United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women

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. It therefore provides funding to civil society and women’s rights organizations to support legislative development.

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. Strategies utilized by grantee partners included strengthening the capacity of lawyers, advocating for strong legal protections for women and girls, and the use of strategic litigation to highlight emblematic cases.

For example, in 2024, The Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) strengthened partnerships with women’s and girls’ rights organizations in Somalia and Somaliland to advocate for legal frameworks that better protect displaced and minority women and girls, who are disproportionately affected by sexual and gender-based violence. SIHA’s coalition has advocated for legislation that guarantees their right to live free from violence, access services and see accountability for perpetrators.

In Mexico, the Grupo de Acción por los Derechos Humanos y la Justicia Social established a network of more than 30 feminist lawyers across 17 states to provide legal aid and represent women and girls in cases of gender-based violence. Building on the organization’s experience in strategic litigation, including high-profile femicide cases, the initiative’s participatory model encourages survivors to claim their rights and regain control of their lives. The network is also training new lawyers using a gender-focused, specialized pedagogy that is unavailable in traditional law schools, and strengthening local groups of women survivors.

During the reporting period, the UN Trust Fund has supported multiple projects focused on sexual violence in conflict including initiatives which have provided essential services to women and girls in conflict situations, supported refugee and IDP women and girls, and initiatives in post-conflict settings which have sought to address the social stigma and discrimination experienced by survivors sexual violence. 

For example, in Kosovo, Medica Gjakova and Medica Kosova are helping women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence inflicted during the 1998-1999 war. Through comprehensive services, including psychosocial counselling, gynaecological care, legal aid, and economic empowerment, the two organizations have helped survivors heal, reclaim their rights and rebuild their lives. Between 2022 and 2024, Medica Kosova assisted over 300 women in applying for "survivor status", which gives them access to pensions, healthcare and other reparations.  The organization also addresses the rise in intimate partner violence, which in 2024 led to over 2,900 documented cases and three femicides. 

In 2024, 43% of the UN Trust Fund's 27th grant-making cycle funding ($5.7 million) supported initiatives for crisis-affected women and girls, including a dedicated special window that channelled $4.6 million to eight organizations, with at least two-thirds of the special window projects addressing conflict-related sexual violence.

Previously, 18 initiatives supported through a funding window focused on forcibly displaced women and girls and refugees (2016-2022) reached over 35,000 refugee and/or forcibly displaced women and girls, with many also addressing sexual violence, notably in refugee camps among women fleeing conflict.

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. 

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. 

Organizations that work directly with underserved women, survivors and communities gain valuable insights into effective strategies for addressing violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund systematically captures, curates and shares this practice-based knowledge and experience so that all can benefit. This occurs through one-on-one communications with grantee partners, learning exchanges, independent evaluations, thematic knowledge products co-produced with grantee partners, webinars and knowledge cafés.

Key data collection activities initiated during the reporting period include:

• An annual organizational survey among active grantee partners in addition to an annual partner survey introduced by the UN Trust Fund in 2021 to monitor the views of key partners (such as UN agencies, donors, other women’s funds, academic/research institutions and other CSO and WRO partners).
• In 2022, the UN Trust Fund launched SHINE, an online platform developed in collaboration with the Spotlight Initiative, which serves as a knowledge hub for civil society and women’s rights organizations, UN agencies, academics, researchers, practitioners, donors, and the private sector to co-create and amplify evidence-based knowledge that advances the shared goal of ending violence against women and girls.

The UN Trust Fund expands the global knowledge base by curating practice-based knowledge from the initiatives it supports, in co-creation with grantee partners. Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund co-produced with civil society organizations a total of 34 knowledge products to codify the practice-based knowledge and learnings of grantee partners, whilst 79 final, external evaluations of grantee initiatives were produced with the support of the UN Trust Fund during this time. 

Finally, the UN Trust Fund also supports grantee partners’ capabilities to generate data and knowledge by providing dedicated funding and delivering tailored trainings and technical support. The eight grants awarded under the ACT programme in 2024 included, for the first time, a specific budget allocation for practice-based knowledge and learnings. An average of 59% of active grantee partners between 2021 and 2024 reported having an ability to produce knowledge or learning on ending violence against women programming with UN Trust Fund support.

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:

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.

The United Nations Trust Fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women (UN Trust Fund) is a global, multilateral grant-making mechanism that supports effort to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund, which was established in 1996 by the General Assembly in the resolution 50/166, is administered by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on behalf of the United Nations system. With the strong institutional support of UN Women and its regional, multi-country offices, and working closely with the rest of the United Nations system through its inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee, the Trust Fund plays a vital role in driving forward collective efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.