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In Kenya, UNDP has supported the training for 35 senior prison officials on the link between Gender Based Violence and HIV and a seminar for National Human Rights Institutions (NHRI) on HIV, GBV, human rights and the law-one of Kenya’s NHRIs has since development a Gender and Diversity Strategy. Furthermore, 121 officials from the peace (district peace committees) and security (National Police, Administrative Police, Directorate of Criminal Investigations) sectors have been trained on SGBV in the context of emergencies through UNDP’s support. These trainings were particularly successful and have led to SGBV being prioritized as a standing agenda item during monthly briefing meetings between the police, peace actors and community leaders.
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.
Through FAO’s community-based resilience building approach called “Caisses de Résilience”, women’s groups received support to strengthen their technical, financial and social capacities to engage in resilient livelihoods, reintegrate into society and rebuild their self-esteem by gaining increased skills, knowledge and economic self-reliance.
As part of the Phase II of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on FGM/C, to strengthen the inter-linkages between VAWG and harmful practices such as FGM/C, and address the root causes of such violence, UN Women has developed is developing policy document on essential elements to end FGM/C as a form of VAWG, in addition to a training module on gender and FGM/C, to accompany the UNFPA-UNICEF Manual on Social Norms and Change.
ESCWA has delivered relevant capacity-building workshops on Violence against Women. Specifically, ESCWA Centre for Women organized in Cairo in 2014 a national workshop on the formulation of a legislative framework to protect women and girls from all forms of violence. Furthermore, ESCWA Centre for Women delivered a relevant capacity-building workshop on addressing Gender-Based Violence in the Arab region through the toolkit for service providers produced in 2015.
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.
In the Central African Republic, IOM is working to prevent SGBV among internally-displaced and host populations. IOM is building capacity among National Police and Gendarmerie forces to respond adequately to SGBV case reports, in coordination with UN Civil Police / CIVPOL. In this effort, IOM is also advocating for the increased recruitment of female police officers. These efforts will provide police with the tools to use a survivor-centred approach, as well as educate them in relation to Central African legislation and international human rights law on rape as a war crime.
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 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.
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.