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Afghanistan Country Office

In November 2018, WFP and UNFPA in Afghanistan signed an agreement to work together in providing information and services to female and male beneficiaries of WFP's food assistance.

Ecuador Country Office: 

Provides food assistance to women in shelters survivors of GBV.

Myanmar Country Office:

Contributed in supporting women’s organizations in their efforts to prevent GBV and to take care of GBV survivors through the White Ribbon Campaign in Myanmar organized by the Gender Equality Network

Sri Lanka Country Office

In collaboration with the UNFPA, officially agreed on Nov 26th to embark on a new project to improve women’s nutrition and promote women’s empowerment and gender equality. Initiatives will be executed to not only enhance the skills of women entrepreneurs, but also to improve the access girls and women have to sexual and reproductive health services. This project hopes to tackle these gender-based issues in six Sri Lankan districts.

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific (UNRCPD) initiated a region-wide project on the issue of women, disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control. UNRCPD conducted two sub-regional workshops on gun violence and illicit small-arms trafficking from a gender perspective, for Southeast Asia in July and for South Asia in September, respectively. 

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) organized a technical workshop on ATT Evaluation of Transfers and Reports for Guatemala. The training covered risk assessment under the ATT, which requires that States assess the risk that the conventional arms, ammunition or parts and components being transferred are being used to commit or facilitate serious acts of gender-based violence or serious acts of violence against women and children. UNLIREC also carried out a Gender & ATT Table Top Exercise in San Salvador aimed at assisting the State in understanding the obligations under the ATT and providing practical insights into the ATT´s risk assessment methodology, emphasizing the importance of gender-based criteria. UNLIREC organized a training course on Firearms and Ammunition Evidence Management, which underlined the gendered aspects of small arms and highlighted the links between armed violence and gender-based violence.

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. By December 2018, the sessions had been delivered live in three languages and recorded to ensure wider participation and share knowledge.  In September 2018, the Trust Fund held a five-day knowledge-exchange workshop in Amman, involving eight current and new grantees working on ending violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts. The event provided an opportunity for grantees to obtain access to training to respond to programmatic and operational gaps in capacity, exchange learning and knowledge and document knowledge in a format that can be used for both internal and external purposes. 

1) Conducted open residential courses, focused on practical strategies to prevent and address violence and harassment at workplace level: "Violence and Harassment in the World of Work: what to do?" 19-23 Nov 2018, Turin - Language: English, French.

2) (In collaboration with Fair Wear Foudation whithin project "Safe and Equal") tailor-made trainings on prevention of Workplace Violence and Harassment for managers and/or workers' reps of garment factories in Indonesia (sept 2018), Vietnam (Oct 2018) and Myanmar (Dec 2018).

ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, supported the Lebanese Ministry of State for Women’s Affairs to develop a national strategy on violence against women. This consultative national strategy, included interviews and focus group discussions with line ministries; several national and sub national validation workshops; and a high-level meeting to discuss the draft strategy.

ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, UN Women, OHCHR and UNDP in Lebanon, is providing technical support to the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW) to develop a National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.

ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, supported the Lebanese Ministry of State for Women’s Affairs to develop a project on costing violence against women. This included developing a project proposal, conducting field work, holding national consultations, developing an operational model for Lebanon, holding a second national consultation, developing a national survey to measure the prevalence of violence against women, analysing the government budget, and developing a national survey for services.

ESCWA conducted three field visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a national consultation to discuss elements of an operational model on estimating the cost of marital violence. This involved engaging with the National Family Affairs Council, in addition to other stakeholders such as governmental entities and civil society members providing services for survivors of family violence.

ESCWA conducted a field mission to Iraq to prepare for the implementation of a project on costing violence against women in Iraq.

ESCWA participated in a consultation with the Egyptian National Council for Women and the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) to discuss practical steps towards carrying out a national study on violence against women with disabilities. This meeting was the second such consultation facilitated by ESCWA to determine the parameters and methodology of the study.

