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UNODC is the permanent coordinator and secretariat of the Inter-Agency Coordination Group on Trafficking in Persons (ICAT), established by the General Assembly. The principles of gender equality and the empowerment of women underpin the work of ICAT. For instance, in 2019, ICAT published a brief on the gender dimensions of human trafficking and UNODC coordinated the development of the ICAT submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) to support the development of a general recommendation on trafficking in women and girls in the context of global migration. 

UNODC is part of the UN Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict (UN Action) and has implemented projects funded by the UN Action Multi-Partner Trust Fund.

The United Nations Trust Fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women is a global, multilateral grant-making mechanism that supports efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The Trust Fund, which was established in 1996 by the General Assembly in its resolution 50/166, is administered by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on behalf of the United Nations system. With the strong institutional support of UN Women and its regional, multi-country and country offices, and working closely with the rest of the United Nations system through its inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee, the Trust Fund plays a vital role in driving forward collective efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.

The results of the 2008 grant cycle were announced on 25 November 2008, at an event with the Secretary-General and UNIFEM’s (now part of UN Women) Goodwill Ambassador, Ms. Nicole Kidman. A total of US$22 million in grants were approved, reflecting both multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder interventions.

The UN Trust Fund adopted a new strategic plan, guiding its grant‐making for 2010-2015. Implementation of the strategic plan will be aided by a high-level steering committee bringing together heads of UN agencies and representatives of Member States. In response to its 15th Call for Proposals, the UN Trust Fund received a record number of 2,574 applications (51 come from UN Country Teams) for total value of $1.2 billion, signifying an increase of 56% in the number of applications and 40% in the amount of funds requested from the previous year, numbers which indicate an unmet demand for resources to address violence against women on the ground. One third of the UN Trust Fund’s 80 active grantees are focusing on primary prevention. Nearly half of UN Trust Fund grantees engage men and boys as change agents to promote healthy, non-violent models of masculinity. In December 2010, the first White Ribbon Campaign was launched in the Middle East to mobilize men and boys to advocate for legislation on domestic violence. Male university students took the lead in crafting messages for a public sensitization campaign that garnered the support of 128 MPs for a bill on the Protection of Women from Family Violence prior to parliamentary debates on this legislation. One third of the UN Trust Fund’s active grants employ strategies to provide services to women and girls survivors of violence, including marginalized and hard‐to‐reach populations. For example in the Kandal Province of Cambodia, the UN Trust Fund supports a model of community-based support for sexual assault survivors, through increasing survivors’ access to coordinated health, counselling, and legal services. In the region of Puno in Peru, where the indigenous population suffers from the highest rates of intra‐family violence in the country, the UN Trust Fund supports capacity-building for health, justice and law enforcement sectors to respond to the needs of women and girls. Local officials have convened an inter‐agency task force to strengthen cross‐sectoral coordination, supported by the Ministries of Health and Women, resulting in an increase of referral rates and reporting rates of domestic violence. 17 percent of UN Trust Fund grantees work to respond to the needs of women survivors of violence living in conflict, post‐conflict and unstable situations: it supported the development of a mobile care model to assist survivors of sexual violence from Central African Republic living as refugees in northern Cameroon. In just one year, the mobile clinics brought a fourfold increase to the rate of sexual violence survivors receiving medical care and counselling; in Sierra Leone, it supports national reparations programmes that respond to the needs of 3,600 women survivors of sexual violence in conflict; Women’s organizations conducted surveys with women survivors of violence across the country to assess their marketable skills and recommended skills training and income‐generation programmes. As part of the official observance of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and in partnership with UNiTE campaign, the UN Trust Fund launched a fundraising effort to achieve the campaign’s goal of $100M by 2015 for the annual grant giving. By texting the word UNITE to 27722, people in the U.S. could donate $10 to the UN Trust Fund for programmes and services on the ground and online donations can be made through the UN Foundation.

The Final Evaluation Report of the UN Trust Fund 2005-2008 and the Management Response can be found at the UNIFEM website (www.unifem.org/evaw). A debriefing on the evaluation findings was organized in September for the global inter-agency Programme Appraisal Committee and UN Member States. The UN Trust Fund continued to intensify its outreach and resource mobilization efforts, including through a new fund-raising strategy under the UN Secretary-General’s UNiTE to End Violence against Women Campaign. The Campaign’s target of an annual contribution of US $100 million by 2015 to the UN Trust Fund became a Commitment to Action of the Clinton Global Initiative. In 2009, the UN Trust Fund reached an unprecedented US $23.5 million in total donor contributions and pledges, the largest amount of resources mobilized thus far in a single year. UNIFEM Goodwill Ambassador and UN Trust Fund grantee organization Breakthrough testified in October 2009 to the United States House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. They presented strategies on ending violence against women and girls, and called attention to the need to scale up resources to the UN Trust Fund. In November 2009, the UN Secretary-General announced US $10.5 million in UN Trust Fund grants. A training curriculum on evidence-based programming, monitoring and evaluation was piloted, and two workshops were held in Ethiopia and in India for grantee organizations.

