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UNDP implemented various activities for raising awareness and advocacy to prevent VAWG at both national and local level throughout the year. Through massive events, sessions and campaigns held in cooperation with national authorities and civil societies around the world, thousands of participants were provided with information on types of violence, prevention measures, as well as current laws and state programmes to prevent domestic violence.
UNDP Libya Co-organized a webinar on the topic of Violence Against Women in Elections aimed at bringing together the Libyan High National Election Commission (HNEC), civil society organizations and other stakeholders around a discussion on violence against women in elections and efforts to enhance women’s electoral participation. The webinar was an opportunity to raise awareness and interest in the efforts of election stakeholders to protect women’s electoral participation and discuss avenues for effective cooperation and collaboration between government and non-government entities towards accelerating progress for violence against women in elections.
UNDP India organised dialogues with civil society organisations to better understand ground reality from the context of different population groups. Along similar lines, the office advocated for the inclusion of Redress to GBV as an essential service.
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.
UNHCR's GBV Policy institutionalizes the commitment to strengthening its advocacy and effective partnership with governments, diversifying partnerships with women refugee-led organizations, supporting localization, contributing to the establishment of GVB inter-agency coordination and combatting unequal gender norms that normalize and legitimize violence against women and girls.
Prevention programming and awareness-raising initiatives are implemented by UNHCR's operations with the aim of addressing all aspects of prevention, including through transforming systems and harmful social norms. Models such as SASA!, EMAP (Engaging Men through Accountable Practice) and ZTVA (Zero Tolerance Village Alliance) have been rolled-out in numerous field operations.
UNHCR has global partnerships with Raising Voices and International Rescue Committee with a focus to increase the capacity of staff working on prevention programming.
UNHCR will partner with Voice Amplified to undertake a project focused on mentoring WLOs on assessment design and data collection to conduct their own analysis of the refugee women and girl priorities and perspectives. This will be coupled with a mentoring initiative to increase WLOs access to funding through donor relations and resource mobilization opportunities. Participants will be included in a global knowledge hub to allow for networking and to further sustain their advocacy and funding opportunities beyond the project lifespan.
UNODC supported countries in awareness-raising and advocacy for ending violence against women, including:
UNODC established the GLO.ACT Women's Network of Regional Champions against Trafficking in Persons and Migrant Smuggling, composed of female and male gender champions from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan.
UNODC supported ICAT events to promote CEDAW General Recommendation 38 and advocate for survivor-centered approaches to address human trafficking and the non-punishment of trafficking victims.
During the course of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020, the UN Trust Fund invested USD47 million in projects that solely or partly focused on preventing violence against women and girls.
To disseminate the expertise and knowledge of civil society and women's rights organizations, the UN Trust Fund worked with grantee organizations and researchers to create a series of briefings on preventing violence against women. The organizations' practice-based insights are invaluable to planning, designing and funding interventions aimed at ending violence against women and girls.
The main objectives of the knowledge products are to:
The findings identified 10 key pathways to prevent violence against women and girls. Each theme will be explored in conversations with 10 grantees, resulting in a detailed report per theme published on a rolling basis in starting July 2021 and 2022.
DPPA addresses the issue of conflict-related sexual violence as part of its overall efforts to ensure that gender relevant issues and perspectives are fully integrated into the Department’s daily work to promote inclusive conflict prevention, mediation and peacebuilding. This includes operational support, capacity building, gender mainstreaming, and reporting and outreach across the work of DPPA.
ESCWA, in partnership with the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (IADC), has started the implementation of the project titled “Support to Women Refugees from Syria and Vulnerable Women and Girls in Host Communities in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon” (2018-2020). The project seeks to engage women refugees from Syria and vulnerable women and girls in host communities in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to better advocate for their rights and exercise their voice to improve their status and reinforce their resilience. The two phases of the project in Jordan and Lebanon with women refugees from Syria and host community were completed as planned. Three position papers will be developed to be shared with decision-makers Jordan, Lebanon and Syria on the specific needs of women refugees, including the particular needs for protection from violence.
A number of initiatives were undertaken by UN Women country offices through the support of RO and other partner agencies in undertaking advocacy and awareness on addressing sexual violence in conflict situations.
Through the ICGLR Program support and as part of the Domestication of the Protocol on the Prevention and Punishment of Sexual Violence Against Women and Children in the ICGLR member states, a total of 9 countries out of the 12 ICGLR Member States that have established the special court, special sessions and special procedures as mechanisms to fast track SGBV cases within the region. For example, in 2018 Uganda established a special session as a strategy to clear SGBV case back log and they were able to clear a total of 788 cases surpassing the target of 650 set for one month. Countries that do not have any mechanisms to fast track SGBV cases are Tanzania, Central African Republic and Angola. Sudan however implemented special procedures for cases involving children for the period between 2014- 2016.
UN Women also participated and provided briefing to the HQ DPA high level missions and advocacy initiatives towards developing strategies for addressing PVE, CVE with focus on prevention of sexual violence in conflict situations.
The Strategy for Prevention of and Response to the Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Ukraine
The present strategy provides guidance and recommendations on how governmental institutions of Ukraine, civil society organizations, international organizations and UN system can join efforts to effectively prevent and respond to CRSV. The document has a narrative part, which sets out the general context, mandate and scope of the strategy, implementation mechanism, coordination mechanism and tools. Second part of the document is a roadmap matrix that suggests specific objectives, actions for specific actors to carry out to accomplish those objectives, leading to a more targeted approach. The strategy is currently being developed at the initiative of government of Ukraine, applicable to whole of Ukraine. It is available here.
UNAIDS ensured continued support for implementation of the ‘integration of gender-based violence awareness, prevention and response’ in South Sudan ‘in collaboration with the GBV sub-cluster under the humanitarian response programme (a UNAIDS Secretariat initiative with UNHCR and WFP).
Participation in the Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Arrangements (MARA) on conflict related sexual violence of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict to promote appropriate timely action to prevent and respond to conflict-related sexual violence; inform strategic advocacy; enhance prevention and programmatic responses for survivors; and contribute to the development of comprehensive strategies to combat sexual violence at country-level.
In South Sudan UNAIDS trained police officers with a particular focus on female officers on prevention of GBV and HIV.
UNHCR has issued a Technical Note on UNHCR's Engagement in the Implementation of the Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism for grave violations against children in armed conflict, as well as on Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Arrangements on conflict-related sexual violence (it is available here) and is regularly offering webinars with guidance on the technical note.