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Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality organized a session on Ending Violence againt Women during the 15th Annual session of the IANWGE with panelists from UN Women and UNODC in March 2016.
In 2014, Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality provided briefings and updates on the Secretary General's UNiTE Campaign during the 13th and 14th annual sessions of the IANWGE as well as inputs from participating agencies for the final report to the Campaign’s High Level Steering Committee.
UNFPA is a member of IASC and in contexts where the IASC Cluster Approach has been activated, UNFPA and UNICEF are mandated to co-lead the GBV Area of Responsibility. As co-lead, UNFPA is accountable for working closely with national authorities, partners and communities, to ensure that minimum standards are in place to prevent and respond to gender-based violence in emergencies.
UNHCR was actively engaged in the revision of the IASC Guidelines for integrating Gender Based Violence interventions in humanitarian settings published in 2015 and supports the roll-out of the guidelines in the field. In 2016, 11 pilot countries receive training and technical support.
In March 2015, the United Nations Secretary-General’s campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women (UNiTE) launched its call to action for the 16 Days of Activism, ‘Orange the World: End Violence against Women and Girls’. The theme of prevention of violence against women and girls was selected as a focus to provide opportunities to highlight the need for greater investment in ending violence against women and girls at global, regional and country level in the particular context of the new SDG framework with a focus on prevention as a long term solution.
WFP attended 9 IASC meetings in 2015, in which WFP was playing a pivotal role as a member of the standing committee of the GenCap project & the co-chair of the IASC Gender Reference Group. Gender based violence is a key consideration in WFP's Policy on Humanitarian Protection (2012) that outlines the organisation's position on protection and provides a framework for implementation of its responsibilities in this regard. As part of its modus operandi, WFP seeks to implement food assistance programmes that take the interlinkages between hunger and gender-based violence into account. The objective is to ensure that programmes are safe and dignified, and to support an overall environment in which gender-based violence is reduced and the effects of violence on survivors are mitigated.
WHO is one of the 13 UN entities of UN Action, leading knowledge pillar by contributing to improved evidence for understanding the scale of sexual violence in conflict and how to respond effectively. In 2015, WHO together with UNODC published a toolkit on 'strengthening the medico-legal response to sexual violence', which aims to support service provision and coordination in low-resource settings, available in English and French. It is being field tested in several countries with the aim of improving coordination across the multiple stakeholders involved.
Within the framework of UN Secretary-General’s campaign “UNiTE to End Violence against Women”, UNIC (United Nations Information Centres) Beirut, Lebanon in partnership with the Theatre Club at the Balamand University in Lebanon produced a theatre play on the issue of violence against women targeting school students - a work that was fully supported and sponsored by the Lebanese Minister of Education and Higher Education. The play, entitled “We Are All Humans”, presented real cases of violence against women within families in Lebanon through a vibrant script and a combination of gestures, songs, music and dance performed by university students. It tackles the hereditary violence against women and sheds light on physical and moral violence practiced directly or indirectly against girls in society. UNIC took part in the script drafting and the directing process to reflect the real objectives of the UNiTE campaign aiming to prevent all forms of violence against women and girls and eliminate this scourge.