ESCWA facilitated a Regional Workshop on the Measurement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Violence against Women and Time Use Statistics Indicators with senior gender experts/statisticians from national statistical offices, ministries of gender equality and women’s affairs. The workshop addressed selected SDG indicators, focusing on the following gender concerns: physical, sexual, psychological violence against women perpetrated by an intimate partner and sexual violence against women perpetrated by a person other than an intimate partner.

ESCWA supported the Ministry of Women, Family, Childhood and Elderly in Tunisia to better understand the availability and quality of data needed to carry out an estimation of the cost of violence in Tunisia.

ESCWA, the League of Arab States and UN Women, in partnership with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria and UNDP held a workshop on the different pillars of reporting when preparing National Voluntary Reports (VNR). Discussion included the tools available at the regional level to report on SDG 5, and the role of national stakeholders in preparing the VNR.

ESCWA and UNFPA Regional Office in Beirut organized a workshop on monitoring, control and protection of human rights including sexual and reproductive health and rights. This workshop targeted national human rights institutions and National Women’s Machineries in the Arab region, as well as in some countries of the Horn of Africa. The workshop sought to strengthen collaboration between National Women’s Machineries and national human rights institutions, especially in documenting the status of women and women’s sexual and reproductive health within the framework of international conventions.

Cuba Country Office: 

As part of the Inter-agency Gender Group, WFP participated in knowledge sharing workshops on preliminary results of the National Survey on Gender Inequality (led by the Centre for Women Studies of the Cuban Women Federation), which also included analysis on gender-based violence issues. WFP also started to disseminate the results of this survey within the supported agricultural cooperatives.

UNODC, Gender-related killing of women and girls (2018). The study gives an overview of the scope of gender-related killing of women and girls within and outside the family sphere. 

UNODC, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (2018). The report shows that most of the victims detected across the world are females; mainly adult women, but also increasingly girls. Conflict situations create increased vulnerabilities for women and girls to become trafficking victims. 

Following the Sixth Biennial Meeting of States on small arms and light weapons in all its aspects, ODA revised the Programme of Action national reporting template to include for the first time two questions regarding gender considerations in the implementation of the Programme of Action, allowing. Reports are publicly available on the ODA website.

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) launched a project on measuring illicit trafficking and community security through participatory SDG 16-based indicators and conducted capacity building sessions on the indicators, one of which is violence against women at the community level.

The United Nations Regional Centre for Peace, Disarmament and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNLIREC) published a study on the criminal use of ammunition and trafficking based on data collected from crime scenes in the Dominican Republic and Peru. The study discussed gender aspects, such as ammunition used in gender-specific crimes, gender of victims of crimes involving ammunition, gender roles in the trafficking of ammunition, and the inclusion of women in criminal investigations involving ammunition. 

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. As a result, the framework has been simplified to include three tiers of result types in order to better reflect which results can be attributed to the secretariat of the UN Trust Fund and which are achieved by the organizations themselves through the Trust Fund grant. A mid-term review of the current Trust Fund’s strategic plan was initiated in 2018, and the report is scheduled to be issued in early 2019.

In October 2018, CEDAW adopted revised reporting guidelines for States parties, which integrate SDGs with a view to ensuring systematic reporting by States parties and collection of data to be used in assessing progress made on the implementation of all SDG targets.On 22 November 2018 to commemorate the International Day on the Elimination of Violence against Women and which, inter alia, “called for strengthened cooperation between independent global and regional mechanisms, as common synergies and efforts to address violence against women under the existing normative framework on human rights, which will contribute to closing gaps in combating and preventing violence against women worldwide” the experts also called for the inclusion of monitoring mechanisms to ensure full implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 5.” (See: https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23921&LangID=Ettp://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22432&LangID=E );

On the occasion of the 16 Days of Advocacy on ending violence against women and International Human Rights Day in December 2018, the OHCHR supported the efforts of the SRVAW who reiterated her call for the establishment of a femicide watch to collect, analyse and review data at the national, regional and global levels.

On the occasion of International Women Human Rights Defenders Day the OHCHR supported the SRVAW, SUMEX and WGDAW, along with other relevant mandates in calling on States “to fulfil their commitment to enable that work, proclaimed almost 20 years ago in the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and reaffirmed five years ago in General Assembly resolution 68/181 on protecting women human rights defenders” https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23943&LangID=E