Oct 2009 - Feb 2010

During 2009, UNHCR organized a session for staff at Headquarters to raise awareness about Security Council resolutions 1820 and 1888, and also held a lecture on Revisiting Strategies of Inclusion and Violence against Women. UNHCR commemorated the 16 days of activism campaign against gender violence at Headquarters and in the field with a variety of activities, including a demonstration of solidarity by UNHCR staff in joining the “Get Cross” campaign of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict.

UNAIDS is providing technical and/or financial support to an additional six countries to strengthen programming to reduce sexual violence against girls. Violence against women has been made a priority of the Global Uniformed Services Task Force on HIV. A strategy is being developed and implemented to ensure that uniformed services undergo basic awareness raising and training in the prevention of sexual violence in addition to HIV.

In the context of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflicts, UNAIDS and partners aim to incorporate the HIV implications of sexual violence in conflict and post conflict situations into the progress report on implementation of resolution 1308, to be presented at the Security Council in Fall 2010. Sexual violence is one of the three output areas for the “UN system-wide work programme to scale up HIV services for populations of humanitarian concern” project implemented by FAO, OCHA IRIN, OCHA, UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR, WFP, WHO, UNICEF under the coordination of the UNAIDS Secretariat.

The project “Strengthening prevention of sexual violence in conflict with parties to armed conflict (phase I)” was submitted for funding to UN Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict in December 2009. The project, in which UNICEF, UNFPA, DPA and OCHA have partnered up, aims to develop a set of tools and approaches for engaging parties to conflict, and calling on them to respect international law and to stop using rape and other forms of sexual violence as a weapon of warfare.

In November 2009, UNFPA participated and was a key note speaker in the international conference on monitoring implementation of Security Council resolutions 1325 and 1820, held in Oslo, Norway.

Issues # 5 and 6 of Words to Action, DAW’s (now part of UN Women) quarterly newsletter on violence against women, was produced with feature articles on sexual violence in conflict settings, and the vital role of CEDAW in eliminating violence against women.

UNAIDS Programme Acceleration Funds have supported 35 countries over the last year to scale up work on gender-related responses to HIV, including a focus on violence against women. UNESCO continued its activities under its project “Culturally appropriate approaches to HIV/AIDS”.

Pursuant to resolution 18/1 of the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice, UNODC convened an intergovernmental expert group meeting, in Thailand, in November 2009, to develop, consistent with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners (SMR) and the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for Non-custodial Measures (the Tokyo Rules), supplementary rules specific to the treatment of women in detention and in custodial and non-custodial settings.

UNHCR, in cooperation with UNFPA and WHO, published an e-learning tool on the clinical management of rape. UNHCR’s Handbook for the Protection of Women and Girls has been translated into Arabic, French, Russian and Spanish and a CD-ROM version in Arabic, English, French and Spanish has been produced.

UNIFEM’s (now part of UN Women) efforts to strengthen programming and institutional responses included support for: the establishment of a domestic violence office in Argentina’s Supreme Court, with UNDP and UNICEF; judicial guidelines on in-camera hearings (Nepal), on domestic violence (China) and on traditional justice in indigenous communities (Ecuador); a reference guide for Albanian magistrates; a legal assistance guide for Haitian SGBV survivors; technical assistance for the International Commission of Inquiry for Guinea Conakry; training for justice sector personnel in the Great Lakes R