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In Kosovo (under Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)), Medica Kosova is implementing a small grant from the UN Trust Fund to implement a project whose aim is to protect the legal rights, including property rights, of women who have experienced gender-based violence during and after the armed conflict, and to improve institutional responses to gender-based violence. Medica Kosova is also providing monitoring and advocacy training for women’s organizations and is working with those organizations to identify shortcomings in the implementation of the national strategy against domestic violence. Thus far, the project has assisted 17 survivors of gender-based violence in obtaining legal support and starting the process of registering their properties. Another nine women, who have obtained official status as survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, have expressed an interest in following the legal procedures to register their houses and farms. In addition, 19 women have applied for the status of survivors of conflict related sexual violence and will be enrolled in the reparations scheme that provides them with a monthly lifetime pension.
During 2019, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women commissioned an independent meta-evaluation and a meta-analysis to provide insights into what makes Trust Fund supported projects effective as well as into the strengths and weaknesses in evaluation practices. This work also established a database that will enable the Trust Fund to analyse future evaluations of its funded projects and advance the standards and rigour of its overall evaluation practice. Overall, the evaluators found an upward trend in the quality of the evaluations. The meta-evaluation was concluded with a number of recommendations to improve the quality and usefulness of evaluations, which included reviewing the questions to assist evaluators in writing more nuanced findings, greater disaggregation of data and ensuring that recommendations create a pathway for identifying recommendations that are clear, realistic, actionable and timebound.
In Solomon Islands, the Regional Rights Resource Team of the Pacific Community, funded by the UN Trust Fund, is implementing a pilot project aimed at improving access to justice for women survivors of violence in the provinces of Guadalcanal and Malaita. The aim of the project is to assist the authorities of Solomon Islands in the implementation of the 2014 Family Protection Act. The Act provides for an integrated response by various government departments, for assistance to survivors of family and domestic violence, for improved access to justice and for redress for survivors of violence against women. The grantee has developed a national training curriculum and accreditation scheme to develop the capacity of selected informal justice mechanisms established in rural communities under the Family Protection Act to deliver quality services. Five capacity-building and monitoring missions at each of the 37 project sites have resulted in an increase in the number of cases reported and in discussions about domestic violence as a harmful practice. A total of 48 authorized justices have been trained. They continue to show a willingness to hold awareness-raising sessions and speak to their communities about their role and about the purpose of the Family Protection Act.
In 2018, the UN Trust Fund published a technical annex to its Annual Report of 2017, providing an update on the results framework of its strategic plan, 2015–2020. As the first such report to be produced by the UN Trust Fund in its 20-year history, it involved the development of indicators, methods and systems to collect data, including input from, and in consultation with, more than 70 grantee organizations. As a result, the framework has been simplified to include three tiers of result types in order to better reflect which results can be attributed to the secretariat of the UN Trust Fund and which are achieved by the organizations themselves through the Trust Fund grant. A mid-term review of the current Trust Fund’s strategic plan was initiated in 2018, and the report is scheduled to be issued in early 2019.
In October 2018, the founder of the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denis Mukwege, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his work with women and girls who are survivors of sexual violence. The hospital helped to pioneer the Panzi Foundation model of integrated rights-based psychosocial, legal and socioeconomic support provision in one-stop centres. The Panzi Foundation, which was awarded a grant from the UN Trust Fund to enhance its services for sexual violence survivors, worked in partnership with Physicians for Human Rights, another Trust Fund grantee, to train medical, legal and psychosocial professionals on the principles underlying its model and on the collection of forensic evidence to bring the perpetrators of sexual violence to justice and obtain justice for survivors. Beginning in 2011, the Trust Fund has invested in the Programme on Sexual Violence in Conflict Zones launched by Physicians for Human Rights and is currently funding its second generation of results. Since that time, Physicians for Human Rights has trained 1,578 health-care, legal and law enforcement professionals, who have provided services to 42,162 survivors of sexual violence throughout the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Kenya.
In Peru, the organization Red Nacional de Promoción de la Mujer is implementing a project in the regions of Ayacucho and Huánuco aimed at reducing gender-based violence against older women who were victims of conflict-related violence in the 1980s and 1990s. The project has empowered more than 487 women, of whom 44 per cent were over 60 years of age, by increasing their awareness of their rights. Through peer-to-peer exchange workshops, the grantee reached more than 210 older women from various organizations and 286 men and other women, including students and youth groups. The grantee adopted a holistic approach to developing participatory needs assessments, awareness-raising and training workshops and communications campaigns, all focusing on rights, interculturality, gender and aging. The project was also aimed at raising awareness among local officials and advocating for gender- and age-sensitive public policies. As a direct result of the project’s implementation, older women are now part of community surveillance committees and the municipalities’ round table on poverty reduction. In addition, four emblematic cases of violations of women’s rights were reviewed and, to date, one case has been decided in favour of the survivor; the remaining three are pending decisions.
A project implemented by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) with funding from the UN Trust Fund in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya is working to address gaps in the medical-legal process in order to improve responses to sexual violence against women and girls. The programme has been actively engaged in the two countries, both of which have endured widespread, conflict-related sexual violence and were being investigated for mass crimes by the International Criminal Court.
In December 2017, the Kavumu Case was concluded with the conviction of 11 men for crimes against humanity for the rape of 37 toddlers and young girls over a three-year period in the village of Kavumu, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This was a landmark case because a sitting government official was stripped of his immunity and was found guilty for crimes that he and his armed militia committed and because it was the first time that survivors/witnesses were afforded innovative means of protection in court in the country. PHR helped to coordinate the investigation and provided technical assistance to clinicians and police investigators that led to the arrests of militia members.