Measures

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.  

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund awarded $54.7 million to 134 civil society organizations, including 96 (72%) women’s rights organizations, to address violence against women and girls (EVAW) in three priority areas: (a) improving access to essential multisectoral services; (b) preventing violence through changes in behaviours, practices, and attitudes; and (c) enhancing the effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans, and accountability systems. Nearly 119 million people were impacted by or involved with UN Trust Fund grantee partners during this period.

The UN Trust Fund also supported 55 organizations under the Spotlight Initiative, including 35 (24 in sub-Saharan Africa and 11 in Latin America) receiving grants from the 2019 Spotlight Call for Proposals, as well as additional support through the COVID-19 response funding allocation. A further 20 grantee partners in sub-Saharan Africa received extra support through the 2020 COVID-19 response allocation.

In 2023, the UN Trust Fund, UN Women, and the European Commission launched in partnership the Advocacy, Coalition Building, and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme to strengthen coalition-building, leadership, and resilience within feminist and women’s rights movements, while enhancing advocacy, campaigning, and policymaking. In 2024, the ACT programme awarded $2.34 million to eight women’s rights organizations and organized a global convening of programme partners aimed at strengthening coalition-building and collective action in the face of emerging challenges.

In 2024, the UN Trust Fund launched an initiative, co-led by the Spotlight Initiative and 11 UN entities, to transform the way the UN System funds civil society and women’s rights organizations, by addressing institutional barriers and promoting accessible, effective, feminist-informed funding mechanisms for women’s rights and gender equality. 

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Improving access for women and girls to essential, specialist, safe and adequate multisectoral services is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025.

Between 2021 and 2024, an average of 70% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to prevent violence against women. 

During that period, a total of 218,147 women and girls used specialist services to heal and recover from violence, and 41,615 individual providers improved service for survivors and women and girls at risk.

In Egypt, UN Trust Fund partners addressed growing, critical gaps in services for refugee women and girls primarily from Sudan, Eritrea and South Sudan. In 2024, some 520 young mothers – many of them survivors of violence – received tailored support, including mental healthcare, to improve their ability to cope. The initiatives also provided 872 individuals with psychosocial support, emergency cash grants and referrals, while promoting longer-term recovery through vocational training and small business support. 

An intervention by the Greater Women Initiative for Health and Right (GWIHR) in Nigeria’s Rivers State has enhanced accessibility to services, institutional accountability, and legal protection for female and transgender sex workers, who face systemic discrimination. Thanks to peer-driven human rights education, in 2024 over 2,500 sex workers reported abuses and pursued legal action against perpetrators. GWIHR handled 327 gender-based violence cases and connected nearly 500 survivors to support services.

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Supporting legislative and policy development is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025, reflecting the critical importance of effective legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to ensure survivors of violence have access to justice services and protection under fully implemented laws and policies.

As such, between 2021 and 2024, an average of 46% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to increase effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to end violence against women and girls.

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund supported 11,904 institutional partners that had increased capacities to develop or implement national and/or local multisectoral strategics, policies and-/or action plans to end violence against women and girls. In total 4,217 local, subnational or national government institutions worldwide increased capacities to design and implement institutional reforms, strategies and /or policies to prevent or respond to violence women and girls. 

For example, in Kenya in early 2022, the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) supported Isiolo County, one of its project sites, to officially launch its own gender policy to guide the mainstreaming of policies and processes to address VAW/G. The policy was drafted by CREAW and the Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association. CREAW also teamed up with local women’s rights groups to advocate for the policy’s adoption. The policy set out specific information on how the County Government can mainstream gender in all county functions to address a number of issues, including public participation and the representation of women and girls in all sectors; economic funds and equal opportunities for women; and a mechanism for gender-based violence prevention and response (such as safety nets, shelters and economic justice).

