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UN Women supported the office of the UN Secretary General in drafting three Secretary General’s reports on " Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilations", "Intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls" and "Trafficking in women and girls”. These reports were presented to the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly and have served as a basis for the negotiations of new resolutions on these subjects, which were approved at its 71st Session.
UN Women has continued working with other UN agencies to finalize a UN global joint programme to build sustained national capacities to implement VAW prevalence surveys in line with international standards and SDG monitoring requirements, as part of UN Women’s Flagship Programme Initiative “Better production and use of gender statistics for evidence-based localization of the SDGs”.
UN Women is working with UNDP in the finalization of a policy and programming guidance for prevention of violence against women in elections (VAWE). The guidance aims to fill gaps in current knowledge by providing an overview of the specific forms of VAWE, including scope, types, victims and perpetrators, and the range of actions that can be taken at each phase of the electoral cycle to prevent and mitigate it. The Guide is targeted at the key stakeholders and actors who are positioned to act to prevent and mitigate VAWE, and to international organizations and those providing programming support on electoral assistance, women’s political participation and ending violence against women. It is also targeted at members of political parties, particularly the leadership of those parties, civil society organizations (CSOs), women’s groups and gender equality activists.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, is currently conducting a full fledged project on estimating the cost of VAW in the Arab region. This project consists of two phases: the first one includes two studies (namely, “Status of Arab Women Report: Violence against Women: What is At Stake” and "Model for costing domestic violence against women in the Arab region"). The former, produced in partnership with UN Women and the Lebanese American University, provides a contextualized understanding of VAW and its importance, examines the existing reporting mechanisms, explores the linkages between VAW and social, economic and health factors, and reviews the relevant methodologies with a view to identify the most suitable one for the Arab region. This first study paves the way for the development of the regional economic model to estimate the cost of VAW in the region, which is addressed in the second study in partnership with UN Women. The second phase of the project focuses on building the capacity of member States on the importance of costing violence against women, as well as piloting the economic model in two Arab countries.
In August 2014, OHCHR and UN Women launched the Latin American Protocol for the investigation of Gender-Motivated Killings of women, which provides guidance for investigations to comply with due diligence standards (promoted in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Peru).
UN Women launched the Global Database on Violence against Women website during the Commission on the Status of Women 2016. The Global Database is an online resource, designed to provide comprehensive and up-to-date information on measures taken by 193 United Nations Member States to address all forms of violence against women, in the areas of laws and policies, prevention, services, and statistical data. It also serves as an important tool to monitor the implementation of SDGs and its target areas on violence against women. The Global Database is one of three websites on the Global Knowledge Platform to End Violence against Women. The platform aims to improve knowledge and coordination among different actors in order to address violence against women more effectively, and it offers a comprehensive picture of interventions addressing VAW, both by Governments as well as by the UN system. In addition to the Global Database, the other two websites on the platform are: the Inventory of UN Activities to End Violence against Women, and the Virtual Knowledge Centre to End Violence against Women and Girls.
In June, 2016, UN Women held Results-Sharing Meeting on Leveraging Technical Tools, Evidence and Community Engagement to Advance the Implementation of Laws and Provision of Services to Women Experiencing Violence in South-East Asia. Over 40 government officials, UN Women officers and Civil Society Organizations across South-East Asia region shared results from EVAW work, affirming the importance of a two-tier approach, where policy-level interventions are undertaken in parallel to interventions at the community level.
UN Women Multi-Country Office in Barbados has provided support to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to develop and adopt a model for conducting national prevalence surveys on violence against women in the region. The model is currently being piloted in Jamaica, where prevalence data are expected to be available in late 2016-early 2017, and will be later implemented in other countries in the region. In Kazakhstan, UN Women supported the Committee of Statistics to conduct the first specialized national survey on the prevalence of domestic violence, through provision of expert's support to conduct a series of trainings for implementing the survey.
UN Women participates as observer in the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators, and it has influenced the selection and definition of EVAW related SDG target indicators, more specifically target 5.2 indicators. It has led and worked with other UN agencies to develop the metadata for the two indicators to monitor progress of this target. UN Women also convened a meeting with other UN agencies working on VAW data and it is coordinating the development of a UN global joint programme to build sustained national capacities to implement VAW prevalence surveys in line with international standards and SDG monitoring requirements. This work is part of the Flagship Programme Initiative “Better production and use of gender statistics for evidence-based localization of the SDGs”.
Focusing on strengthening political and institutional commitments, UN Women provided technical assistance in the drafting process of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action on the Elimination of Violence against Women (2016-2025), which was adopted at the ASEAN Summit in November, 2015. The plan addresses violence prevention, access to justice and services for survivors of violence, and speaks to the role of men and boys in ending violence against women, including through social norms change.