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In March 2016 a webinar on Protection from Gender-based Violence in Food Security and Nutrition interventions was delivered, available to all staff, as part of the roll-out of the new corporate guidelines. Tailored guidance will be provided to staff working on projects in decentralized offices during 2016 and 2017.
Capacity-building of UNRWA staff, including trainings, has been a focus for UNRWA in ensuring that addressing Gender Based Violence is embedded into the work done by the different Agency’s programmes. To that effect, UNRWA has started training staff on identifying and addressing GBV through different levels of trainings. Trainings have served a dual purpose to not only in increasing staff capacity to respond to GBV, but also raise awareness and change perceptions of UNRWA staff. To support the training of staff, UNRWA developed a GBV manual which was developed in 2012. In order to monitor to what extent staff understand and acknowledge their roles and responsibilities to address GBV, UNRWA carried out biannual readiness assessment questionnaires in all core programmes. Further, by looking at the return on trainings through identification, it is clear that even within programmes which have received high levels of trainings there have been persistent obstacles to reporting the identification of GBV survivors and referring them to appropriate services. This shows that while trainings have been crucial, it has not been sufficient on its own. Supporting mechanisms, such as revisions to staff terms of references, accountability frameworks and reference tools and guidelines to support staff in implementation, are necessary to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of the response and to ensure sustainability. UNRWA has been able to target staff from all its different programmes, including health, relief, and education with more than 4000 trainings in the period 2014-2015.
ESCWA has implemented a project to build the capacities of parliamentarians from selected Arab countries and other stakeholders in implementing UNSCR 1325 (2000) on Women, Peace and Security. This project has resulted in the delivery of training workshops to foster the formulation of national action plans aiming at amending specific discriminative legislation to better protect women during armed conflicts, enacting new laws to facilitate women’s access to decision-making positions in peace process and endorsing financial implications by Governments to carry out action plans accordingly.
In 2015, ESCWA produced a background paper on the socioeconomic impact of wars on women and girls in the Arab region. The paper shows that Gender-Based Violence is one of the most relevant repercussions of wars on women and girls and proposes recommendations at the institutional and legal levels.
In 2015, ESCWA produced a study entitled “Endurance, Resistance and Survival – Women and Girls in Conflict and Humanitarian Settings in the Arab region”, focusing on the gendered typology of conflicts in the region and their implications on the status of women.
In November 2015, ESCWA co-organized with the Lebanese American University session of the Gender Discussion Series focusing on Gender-Based Violence in emergency settings. This session gathered experts from civil society organizations, national institutions and UN agencies to shed light on the topic.
In order to enhance the ability of Country Offices, Regional Service Centres and Regional Bureaux to deliver transformative results for gender equality, UNDP has created the UNDP Gender Equality Seal. The Seal is a corporate certification process that recognizes good performance in gender mainstreaming. It offers three levels of certification (Bronze, Silver or Gold). An office/unit can be certified and awarded after the following four steps: the first step consists of a self-assessment based on a set of benchmarks. In the current round of the Seal, countries have to score positively on several mandatory benchmarks and score a certain % of other benchmarks to get any certification award. One of the benchmarks (3.2) aims at preventing workplace harassment, sexual harassment and abuse of authority and states that an office/unit policy has to be notified and implemented. Specific responsibilities for senior management include communicating the policy to staff; ensuring that staff complete the online training course on harassment and abuse of authority; acting as a role model and resource on the policy for staff members and non-staff personnel; ensure prevention of harassment, especially by supervisors; take prompt action for investigation and redress of any incidents; ensure confidentiality and sensitivity; and ensure that there is no retaliation against complainants. They are 43 currently participating countries that will have to complete this mandatory benchmark to qualify for a Seal certification.
Some 3000 WFP staff and partners have been trained on integrating protection in WFP's operations. The training covers gender-based violence and aims at building people's capacities for the integration of protection measures in food assistance programs, including Gender based violence related measures.
FAO has been instrumental in the finalization of the Committee on World Food Security’s (CFS) Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (FFA), a global policy guidance instrument endorsed in October 2015. The document explicitly recognizes the role of all stakeholders in “protecting against all forms of gender-based violence and sexual exploitation and abuse, particularly towards refugees and IDPs, to allow safe access to resources to meet food and nutrition needs”, and in “designing and delivering food security and nutrition policies and actions in ways that minimize the risk to recipients and contribute to preventing and ending gender based violence.”
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).