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A project implemented by the Center of Women’s Rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina funded by the UN Trust Fund is working to improve protection mechanisms for survivors of intimate partner violence. The grantee worked to create alliances with relevant professionals; adapting during COVID-19 to conduct communication and preparations by telephone and email. The Center of Women’s Rights organized seminars for judges and prosecutors, including obtaining the necessary approvals, disseminating plans and worked to organize seminars with participants in the Multisectoral Working Group and the Expert Group.  This led to an important achievement: for the first time since the establishment of the Judicial and Prosecutorial Training Centre, the seminar on changing attitudes and perceptions of judges and prosecutors was included in the regular Annual Training Programme of Judges and Prosecutors. In addition, the Center drafted and submitted a proposed amendment to the law on protection from domestic violence. Hide

During the course of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020, the UN Trust Fund invested USD47 million in projects that solely or partly focused on preventing violence against women and girls.

To disseminate the expertise and knowledge of civil society and women's rights organizations, the UN Trust Fund worked with grantee organizations and researchers to create a series of briefings on preventing violence against women. The organizations' practice-based insights are invaluable to planning, designing and funding interventions aimed at ending violence against women and girls.

The main objectives of the knowledge products are to:

make the practice-based knowledge available to all those working to end violence against women and girls;

examine the unique contributions and levels of impact of civil society and women's organizations in preventing violence against women and girls, as well as the challenges faced and lessons learned;

guide the UN Trust Fund’s grant-making priorities; and

inform the work of the UN and other stakeholders on preventing and ending violence against women and girls.

The findings identified 10 key pathways to prevent violence against women and girls. Each theme will be explored in conversations with 10 grantees, resulting in a detailed report per theme published on a rolling basis in starting July 2021 and 2022.

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The UN Trust Fund’s signature wraparound support model responds to the complex and evolving needs of civil society organizations working in challenging and often under-resourced contexts. Alongside funding, the UN Trust Fund offers organizational development support; capacity strengthening; tailored accompaniment; visibility and advocacy; and evidence-based knowledge production.

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund has delivered 81 webinar sessions in support of grant management and compliance of EVAW/G projects, including thematic sessions on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) among others, recording a total of 5,449 attendees. In 2024, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Trust Fund resumed the yearly in-person training tradition, allowing grantee organizations to share experiences, network and foster a sense of community among EVAW/G practitioners. 

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Medica Kosova, a UN Trust Fund grantee, raises awareness among women’s organizations of the Istanbul Convention, which guided preparation of the Kosovo (Under UN SCR 1244 (1999)) National Strategy against Domestic Violence. Medica Kosova works to increase efforts by national and local government bodies to implement the National Strategy. In addition, Medica Kosova supports women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence such as assisting women in applying for the status of survivors of conflict related sexual violence. It works with women’s organizations in relatively small municipalities, focusing on women in under-served communities, including Roma women. During the COVID-19 pandemic, staff worked closely with women survivors of violence and local services.  The organization also took steps to enhance communication and awareness of the women and girls with whom they work. During the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, Veprore Shehu, Executive Director of NGO Medica Kosova, a UN Trust Fund grantee said, “Five team members (a psychologist, lawyer, psychosocial counsellor, project assistant and executive director) make phone calls to survivors asking about their well-being, challenges they face during this period of isolation and their daily activities with their close families.” Hide

