Search
Training and capacity-building remained a key area of the UN Trust Fund’s work both online and in face-to-face workshops. For example, the fund has implemented 10 online training modules, developed in 2017, on how to ensure accountability for grants, in accordance with the Project Cooperation Agreement, including sessions on project design, monitoring and evaluation; financial and operational management; and ethics and safety. The course is open to new Trust Fund grantees and their implementing partners and is offered as refresher training to all current grantees. By December 2018, the sessions had been delivered live in three languages and recorded to ensure wider participation and share knowledge. In September 2018, the Trust Fund held a five-day knowledge-exchange workshop in Amman, involving eight current and new grantees working on ending violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts. The event provided an opportunity for grantees to obtain access to training to respond to programmatic and operational gaps in capacity, exchange learning and knowledge and document knowledge in a format that can be used for both internal and external purposes.
ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, supported the Lebanese Ministry of State for Women’s Affairs to develop a national strategy on violence against women. This consultative national strategy, included interviews and focus group discussions with line ministries; several national and sub national validation workshops; and a high-level meeting to discuss the draft strategy.
ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, UN Women, OHCHR and UNDP in Lebanon, is providing technical support to the National Commission for Lebanese Women (NCLW) to develop a National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security.
ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, supported the Lebanese Ministry of State for Women’s Affairs to develop a project on costing violence against women. This included developing a project proposal, conducting field work, holding national consultations, developing an operational model for Lebanon, holding a second national consultation, developing a national survey to measure the prevalence of violence against women, analysing the government budget, and developing a national survey for services.
ESCWA conducted three field visits to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a national consultation to discuss elements of an operational model on estimating the cost of marital violence. This involved engaging with the National Family Affairs Council, in addition to other stakeholders such as governmental entities and civil society members providing services for survivors of family violence.
ESCWA conducted a field mission to Iraq to prepare for the implementation of a project on costing violence against women in Iraq.
ESCWA participated in a consultation with the Egyptian National Council for Women and the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) to discuss practical steps towards carrying out a national study on violence against women with disabilities. This meeting was the second such consultation facilitated by ESCWA to determine the parameters and methodology of the study.
ESCWA facilitated a Regional Workshop on the Measurement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on Violence against Women and Time Use Statistics Indicators with senior gender experts/statisticians from national statistical offices, ministries of gender equality and women’s affairs. The workshop addressed selected SDG indicators, focusing on the following gender concerns: physical, sexual, psychological violence against women perpetrated by an intimate partner and sexual violence against women perpetrated by a person other than an intimate partner.
ESCWA supported the Ministry of Women, Family, Childhood and Elderly in Tunisia to better understand the availability and quality of data needed to carry out an estimation of the cost of violence in Tunisia.
ESCWA, the League of Arab States and UN Women, in partnership with the Swedish Institute in Alexandria and UNDP held a workshop on the different pillars of reporting when preparing National Voluntary Reports (VNR). Discussion included the tools available at the regional level to report on SDG 5, and the role of national stakeholders in preparing the VNR.
ESCWA and UNFPA Regional Office in Beirut organized a workshop on monitoring, control and protection of human rights including sexual and reproductive health and rights. This workshop targeted national human rights institutions and National Women’s Machineries in the Arab region, as well as in some countries of the Horn of Africa. The workshop sought to strengthen collaboration between National Women’s Machineries and national human rights institutions, especially in documenting the status of women and women’s sexual and reproductive health within the framework of international conventions.
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.
1. Intervention to address VAW in antenatal care setting : WHO and the Wits Institute for Reproductive health have finalised a randomised control trial of an empowerment counselling-based intervention in antenatal care for pregnant women experiencing abuse in Johannesburg, South Africa. The trial found that the intervention was efficacious in reducing IPV, and was acceptable but delivering it would require further efforts.. The findings and intervention training manual will be published in 2018 2. Building on field testing of the WHO clinical handbook for the response to intimate partner violence and sexual violence, WHO is carrying out implementation research to identify effective approaches to roll out WHO clinical guidelines and derivative tools on the health sector response to violence against women. 3. The questionnaire developed for the WHO multi-country study on women’s health and domestic violence against women has been updated and now includes questions on non-partner sexual violence, sexual harassment and updated questions on social norms and mental health. The questionnaire will be published in 2018 along with an accompanying question-by-question manual. 4. WHO updated its database on intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence and established a technical advisory group for the VAW inter-agency working group on estimation and data as part of the UN-wide SDG monitoring efforts
1. The ILO report “Care work and care jobs for the future of work” gathers diverse data on the presence of violence and harassment in care work and acknowledges that, “on occasion, care workers experience violence and harassment” and that “health-care workers report some of the highest levels of violence compared to other industries or sectors”. See: ILO. 2018. Care Work and Care Jobs for the Future of Decent Work (Geneva).
