Mar 2011 - Feb 2012

In commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, ESACP reported that an awareness raising exhibit was displayed in the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok, including winning T-shirts from the UNiTE campaign T-Shirt Design Competition.

Both in the lead-up to the International Day and throughout the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence, DPI highlighted ending violence against women and girls on its UN social media platforms – including Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Sina Weibo – with related content posted on a daily basis.In all regions, DPI’s network of UN Information Centres organized numerous activities and events to mark the International Day, often in cooperation with government and civil society partners.

In Haiti, the eight regional offices of the Human Rights Section of MINUSTAH conducted several sensitizations activities on international human rights instruments for the protection and promotion of the rights of women, the Haitian legal procedures for the prosecution of sexual crimes and the protection of women’s rights in the event of natural disasters.

In October 2011, the ECA organized jointly with Mentoring and Empowerment Programme for Young Women (MEMPROW) a sub-regional advocacy workshop in Zambia on violence against young women and girls in centers of learning. The workshop identified issues affecting girls’ performance and retention in the context of VAW and made recommendations to improve policy and practice.

UNRWA organized several awareness-raising initiatives, such as in Lebanon in partnership with the General Union of Palestinian Women, in a UNRWA health clinic.

UNICEF Country Offices continued to implement programmes to promote awareness and abandonment of harmful traditional practices in 15 countries covered by the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on awareness and abandonment of child marriage.

WHO developed a capacity-building package on primary prevention of intimate partner and sexual violence accompanying the guidelines “Preventing intimate partner violence and sexual violence against women: taking action and generating evidence.” Three regional workshops on primary prevention of intimate partner and sexual violence were conducted for policy makers and implementers from several countries in the African Region, the Western-Pacific region and the Americas. On the basis of the feedback of the workshops the training package was revised.

UNRWA, supporting the gender-based violence campaign in Palestine and connecting it to the International Year of Volunteers +10 (IYV+10), highlighted the importance of volunteerism in achieving results in fighting gender-based violence. One initiative was UNRWA’s use of a questionnaire to collect data on gender based violence in the Palestinian refugee camps. UNV mobilized around 300 local volunteers particularly university students. The added value of this partnership was that the volunteers considered themselves as recipients of this campaign.

In Algeria, UN Women provided support to the national mechanism for women human rights to carry out the national campaign on violence against women, under the framework of the Africa UNiTE campaign to end violence. For the first time, the civil society working on violence against women has been clearly invited by the Ministry to present their work and achievements and to join their efforts to address this issue.

The Department of Public Information (DPI) was heavily involved in promotion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women on 25 November 2011. DPI updated and developed new press and campaign materials, and the key message emphasized in media materials – the call for resources for the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women – was picked up prominently in the media coverage. A short video, “Youth Voices on Ending Violence against Women”, was produced and launched ahead of the Day.