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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.
In Palestine, UNODC published a manual for forensic medical practitioners and a code of practice to aid healthcare practitioners in examining victims of sexual and gender-based violence in accordance with international best practices.
In Africa, training sessions were organized in 2013 and 2015 under the auspices of the UNiTE campaign for representatives from the Defense Forces, Police institutions and Correctional Services. Participants received training to enhance the capacity of Africa Security Organs to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls in conflict and post-conflict situations.
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.
In Afghanistan, with support from the WHO, the Ministry of Public Health is training nearly 7000 health providers and upgrading health facilities in all provinces over the next 5 years to deliver Gender Based Violence services to survivors based on implementation of a national treatment protocol and the WHO clinical handbook for responding to intimate partner violence or sexual violence. In Uganda, health providers in 3 districts were trained based on updated national training guidelines to deliver care and services for GBV to survivors. Similar efforts are underway in India and Namibia.
WHO provides support to its collaborating centres and research institutions to strengthen capacity to implement research – including on ethical and safety aspects of conducting research on violence against women, and through workshops and courses on appropriate research methods for this topic. To facilitate this effort, WHO and RTI (Response to Interventions) International published ethical and safety guidelines for interventions research on VAW in 2016.
UNODC, with its Global Programmes against trafficking in persons, smuggling of migrants and field based projects, follows a victims'/migrants' rights-centred and gender-specific approach, aiming to ensure protection of human rights of trafficked persons and smuggled migrants. With women and girls being a particularly vulnerable group, UNODC seeks to contribute to gender equality by strengthening the rights and the position of victims and smuggled migrants during investigation and prosecution by competent authorities. The Global Programmes seek to ensure, where possible, a gender balance in the different activities, notably with regard to participants in capacity building activities/workshops. Performance indicators are, where possible, disaggregated by sex and age. Also, gender is incorporated into questionnaires given to participants (e.g. country assessments, training questionnaires, etc).
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.
In Mexico, UNODC continued to provide normative assistance on criminal justice and prison reform with emphasis on training and awareness-raising on violence against women.
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.