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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.
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.
Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality
The Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE) is a network of gender focal points of United Nations offices, specialized agencies, funds and programme, providing a platform for monitoring and overseeing the mainstreaming of gender perspective in the programmtic, normative and operations work of the UN System. With respect to violence against women, the network has closely followed the activities of the UN system, and has been a platform to share information and promote coherent, multi-sector approach to EVAW through dedicated sessions on the subject during IANWGE annual sessions, inter-sessional meetings, and the OECD DAC Gendernet-IANWGE Joint workshops, as relevant.
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The Network has in the past convened a Task Force on violence against women, in which the Network addressed all forms of violence against women, at the global, regional and country level. The Task Force aimed to: enhance support to Member States in their efforts to eliminate violence against women; strengthen systematic and timely information exchange among entities of the United Nations system about existing and planned strategies, programmes and activities on violence against women, at global, regional and national levels; achieve an enhanced understanding of resources available from the United Nations system, at the national level, to support work by Governments and non-governmental organizations to prevent and respond to violence against women; and ensure leadership by senior officials of entities of the United Nations system to address violence against women.
In 2008, the Task Force began a joint programming pilot initiative to address violence against women in ten pilot countries: Burkina Faso, Chile, Fiji, Jamaica, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Paraguay, Philippines, Rwanda, Yemen. The initiative brought together relevant stakeholders at the national level, including Government actors, the UN Country Teams, and civil society stakeholders to harmonize initiatives and budgets, and maximize each stakeholder’s comparative advantage, to end violence against women. The ten pilot countries were selected on the basis of a number of factors, including: support from UN entities for programmes on violence against women; evidence of substantial efforts and commitment at the national level to address and eliminate violence against women; existence of baseline data on violence against women; and a geographical balance of the countries represented.
The six steps in the joint programming pilot initiative were:
*Step I: A baseline assessment is conducted to determine: existing initiatives addressing violence against women, including in the areas of law, service-provision, prevention, and data collection; stakeholders involved and their respective capacities and strengths; existing data on violence against women; gaps and challenges to addressing this issue in a concerted manner; and identified priorities for action.
*Step 2: Based on the baseline assessment, a national multi-stakeholder workshop is held. These workshops are instrumental in developing a multi-sectoral framework that brings together UN system actions in support of national efforts to address violence against women, including in support of the implementation of national action plans on violence against women where such plans exist; or to assist in the development of such plans where they do not yet exist.
*Step 3: A joint national committee is formed, consisting of stakeholders from Government, the UN, and civil society.
*Step 4: The joint national committee drafts a multi-sectoral joint programme proposal which is submitted to various bodies for funding.
*Step 5: Joint programming activities are implemented based on availability of resources.
*Step 6: Monitoring and evaluation is undertaken to identify lessons learned and scale up efforts.
During IANWGE’s Annual Meeting, violence against women is regularly included during the session on Thematic areas of System-wide Relevance. Members are briefed on updates related to the prevention of violence against women, the availability of essential services for survivors, and violence against women data collection.
In 2014, Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality provided briefings and updates on the Secretary General's UNiTE Campaign during the 13th and 14th annual sessions of the IANWGE as well as inputs from participating agencies for the final report to the Campaign’s High Level Steering Committee.
Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality organized a session on Ending Violence againt Women during the 15th Annual session of the IANWGE with panelists from UN Women and UNODC in March 2016.