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UNFPA supports the global geospatial knowledge platform to assist in knowledge sharing related to the prevalence of intimate partner violence for 119 countries and their subregions. A geospatial dashboard on IPV was launched in December 2020, and an accompanying report on IPV data was published in May 2021.
During emergencies, UNFPA is a lead agency in enabling safe and ethical service data collection and management, including coordinating the GBV Information Management System (GBVIMS) Steering Committee (UNFPA, UNICEF, UNHCR, IRC and IMC). Online (Primero/GBVIMS+) and offline (GBVIMS) GBV case management and incident monitoring systems facilitate safe and ethical GBV data collection and sharing in order to support a continuous process of evaluation in the improvement and coordination of services to ensure that survivor-centered care is supported, and support quality service provision by providing a set of tools which help service providers to support survivors in an integrated manner. GBVIMS and GBVIMS+ are currently used by 159 non-governmental organisations (139 national and 20 international) and engage 12 UN entities in 25 countries.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, UNFPA was at the forefront in projecting the impact of women and girls. In April 2020, UNFPA, Avenir Health and Johns Hopkins University published modelled data on the impact of the pandemic on gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. This model has been highly cited to exemplify the devastating effects of the pandemic on efforts to end VAW. UNFPA estimated that if the lockdown continued for 6 months, 31 million additional gender-based violence cases could be expected, and for every 3 months of continued lockdown, an additional 15 million additional cases of gender-based violence were to be expected. It was also estimated that 2 million cases of FGM and 13 million cases of child marriage that could have been otherwise prevented, would occur as a consequence of the pandemic.
UNFPA is undergoing a costing exercise for GBV programs at country level. By August 2021, the cost of UNFPA’s GBV prevention and response programmes had been estimated for 9 countries.
As of 2021, 15 GBV prevalence surveys and 24 countries have benefited from the kNOwVAW data capacity building initiative. This initiative also supported 9 countries in the Asia Pacific to publish reports with findings of a VAW prevalence survey.
In November 2020, the East Asia and Pacific Regional Offices of UNFPA, UN Women and UNICEF launched a joint study exploring and illustrating the interlinkages between violence against women and violence against children in four countries, namely Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Viet Nam.
UNFPA works largely in implementing prevention programmes that transform gender and social norms, as the root causes of gender-based violence. UNFPA, jointly with UNICEF, led the development of the social norms manual. UNFPA works on comprehensive sexuality education as a GBV prevention strategy in more than 95 countries. In December 2020, under the Spotlight Programme in the Pacific - comprising 11 island states - UNFPA launched the 2020 International Technical and Programmatic Guidance on Out-of-School Comprehensive Sexuality Education, which has created a momentum across the region at the highest possible levels of political and faith-based leadership. In June 2021, UNFPA and the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities organized a webinar with almost 300 attendees, on GBV prevention through CSE and the importance of engaging religious leaders and faith-based organizations.
UNFPA prevention efforts take an inclusive approach by engaging with men and boys and promoting positive masculinities that challenge gender inequality in 107 countries. Similarly, UNFPA implements gender-transformative programmes in 114 regional and country offices across all regions.
UNFPA GBV prevention efforts are guided by the RESPECT framework, co-produced with WHO and UN Women in 2019.
UNFPA, in partnership with other UN agencies and organisations, supports more than 20 countries to implement programmes aimed at eliminating and ending harmful practices.
The Ending Female Genital Mutilation Programme applies a gender-transformative approach to eliminate FGM, through which since 2008 30,182 communities, representing 42.4 million people, have publicly declared the abandonment of the practice, while 35.9 million people have participated in education, sensitization, and social mobilization sessions; and 69.6 million listeners have been reached through radio and TV programmes that promote the elimination of FGM.
