DPKO

Spotlight Initiative Logo
Address/Websites

220 East 42nd Street
New York, NY 10017

About Measure

Background

Launched in 2017 with an initial investment of over 500 million USD from the European Union, Spotlight Initiative is the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Impact Initiative to end violence against women and girls (EVAWG). Recognized as one of the 12 High-Impact Initiatives – driving progress across the sustainable development goals – Spotlight Initiative represents an unprecedented global effort to address violence against women and girls at scale.

During its first phase (2017- 2023), Spotlight Initiative helped cohere the UN system to implement 34 programmes across five regions. This included two civil society grant-making programmes – established in collaboration with the UN Trust to End Violence against Women and the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund – which helped channel additional resources directly to civil society. By fostering a “One UN” approach under the leadership of the Resident Coordinators at the country level, Spotlight Initiative has leveraged various UN agencies’ complementary expertise, deepened collaboration, and streamlined operational processes, allowing for stronger programme delivery and better results for women and girls.

Through its deep partnerships at country and regional level – including with governments, civil society, faith-based and traditional leaders, academic institutions, media, the private sector, and others – Spotlight Initiative drove significant progress across response and prevention efforts. A strong commitment to meaningful engagement with civil society in particular, including local and grassroots organisations and feminist and women’s rights groups, has been central to the Initiative’s approach, as well. Under its first phase, nearly half of the Initiative’s activity funds were channeled directly to civil society, ensuring local ownership, buy-in, and sustainability of the Initiative's investments. At the global level, the Initiative forged a range of strategic partnerships, including with the Group of Friends, a coalition of 93 UN Member States advocating to end violence against women and girls, and the UN Foundation, which helped launch the WithHer Fund to channel more funding directly to local organizations.

Through its comprehensive approach – working to pass progressive laws and policies, strengthen institutions, deepen prevention programming, improve access to services, and generate data, and by centering partnerships – particularly with civil society – the Initiative has been shown to be 70% to 90% more effective at reducing the prevalence of violence against women and girls than siloed, single-pillar approaches. By aligning its interventions with national and local priorities, Spotlight Initiative works to deepen capacity, political will, and long-term commitment to ending violence against women and girls and advancing gender equality and women’s rights.

Areas of Focus

Unique to the Initiative is a whole-of-society approach that places ending violence against women and girls at the heart of national development priorities and gives local communities the tools they need to address violence in their specific context. The model works to support the development and revision of gender responsive laws and policies; strengthen institutions and data collection on VAWG; promote gender-equitable attitudes and positive social norms, and provide quality services for survivors of violence and their families.  It does this work in partnerships with government and, critically, with civil society and women’s movements at every level, enhancing civic space and driving sustainable, transformative change.

Resources

Department of Peacekeeping Operations
Item ID
{0D77DA70-1857-40ED-A96D-9CD8EA9F6470}
UNAgency ID
{637A11D2-6B98-4AB4-A550-C93BF4AFEA22}
Background

The mission of the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) in the United Nations Secretariat is to plan, prepare, manage and direct United Nations peacekeeping operations so that they can effectively fulfil their mandates under the overall authority of the Security Council and General Assembly, and under the command vested in the Secretary-General. DPO is a member of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. DPO provides political and executive direction to UN peace operations around the world and maintains contact with the Security Council, troop and financial contributors, and parties to the conflict in the implementation of Security Council mandates. Within the purview of mandates of the respective missions, with due reference to relevant Security Council resolutions, DPO works to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV).

URL
https://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/
Mail Address
United Nations, New York, NY 10017. USA
Areas of Work

Towards implementing its specific mandates on Women, Peace and Security (WPS), DPO works to address all forms of sexual and gender-based violence against women, including sexual exploitation and abuse by civilian and uniformed peacekeeping personnel.

As each functional unit of peacekeeping has direct responsibility for supporting prevention and response to sexual and gender-based violence, activities are mission and mandate specific. The women, peace and security architecture in the Missions represented through the presence of  gender units, senior gender advisors, senior women protection advisors, gender advisors in uniform and the gender focal persons across the various functions and components of the peacekeeping missions facilitate the implementation of WPS mandate and address sexual and gender-based violence  through partnerships with a variety of actors, including women’s  civil society organizations and networks, host governments, regional bodies and other United Nations entities . Specific focus areas for addressing SGBV include investing in gendered conflict analysis to identify risks, vulnerabilities and drivers of SGBV, identifying and implementing targeted actions in planning and implementing of protection of civilian strategies and community violence reduction programmes that identify particular risks and threats faced by women, contributing to strengthening institutional response mechanisms/referral pathways for SGBV survivors,  providing targeted awareness raising, trainings and context specific guidance to address SGBV risks faced by women and girls and contribute to establishing gender responsive national security and justice mechanisms, including legal frameworks to address SGBV.

In missions with a CRSV mandate, Women’s Protection Advisers , engage in a dialogue with parties to the conflict to elicit formal commitments from their leaders on preventing and addressing CRSV in accordance with their international obligations.  

 
Agency Type
SECRETARIAT
Title
Department of Peacekeeping Operations

Feb 2020 - Sep 2021 | DPKO

DPO collect data through qualitative and quantitative reporting to monitor progress, trends, and challenges including on protection and prevention to ending violence against women. Through WPS quarterly reporting, the peacekeeping operations report on gender-based violence incidents and survivors, gender responsive patrols by the military and police and local early warning mechanisms for prevention.

Feb 2020 - Sep 2021 | DPKO

With the support and advice from Senior/Women’s Protection Advisers, personnel in peacekeeping operations facilitate victims/survivors’ access to protection and support services notably through information-sharing about services, referrals and special assistance projects.

Feb 2020 - Sep 2021 | DPKO

DPO continued to strengthen coordination and coherence on the prevention and response to conflict-related sexual violence across the UN system through active participation in the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict network and its activities. Most specifically, since November 2020, DPO has notably been leading on an activity to assess the operationalization of the Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Arrangements on CRSV (MARA) in coordination with OHCHR, OSRSG-SVC, DPPA, UNFPA and UNICEF.

Feb 2020 - Sep 2021 | DPKO

Peacekeeping missions ensured that COVID-19 related re-orienting of mandate implementation, including contingency planning and programme criticality mapping, as well as support to national authorities and collaboration with UN Country Teams and AFP’s, is gender responsive.

Feb 2017 - Apr 2018 | DPKO

Gender Unit: An updated Gender Equality and Women, Peace and Security Resource Package is being finalized which includes dedicated chapters on CRSV and SGBV. This comprehensive resource tool will act as the main comprehensive resource and a “how to guide” to integrate gender and WPS for all peacekeeping personnel across all components and functions of peacekeeping operations; and will provide good practices to enhance evidence based programming. 

Feb 2017 - Apr 2018 | DPKO

Gender unit: A compendium of WPS indicators and a dashboard was developed as a platform to track progress of WPS mandates, including specific indicators on addressing SGBV prevention and protection
. A Mission wide roll out of these indicators is expected to take place through 2018

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