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In Belarus, in partnership with UNFPA, UNICEF and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, IOM provided tools and technical assistance to NGOs to improve national capacity to counteract and prevent domestic violence, especially against women and children. This project launched a Pilot Seminar on the relationship between domestic violence and trafficking in women and children. Counter-trafficking NGOs, judges, prosecutors, law-enforcement officials and representatives of the border troops of Belarus participated in this event. The seminar has brought the attention to and initiated a dialogue among the relevant actors on this topic. It established a forum for relevant parties to work together and improve various legal and support provisions for victims of trafficking and domestic violence. Overall, ten NGOs, 75 NGOs’ staff members, 45 law-enforcement officials and over 40 other specialists received training as part of this project. The project also referred at least 700 victims of domestic violence for specialized assistance.
OHCHR assisted CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) and the CRC (Committee on the Rights of the Child) in elaborating joint General Recommendation No. 31/General Comment No. 18 on harmful practices and the update of General Recommendation 19 on violence against women.
UNODC convened an open-ended intergovernmental expert group meeting on gender-related killing of women and girls in Bangkok in November 2014, adopting recommendations for action against gender-related killing of women and girls (E/CN.15/2015/16).
The 'Global plan of action to strengthen the role of the health system within a national multisectoral response to address interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls, and against children’ was endorsed by the 193 Member States of WHO at the May 2016 World Health Assembly. This plan encourages actions by MS, national and international partners and WHO along 4 strategic directions: Strengthening the health systems leadership and governance; providing comprehensive health, including SRH, services and training health providers ; strengthening prevention programming; and improving evidence and information to address violence against women and girls.
OHCHR continued strengthening national capacities to investigate sexual gender-based violence in Afghanistan, the DRC, Liberia, and Sudan.
OHCHR provided technical assistance and capacity-development to states and civil society groups on using a human rights-based approach to address trafficking in persons in Belarus, Thailand and other countries in South East Asia.
Since 2013 the International Training Centre of the ILO (ITCILO) has started to focus more specifically on gender-based violence at work, introducing thematic workshops on the topic in both editions of the ITCILO Gender Academy (2013 and 2015), a major global specialised event on gender equality in the world of work. The workshops provided both formal training and participatory awareness raising sessions such as Forum Theatre. During the years 2012-2015 ITCILO has also introduced half-day Forum Theatre sessions to sensitize ITCILO training participants and staff on GBV, in various regular training courses on gender equality.
Based on the lessons learned over these years, and teaming up with FairWear Foundation – which has extensive experience in combating VAW in the textile global supply chain – in 2015 ITCILO has produced a Training Resource Kit on Preventing and Addressing Gender-based Violence in Global Supply Chains, which offers information, case studies and other resources to inform, sensitize and build capacities among ILO constituents and various other public and private actors. The Resource Kit will be on-line in April 2016. A face-to-face course on “Addressing Gender-based Violence in the world of work” open to representatives of social partners, gender machineries and NGOs will also take place in Turin in September 2016.
In Egypt, UNODC contributed to the government's strengthening of its response to violence against women and girls and began developing training manuals on the appropriate handling of such cases by police and prosecutors.