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 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.
In Peru, UNODC started implementing a new project on crime prevention and victim assistance, which is aimed at reducing small-arms violence and promoting dialogue for peaceful coexistence, addressing the needs of vulnerable groups and reducing the vulnerability of adolescents to gender-based violence by promoting education and health programmes.
In Vietnam, UNODC implemented the Domestic Violence Minimum Intervention Package and supported establishing 18 Domestic Violence Rapid Response Teams and continued to provide support to national authorities in awareness raising activities. It also continued producing successful television programmes to raise public awareness on domestic violence.
UNRWA has developed context-specific GBV prevention initiatives in all its five fields of operation (Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and the West Bank), building on local partnerships and working with community structures. These initiatives have focused on developing effective approaches to tackle root causes of GBV, addressing power imbalances and gender inequality and engaging communities in the effort to combat GBV. Progress has also been made in involving men and boys in awareness-raising activities and key services, such as involving men in preconception care and family planning counselling in UNRWA health centres.
UNRWA, working with local NGOs and community-based structures and organizations, in addition to UN agencies at the field level, engages men, women, as well as youth and children in the awareness-raising activities through discussion groups and support groups. UNRWA employs art, theatre and photography as a way of reaching out to the community and creating space for self-expression and support through different activities. During 2015, UNRWA was able to reach out to more than 30,000 community members including men, women, and youth to raise awareness on priority issues related to GBV according to field contexts, such as child marriage and domestic violence. Awareness-raising sessions and events also serve to increase community knowledge on available services.
WFP HQ and Country Offices ran multiple awareness and advocacy activities during the 16-days of UNITE's campaigns in Nov-Dec 2014 & 2015. In addition, from January 2015, every 25th of the month, WFP's internal website is turned orange and few activities take place in HQ and COs to keep alive the mobilisation among WFP staff. On 25 May 2015, WFP Executive Board members actively celebrated the Orange Day.