2. A national questionnaire and a paper was developed in Egypt in early 2018 to better understand the dimension of violence at work. The paper is under finalization.
IOM’s efforts to improve the capacity to identify GBV risks continued, including through the use of the Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM). The DTM is a system that regularly captures, processes and disseminates multi-layered primary data and information on the mobility, locations, vulnerabilities and needs of displaced populations at national, regional and global levels, now contains protection and GBV risk indicators. In the aims of developing tools to facilitate the analysis and reporting of GBV risk-sensitive data collected through the DTM, DTM-GBV workshops have been organized. The DTM also made progress in standardizing data dictionaries including GBV-risk related data and standard operating procedures for collecting this type of data in its response. Furthermore, IOM decided to review its DTM data monitoring system to better capture its use by other clusters and agencies, including the Protection, Child Protection and GBV sectors. 36 DTM operations reported collecting gender sensitive and GBV-risk related data at the end of 2017.
Gender unit: A compendium of WPS indicators and a dashboard was developed as a platform to track progress of WPS mandates, including specific indicators on addressing SGBV prevention and protection
. A Mission wide roll out of these indicators is expected to take place through 2018
DDR: During the reporting period, DDR/CVR teams in peacekeeping operations have increased efforts towards collecting gender disaggregated data both regarding the disarmament and demobilization of female combatants, and the participation of women in community-based projects. The information has been used as a reference for the implementation of CVR projects, some of which specifically target women and address their needs (see below). Noting that CVR initiatives aim at preventing and reducing violence at the local level, it is also expected that it directly contributes to mitigating violence against women.
UNMAS: SADD Mine/ERW victim data collection: UNMAS makes every effort to collect sex and age disaggregated data on victims of mines and explosive remnants of war, to ensure programming, such as risk education, is tailored according to the specific risk profiles.
The December 2017 UNECE Work Session on Gender Statistics ( http://www.unece.org/index.php?id=45133) included seven contributions dealing with statistics on violence against women. Experts from national statistical offices and international organizations exchanged knowledge and ideas about survey methodology, harmonization, garnering political support for conducting specialized surveys, and other topics in the measurement of violence against women.
ESCWA provided technical support on estimating the cost marital violence through a national consultation with the State of Palestine and a training with the Palestinian Central Bureau for Statistics on developing relevant questions on costing marital violence for a forthcoming prevalence survey on violence. The data gathered within the survey will assist the State of Palestine in developing a comprehensive response to marital violence.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women and the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW) at the Lebanese American University, published the study “Status of Arab Women Report 2017: Violence Against Women: What Is at Stake?” The study focuses on intimate partner violence and its economic costs to Arab states, and advocates for costing as an innovative approach and advocacy tool to assess the full impact of such violence on women, families, communities and the state.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, published the technical paper, “Estimating the Costs of Marital Violence in the Arab Region: Operational Model,” which was informed by the earlier study on the “Status of Arab Women Report 2017: Violence Against Women: What Is at Stake?” The paper proposes three different entry points for costing marital violence in the region in an effort to encourage member states to strengthen their socio-economic and legal responses to such violence.
ESCWA published the study "Women, Peace and Security: The Role of Institutions at Times of Peace and War." This study explores the women, peace and security agenda and the response in the Arab region, including an analysis of national women’s machineries, national human rights institutions, the security sector, and civil society institutions during times of stability and conflict and includes case studies on Libya and Yemen.
ESCWA published the study “The State of Gender Justice in the Arab Region,” which maps the barriers and opportunities to achieving gender justice in the Arab region, including formal and informal mechanisms for addressing violence against women. The study calls on Member States to create a more enabling legislative environment, enhance the capabilities of accountability institutions, and foster an empowering socio-economic environment for true gender justice.
FAO facilitates the preparation of Country Gender Assessments for agriculture and food security, as part of the implementation of its Gender Equality Policy. During 2017 and 2018 several CGAs were finalized with GBV analysis forming a part of the assessment.