Spotlight Initiative operationalizes a "One UN" approach under the leadership of Resident Coordinators at country level, coordinating 13 UN agencies across the Initiative to deliver coherent, multi-sectoral responses to ending violence against women and girls. This model of UN inter-agency collaboration is central to how the Initiative drives efficiency, reduces duplication, and strengthens collective accountability.
UNFPA continues to play a strategic and/or leading role in several inter-agency mechanisms and activities:
UNFPA leads the inter-agency coordination mechanism for the GBV Information Management System programme (GBVIMS Steering Committee) supporting strengthened case management through safe and ethical data collection.
UN Women continued to administer the United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women and Girls (UN Trust Fund), the UN system’s only General Assembly-mandated, inter-agency pooled funding mechanism dedicated exclusively to ending violence against women and girls.
In 2025, UN Women strengthened UN system-wide coordination on EVAWG through its leadership of inter-agency mechanisms and global partnerships. As Secretariat of the UN Inter-agency Working Group on EVAWG, it sustained collaboration across UN entities to advance coherent policy and programmatic approaches, including through engagement in UN Action to promote survivor-centred responses and address emerging risks such as technology-facilitated and conflict-related sexual violence.
The United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) is the only global, multilateral, inter-agency grant-making mechanism exclusively focused on ending violence against women and girls.
Through the UN system, coordinated efforts were accelerated to combat intersecting forms of violence, through joint global, regional and country programmes, the Generation Equality Action Coalition on Gender-based Violence, and UN multi- partner trust funds.
As the IASC-mandated agency for coordinating GBV prevention and response in emergencies, UNFPA leads the GBV AoR and coordinates GBV sub-clusters in 32 humanitarian contexts. UNFPA is also a core member of the IASC GBV Guidelines Reference Group strengthening the integration of measures to mitigate risks of GBV across all sectors in humanitarian action.
On 28 November 2024, FAO hosted a session under the UNiTE Campaign during the 16 Days of Activism against GBV, organized in collaboration with UN Women and local feminist organizations in crisis-affected countries, titled "Global Crises and Gender-Based Violence". The event focused on how global crises, including conflicts, economic hardship and climate change, disproportionately affect women and girls, increasing their vulnerability to GBV and food insecurity.
UN Action is an inter-agency mechanism that brings together 26 UN entities across the humanitarian-development-peacebuilding spectrum to coordinate a one-UN response to conflict-related sexual violence. UN Action’s activities on political advocacy, operational impact through catalytic projects, and knowledge building are implemented jointly by at least two, though often more, member entities.
UNODC supports implementing the HAYA Joint Programme, dedicated to eradicating violence against women in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN Habitat), and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women).