In 2013, the UN Trust Fund received 2,410 applications from 145 countries, the majority of them from civil society organizations, with total funding requests of over $1.1 billion. In its 17th grant cycle, the UN Trust Fund continued engaging its inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee, at the global level, and sub-regional programme advisory committees and through its competitive process, awarded $8 million for 17 grants, covering 18 countries and territories. Sixteen civil society organizations and the Government of Antigua and Barbuda received grants that are expected to reach 2.3 million beneficiaries by 2017. In line with the UN Trust Fund’s Thematic Window on preventing and addressing violence against adolescent girls, five of these grants will focus on their specific needs. UN Trust Fund programmes are mobilizing communities in order to change beliefs, attitudes and practices that perpetuate and normalize violence. These initiatives are opening up safe spaces for girls in which they can thrive and develop their potential. They are promoting strategies to end impunity for gender-based violence in conflict situations, including by gathering evidence, strengthening prosecution systems and establishing non-judicial, truth-telling mechanisms. Through the Trust Fund’s support, grantees have made great advances in enabling the implementation of legislation that addresses all forms of violence against women and girls. In 2013 alone, the Trust Fund supported programmes that reached more than 3 million women, men, girls and boys around the world, including more than 30,000 survivors of violence. The work of the Trust Fund remains vital in closing the gap between promises and action. Given the promising results of community-based approaches and the central role of social mobilization to enact change, in the 18th grant cycle the UN Trust Fund will specifically and strategically invest in grass-roots women’s organizations and youth-led organizations, in addition to well-established civil society organizations, Governments and United Nations country teams. Programmes that engage groups facing discrimination and exclusion, such as internally displaced persons, refugees, women and girls living in conflict, post-conflict and transitional settings as well as women with disabilities, will also receive special consideration.

The UN Trust Fund is finalizing its Strategy for 2010-2015, entitled “Vision 2015”. Consultations have involved sister agencies and UNIFEM staff at global and field levels; the UN Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality (IANWGE); and representatives of Member States. Furthermore, over 20 UN agencies and funds have to date participated in the UN Trust Fund’s governance through regional and global Programme Appraisal Committees. Since 2008, the UN Trust Fund has funded UN Country Team programming to end violence against women and girls. Currently, the UN Trust Fund supports eight UN Country Teams – in Bosnia and Herzegovina, China, Ecuador, Mexico, Nepal, Panama, Thailand, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – fostering a more coordinated and coherent UN system-wide action in this area. In some countries, synergies between UN agencies and NGO grantees of the UN Trust Fund are resulting in leveraged efforts for prevention and response. For example in Albania, UNDP is coordinating programming against domestic violence under the ONE UN pilot in the country and is working closely with a current UN Trust Fund grantee, “Refleksione”, to upscale local-level platforms for community coordination including referral and data collection systems. Under its portfolio of over 80 ongoing initiatives in 70 countries and territories, many UN Trust Fund grantees focus on prevention. For example, in a multi-country initiative implemented in Brazil, Chile, India and Rwanda, UN Trust Fund grantee, Instituto Promundo, seeks to systematically evaluate the most effective approaches to involving men and boys in the prevention of violence – the results and lessons learned from impact evaluation studies in the four countries will provide a significant contribution to the evidence-base for engaging young and adult men in ending violence against women and girls. UN Trust Fund grantee, Equal Access Nepal, won the One World Media Special Award 2010 for its radio programme Samajhdari (“Mutual understanding”) that links media and community mobilization to address the intersection between violence against women and HIV. The radio programme, produced by community radio reporters from vulnerable groups, reached potentially 90 percent of the Nepalese population. Seven UN Trust Fund grantees working on addressing the intersection of violence against women and HIV participated in a Poster Exhibition at the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, bringing in their experience on the critical role of addressing violence as part of the HIV response from Botswana, India, Nepal, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda and the Russian Federation. The UN Trust Fund translated its training curriculum on evidence-based programming, monitoring and evaluation into Spanish and French. The translated curriculums were piloted in two regional skills-building workshops, which were held in Nicaragua and Senegal, in June 2010. The training events were attended by 16 UN Trust Fund grantees throughout Central and South America and the Africa region. As a result of the training, grantees have revised their monitoring and evaluation systems for a stronger tracking of results, for building evidence base, and for demonstrating what works to end violence against women and girls.

In November 2007, the UN Trust Fund awarded nearly $5 million in support of effective implementation of national laws, policies and plans of action on ending violence against women, as well as to initiatives addressing the inter-linkages between violence against women and HIV/AIDS. In 2007, Member States, private-sector and other donors raised their contributions to the UN Trust Fund, resulting in more than a tenfold increase over the past four years. However, the demand for support continued to far outstrip its resource base, with more than $105 million in requests received in 2007. Donors to the UN Trust Fund in 2007 include the Governments of Antigua and Barbuda, Austria, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States of America, and UNIFEM national committees in Iceland, Switzerland and the United States. In addition, the UN Trust Fund has benefited from partnerships with the private sector. With the support of Johnson & Johnson, a special window on the interlinkage between violence against women and HIV/AIDS was opened in 2005. In addition, there have been other modest contributions from private-sector partners such as TAG Heuer, Omega, Leo Burnett and non-profit organizations, such as Zonta International, the Transition Network and many individual donors.

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, in collaboration with Avon Products, Inc. convened a global summit in March 2008 wherein Avon Products, Inc. committed $1 million to the UN Trust Fund – the Fund’s largest single, annual, private sector contribution ever.

Grant applications for the 2008 Call for Proposals were invited from governments, civil society organizations, and, for the first time, for UN Country Teams (UNCTs). Technical review teams and global and sub-regional inter-agency Programme Appraisal Committees (PACs), reviewed the received concept notes. As part of its’ ongoing effort to enhance grantees’ capacity in programming and monitoring and evaluation, the UN Trust Fund convened a second workshop on Program Design and Evaluation for grantees working on violence against women and HIV/AIDS, in collaboration with Johnson and Johnson and with technical assistance from PATH.