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, held an Expert Group Meeting on “Methodologies for estimating the costs of achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG 5)” to receive input and expert advice on the proposed approaches and methodologies to estimate the opportunity cost of achieving the SDG 5 in the Arab States.ESCWA, in partnership with UNDP, UNFPA, and UN Women, under the Gender Justice & the Law project, has updated all country studies to account for amendments to legislation impacting gender justice and violence against women in the Arab region. Additionally, ESCWA developed the Gender Justice Portal (http://genderjustice.unescwa.org/), which includes all relevant materials on the legislation impacting gender justice and violence against women in the Arab region.ESCWA published the “Violence Against Women Survey Implementation Toolkit: Complete questionnaire for a stand-alone survey.”ESCWA contributed to a “Situational Analysis of Women and Girls in MENA and Arab States Region” coordinated by UNICEF and in partnership with UN Women, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, WFP, WHO, UNESCO, FAO, Tdh, and Plan International.  The situational analysis aims to present a snapshot of the lives of women and girls in the Arab region, including instances of violence against women and women’s access to justice.ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNICEF, UNFPA and National University of Ireland, Galway, produced the technical report on “Estimating the Cost of Child Marriage in the Arab Region: Background Paper on the Feasibility of Undertaking a Costing Study”  ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNFPA, UNDP, UNODC and WHO, is undertaking a research study on domestic violence service provider coordination and referral systems in the Arab regionESCWA, on behalf of the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs, is currently conducting a Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) of the May 2021 aggression against the Gaza Strip, including an analysis of the impact on GBV and access to GBV services.ESCWA contributed to a Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) of the Beirut Port Explosions, which was coordinated by UN Women, in partnership with UNFPA, CARE and ABAAD. The analysis includes a discussion of the impact of the aftermath of the explosion on GBV and access to GBV services.ESCWA, in partnership with the National University of Ireland, Galway, supported the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs with the technical paper on the “Economic Costs of Marital Violence against Women in the State of Palestine.”ESCWA is supporting the Jordan National Commission for Women to implement a national survey to estimate the cost of the out of pocket expenses for survivors of domestic violence. Hide

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNDP and UNFPA, held a special online meeting with its Committee on Women on “Policy Responses to Protect Women and Girls from the Impact of COVID-19” on 23 April 2020.

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNDP, delivered online training for the National Family Safety Programme (NFSP) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on “Building and Delivering Effective Hotline Service Provision during the COVID-19 Pandemic” during May 2020.

ESCWA delivered an online workshop for the Republic of the Sudan entitled “Best Practices and Shared Experiences on Shelters for Women Survivors of Violence in the Republic of the Sudan” on 25-27 August 2020.

ESCWA, in cooperation with the Supreme Council for Family Affairs of Kuwait, organized a “Webinar Series on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda in the State of Kuwait” on 28-29 September and 13 October 2020.

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNFPA, UNICEF, UNDP and UNODC, coordinated and delivered a series of 12 webinars on Violence against Women and COVID-19 for the National Family Safety Programme (NFSP) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from October-December 2020.

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, the League of Arab States and the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University, organized a high level virtual meeting on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of UNSCR 1325 on 4 November 2020.

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, UNFPA, UNDP and the League of Arab States, organized and facilitated webinar sessions on gender justice and the law designed to better inform members of the subcommittee on gender equality and SDGs on tools to examine and align national legislation with international frameworks, most notably CEDAW, Beijing Platform of Action and SDG target 5.1 on 8-10 December 2020.

ESCWA, in partnership with the Arab Women Organization, facilitated “Sub-regional Training Webinars on Reporting to the Committee on All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)” on 12-16 January 2021.

ESCWA, with support from ABAAD, delivered an online workshop for the National Family Safety Programme (NFSP) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on “Supporting Women between Empowerment and Rehabilitation: Different Approaches” during March 2021.

ESCWA delivered an online workshop for the Sultanate of Oman entitled “Technical support in the field of combating violence against women in the Sultanate of Oman: Ensuring a comprehensive and holistic approach to addressing violence against women through legal/policy frameworks and service provision” on 22-23 June 2021.

ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women and WHO, delivered an online workshop for representatives from National Women Machineries and other relevant stakeholders who provide services for survivors of violence on “Services to Protect Women Survivors of Violence the Arab Region” on 26-29 July 2021.

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ESCWA, in partnership with the Arab Institute for Women at the Lebanese American University, organized a youth arts competition for the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence 2020 to address the theme “Life in Times of Emergency.” To accompany the competition, ESCWA ran a social media campaign throughout the 16 Days, which included facts about violence against women during different types of emergencies. The campaign closed with a panel of women’s rights activists from the region discussing different facets of activism during conflict, revolution and transition.

ESCWA provided an academic module on Gender Justice and Violence against Women in the Arab region to the MA programme on Gender Policies and Women's Rights course at the Saint Joseph University of Beirut.

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