United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

From its Say NO to Violence against Women Campaign, UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, delivered over 5 million signatures, including from Heads of State and Ministers from 60 governments and more than 600 Parliamentarians from over 70 countries to the UN Secretary-General, on 25 November 2008, in support of his Campaign UNiTE to End Violence Against Women. Hide

In February 2008, UN-INSTRAW, now part of UN Women, in collaboration with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), published the Gender and Security Reform Toolkit that aim to support gender mainstreaming; the participation of women in the security sector; the capacity-building of the security sector to respond to violence against women. The toolkit includes 12 tools and corresponding practice notes on gender and police reform, gender and border management, gender and justice reform, and gender training for security personnel, among other topics. The Gender and SSR Toolkit was launched during the fifty-second session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Advocacy is being carried out among Member States and other stakeholders to encourage the use of the toolkit in ongoing security sector reform processes. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, through its gender-responsive budgeting programme in South East Europe, supported civil society, which led to increased regional and municipal budget allocations in 2008 for domestic violence shelters in Bosnia and Herzegovina and amendments to the domestic violence law to ensure co-financing for shelter operations. Hide

DAW, now part of UN Women, co-sponsored, together with the Permanent Missions of Canada and of Finland to the United Nations, the presentation of the book "Violence against Women: An International Perspective" which presents comparative results for nine of the countries which have implemented the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS). Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, advocated for the adoption of Security Council Resolution 1820 (2008) on sexual violence in conflict. As Chair of UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict, UNDP/Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) advocated with Security Council members for the adoption of Security Council resolution 1820 (2008). Hide

UN-HABITAT and UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, held a joint workshop during the International Seminar “Cities without Violence, Safe Cities for Women and Girls”, in July 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and presented a joint training initiative on women’s safety audits for cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Hide

In September 2008, DAW, now part of UN Women, sent a questionnaire to Member States on measures undertaken to address violence against women, for the purpose of obtaining information for the Secretary-General’s database on violence against women (A/RES/61/143, para. 19). Hide

In Burundi, UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, , UNDP, UNESCO and UNICEF worked together to provide training and reporting assistance for civil society organizations and police to improve statistics and data collection on cases of gender-based violence. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, and DFID supported a conference organized by the Rwandan Defense Forces in Kigali in March 2008 on women’s participation in peacekeeping missions, as part of prevention of gender-based violence. In collaboration with UNFPA and UNDP, UNIFEM organized a satellite session “From acknowledgement to action: Intersections between violence against women and HIV/AIDS”, at the International Conference on AIDS in Mexico City, in August 2008.UNIFEM leads or partners on several joint United Nations initiatives on violence against women, including programmes in Bangladesh, Colombia and Morocco; the Asia Pacific Regional Joint Programme Partners for Prevention: Working with Boys and Men to Prevent Gender-based Violence; and the One UN pilots in Albania, Rwanda and Uruguay, which include violence against women in their programming. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, provided capacity development to the Burundian police and judiciary to improve protection mechanisms for survivors of violence against women and to civil society partners, working on violence against women in Indonesia, Thailand, Timor-Leste and the Philippines. It also supported the development of a training course, "Empowerment, HIV and violence against women in the Caribbean." As part of the Safe Cities Programme, UNIFEM and Red Mujer y Habitat supported an online learning course, “Urban violence, insecurity and discrimination”. Hide