The Global Programme to End Child Marriage since 2016 has empowered 7.2 million adolescent girls; provided education support to 500,000 adolescent girls; reached 4.2 million individuals through community dialogue and 31 million through media campaigns; assisted 24,000 facilities to implement adolescent girl-friendly health and protection services; and, enabled 22,000 schools to strengthen adolescent girl-friendly education.
UNFPA is also widely engaged in advocacy efforts and awareness-raising through online and offline activities. UNFPA is partnering with the Center for Women’s Global Leadership to advance the 16 Days Campaign, with a renewed focus on shifting from 16 days of activism to 365 days of accountability. And in advancing the GBV Disruptor initiative and the social media campaign - #IAmAGBVDisruptor.
Following the Generation Equality Forum in 2021, where UNFPA led the Action Coalition on Bodily Autonomy and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, a number of commitments were made to advance bodily autonomy, eliminate harmful practices and end GBV, including to empower women and girls in all of their diversity to make autonomous decisions about their bodies, sexuality and reproduction; and to end child marriage and female genital mutilation by scaling up what works. UNFPA also participates in the Gender-based violence action coalition and it’s committed to strengthen availability of and capacity to use data for ending GBV; to strengthen multi-stakeholder services to support victims and survivors of gender-based violence; and to strengthen prevention of gender-based violence.
The UNiTE Group for the Americas and the Caribbean, including 9 agencies -PAHO, UNDP, OHCHR, UNICEF, UNFPA, UNHCR, ECLAC, WFP and UN Women- and the IDB and the OAS, developed 12 Key Messages to Eradicate Violence Against Women and Girls in Latin America and the Caribbean. This unprecedented effort led by UN Women, systematized the lessons learned from all the publications and knowledge produced in the context of the UNiTE Campaign in the last 7 years. These messages were launched in the framework of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which took place in Montevideo in October of 2016. Thereafter, the messages were the basis for the celebrations of November 25th at regional and country level.
The UN Women Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), hosted the meeting “Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls in Latin-America and the Caribbean: Lessons learned across the globe”, which was held in Panama City from December 5 to 7 of 2016. This event provided a unique space, bringing together several UN agencies, government officials, diplomats, civil society organizations, global researchers and other experts in the field of preventing and responding to violence against women and girls to exchange experiences and explore ways to implement effective and promising practices to address violence against women. This approach sought to drive change in the region, which has been characterized by the lack of evidence-based interventions and rigorous evaluations. A total of 25 countries were represented in this meeting and UN women key guidance documents such as the UN prevention Framework to End Violence against Women and Girls as well as the Essential services guidelines were disseminated.
UNHCR is a founding member of the Gender-Based Violence Information Management System and sits on its Steering Committee along with UNFPA, IRC, IMC and UNICEF. UNHCR is working to strengthen and harmonize data collection on SGBV by implementing the GBVIMS in selected operations. In 2015, UNHCR provided technical support in data collection and analysis to 22 countries.
In 2015, UNFPA and UNDP Burkina Faso supported the creation of a universal form allowing police units and offices for the promotion of women’s rights on decentralized level to collect data on violence against women and girls. Data collection is on-going, again with the support of UNDP. Moreover, UNDP also supported the creation of a tool for data collection and analysis, allowing the monitoring of violence on a regional and national basis.
UN Women, in collaboration with UNFPA and the Turkish Government, held a Global Meeting on “Ending Violence against Women: Building on Progress to Accelerate Change” in December 2015 in Istanbul, Turkey, at which over 150 high-level representatives from over 40 Member States, the Council of Europe, civil society and United Nations entities attended. At the meeting, participants exchanged experiences and renewed their committment to ending violence against women, such as strengthening Government mechanisms for the prevention of and responses to VAW; implementing comprehensive national programmes and involving men and boys as part of the solution.
In March 2014, during the 25th session of the Human Rights Council, OHCHR partnered with UNFPA, UNICEF and others to bring the award winning exhibition, “Too Young to Wed” to the Palais des Nations in Geneva on the issue of child marriage.