN Trust Fund supports capacity-building for health, justice and law enforcement sectors to respond to the needs of women and girls. Local officials have convened an inter‐agency task force to strengthen cross‐sectoral coordination, supported by the Ministries of Health and Women, resulting in an increase of referral rates and reporting rates of domestic violence.17 percent of UN Trust Fund grantees work to respond to the needs of women survivors of violence living in conflict, post‐conflict and unstable situations: it supported the development of a mobile care model to assist survivors of sexual violence from Central African Republic living as refugees in northern Cameroon. In just one year, the mobile clinics brought a fourfold increase to the rate of sexual violence survivors receiving medical care and counselling; in Sierra Leone, it supports national reparations programmes that respond to the needs of 3,600 women survivors of sexual violence in conflict; Women’s organizations conducted surveys with women survivors of violence across the country to assess their marketable skills and recommended skills training and income‐generation programmes.As part of the official observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and in partnership with UNiTE campaign, the UN Trust Fund launched a fundraising effort to achieve the campaign’s goal of $100M by 2015 for the annual grant giving. By texting the word UNITE to 27722, people in the U.S. could donate $10 to the UN Trust Fund for programmes and services on the ground and online donations can be made through the UN Foundation. Hide