Agencies
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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 12 UN 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 supports local communities with the tools they need to address violence in their specific context. The model works by rolling out evidence-based interventions holistically: gender responsive laws and policies; strengthening institutions and data collection on VAWG; promoting gender-equitable attitudes and positive social norms, and providing quality services for survivors of violence and their families. It does this work in partnerships with government and, critically, with civil society - including particularly women's rights organisations – at every level, enhancing civic space and driving sustainable, transformative change.
In Georgia, UN Women supported the Domestic Violence Council to harmonize legislation with the Istanbul Convention and draft a governmental decree to institutionalize the gender equality mechanism within the executive branch of the government. Planned legislative amendments will enhance the Domestic Violence Law to reflect other forms of violence against women, include protective orders, criminalize stalking and female genital mutilation, and align the concept of rape with international standards.
UN Women, in collaboration with the Jordanian National commission for Women(JNCW), held a roundtable meeting on “Jordan-Morocco sharing of experience on the criminal prosecution of rapists “in May 2016 in Amman, Jordan, at which 11 Jordanian parliamentarians as well as Moroccan parliamentarians exchanged views and experience with regards to the current amendments of the Penal Code. The Moroccan parliamentarians have explained the process they went through of reviewing the penal code over two years and then abolishing article 475 (similar provisions to 308) completely after one female minor “Amina” committed suicide for being forced to marry her rapist. At the end of the session, the Jordanian parliamentarians were equipped with knowledge on how to move forward on the abolishment of article 308 of the penal code.
Since 2014 in Tunisia, UN Women, jointly with UNFPA, OHCHR and UNICEF supported the development of the first draft law on violence against women. Since the end of 2014, a close monitoring was ensured with the two consecutive governments to provide technical support and international standards’ guidance to ensure the review of the different versions. Despite the challenges facing the country, the council of ministers has adopted on 13 July 2016 a bill regarding VAW. The House of Representatives has also voted, on the 21st July, the draft of the Organic Law No. 29/2015 on the prevention and fight against human trafficking, which aims at fighting all forms of exploitations of persons, especially women. This law is considered to be in line with international standards.
In Guatemala, OHCHR, though a Progamme named Maya Programme, works with the Public Prosecutor’s Office (indigenous people’s department) on the drafting of a policy on access to justice for indigenous peoples with a human right’s perspective. It requires the Public Prosecutor’s office to “develop and apply specific criteria for the attention, investigation, and criminal prosecution of femicide, sexual violence and other forms of violence against indigenous women.”
In Kyrgyzstan, UNODC facilitated a public safety and crime prevention planning in 14 municipalities, focusing on domestic violence and other priorities. As a result of the active participation of women in local level dialogues on public safety, gender-based violence was included as a priority issue in approved local crime prevention plans in 4 districts.
In Namibia, UNODC conducted an assessment and analysis of information about existing responses to gender violence and provided detailed recommendations to national counterparts on policy and practical matters to enhance crime prevention and criminal justice responses to violence against women.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, ABAAD Resource Centre for Gender Equality and the Lebanese American University, has commemorated the 16 days of activism against Gender Based Violence campaign (25th November-10th December 2016) and organised a series of awareness raising activities. These include a video competition among the youth in the Arab region to send a message on 'how to stop violence against women', a panel discussion with experts and CSOs on estimating the cost of VAW, and a public event to promote civil engagement on the topic.
The UN Women Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), hosted the meeting “Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls in Latin-America and the Caribbean: Lessons learned across the globe”, which was held in Panama City from December 5 to 7 of 2016. This event provided a unique space, bringing together several UN agencies, government officials, diplomats, civil society organizations, global researchers and other experts in the field of preventing and responding to violence against women and girls to exchange experiences and explore ways to implement effective and promising practices to address violence against women. This approach sought to drive change in the region, which has been characterized by the lack of evidence-based interventions and rigorous evaluations. A total of 25 countries were represented in this meeting and UN women key guidance documents such as the UN prevention Framework to End Violence against Women and Girls as well as the Essential services guidelines were disseminated.
UN Women collaborated with UNESCO to develop a guidance toolkit on prevention of and response to violence against women and girls in the educational sector: “Global Guidance on School-related Gender-based violence” in December 2016 (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002466/246651E.pdf). UN Women continues its collaboration with UNESCO to develop similar toolkits to engage the media and sporting organizations in prevention of and response to VAW. These technical documents provide key information to governments, policy-makers, practitioners and civil society who wish to take concrete action against violence against women and girls. It introduces approaches, methodologies, tools and resources that have shown positive results.
UN Women established a Community of Practice (CoP) for stakeholders working on the prevention of and response to violence against women and girls. Specific objectives of the Flagship Programming Initiatives (FPI) CoP include: Making existing knowledge, tools and approaches on the practice available and easily accessible to members of the CoP, allowing members to share concrete experience, challenges and good-practices on the implementation of the FPI so that members can “learn from others”, and generating new knowledge and tools. This community of practice, which follows various channels of communication (knowledge online platform, webinars, email helpdesk and a focal points’ meeting) will be strengthened based on its users’ experience and on new developments within UN Women’s programmes.