Measures

The United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) is the only global, multilateral, inter-agency grant-making mechanism exclusively focused on ending violence against women and girls.  

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund awarded $54.7 million to 134 civil society organizations, including 96 (72%) women’s rights organizations, to address violence against women and girls (EVAW) in three priority areas: (a) improving access to essential multisectoral services; (b) preventing violence through changes in behaviours, practices, and attitudes; and (c) enhancing the effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans, and accountability systems. Nearly 119 million people were impacted by or involved with UN Trust Fund grantee partners during this period.

The UN Trust Fund also supported 55 organizations under the Spotlight Initiative, including 35 (24 in sub-Saharan Africa and 11 in Latin America) receiving grants from the 2019 Spotlight Call for Proposals, as well as additional support through the COVID-19 response funding allocation. A further 20 grantee partners in sub-Saharan Africa received extra support through the 2020 COVID-19 response allocation.

In 2023, the UN Trust Fund, UN Women, and the European Commission launched in partnership the Advocacy, Coalition Building, and Transformative Feminist Action (ACT) programme to strengthen coalition-building, leadership, and resilience within feminist and women’s rights movements, while enhancing advocacy, campaigning, and policymaking. In 2024, the ACT programme awarded $2.34 million to eight women’s rights organizations and organized a global convening of programme partners aimed at strengthening coalition-building and collective action in the face of emerging challenges.

In 2024, the UN Trust Fund launched an initiative, co-led by the Spotlight Initiative and 11 UN entities, to transform the way the UN System funds civil society and women’s rights organizations, by addressing institutional barriers and promoting accessible, effective, feminist-informed funding mechanisms for women’s rights and gender equality. 

The prevention of violence against women and girls through changes in behaviours, practices and attitudes is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025.

Between 2021 and 2024, an average of 80% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to prevent violence against women and girls.

In the same period, grantee partners engaged 39,261 community leaders, 7,325 faith leaders, 11,843 traditional leaders and 16,702 youth leaders to publicly advocate for changes in behaviours, practices and attitudes towards violence against women and girls, including changing harmful practices.

Almost 361,000 women and girls were supported between 2021 and 2024 to build skills and capacities in self-efficacy, agency, assertiveness and self-confidence through support from UN Trust Fund grantees (for example, through economic and social empowerment initiatives as a protective factor against violence against women and girls). An average of 316 evidence and/or practice-based methodologies, approaches or models were developed and/or implemented every year to achieve or advance changes in behaviour and social norms aimed at preventing violence against women and girls through UN Trust Fund grantees.

For instance, in 2024, Leap Girl Africa used podcast and in-person sessions with couples in Cameroon to foster dialogue and reflection within intimate partnerships, helping challenge harmful beliefs about gender roles and redefine what healthy, equitable relationships can look like. The intervention led to measurable shifts in social norms and reported rates of emotional and physical intimate partner violence nearly halved within three months. Jan Sahas in India established balika panchayats (girls' councils) that engaged 1,542 girls in leadership development, equipping them with legal literacy and negotiation skills. They also conducted awareness sessions for men and boys addressing issues such as consent. School-based programmes reached 23,498 students. 

The United Nations Trust Fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women (UN Trust Fund) is a global, multilateral grant-making mechanism that supports effort to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund, which was established in 1996 by the General Assembly in the 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 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.

Improving access for women and girls to essential, specialist, safe and adequate multisectoral services is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025.

Between 2021 and 2024, an average of 70% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to prevent violence against women. 

During that period, a total of 218,147 women and girls used specialist services to heal and recover from violence, and 41,615 individual providers improved service for survivors and women and girls at risk.

In Egypt, UN Trust Fund partners addressed growing, critical gaps in services for refugee women and girls primarily from Sudan, Eritrea and South Sudan. In 2024, some 520 young mothers – many of them survivors of violence – received tailored support, including mental healthcare, to improve their ability to cope. The initiatives also provided 872 individuals with psychosocial support, emergency cash grants and referrals, while promoting longer-term recovery through vocational training and small business support. 

An intervention by the Greater Women Initiative for Health and Right (GWIHR) in Nigeria’s Rivers State has enhanced accessibility to services, institutional accountability, and legal protection for female and transgender sex workers, who face systemic discrimination. Thanks to peer-driven human rights education, in 2024 over 2,500 sex workers reported abuses and pursued legal action against perpetrators. GWIHR handled 327 gender-based violence cases and connected nearly 500 survivors to support services.

The UN Trust Fund’s signature wraparound support model responds to the complex and evolving needs of civil society organizations working in challenging and often under-resourced contexts. Alongside funding, the UN Trust Fund offers organizational development support; capacity strengthening; tailored accompaniment; visibility and advocacy; and evidence-based knowledge production.

Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund has delivered 81 webinar sessions in support of grant management and compliance of EVAW/G projects, including thematic sessions on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) and Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence (TFGBV) among others, recording a total of 5,449 attendees. In 2024, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN Trust Fund resumed the yearly in-person training tradition, allowing grantee organizations to share experiences, network and foster a sense of community among EVAW/G practitioners. 

Organizations that work directly with underserved women, survivors and communities gain valuable insights into effective strategies for addressing violence against women and girls. The UN Trust Fund systematically captures, curates and shares this practice-based knowledge and experience so that all can benefit. This occurs through one-on-one communications with grantee partners, learning exchanges, independent evaluations, thematic knowledge products co-produced with grantee partners, webinars and knowledge cafés.

Key data collection activities initiated during the reporting period include:

• An annual organizational survey among active grantee partners in addition to an annual partner survey introduced by the UN Trust Fund in 2021 to monitor the views of key partners (such as UN agencies, donors, other women’s funds, academic/research institutions and other CSO and WRO partners).
• In 2022, the UN Trust Fund launched SHINE, an online platform developed in collaboration with the Spotlight Initiative, which serves as a knowledge hub for civil society and women’s rights organizations, UN agencies, academics, researchers, practitioners, donors, and the private sector to co-create and amplify evidence-based knowledge that advances the shared goal of ending violence against women and girls.

The UN Trust Fund expands the global knowledge base by curating practice-based knowledge from the initiatives it supports, in co-creation with grantee partners. Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund co-produced with civil society organizations a total of 34 knowledge products to codify the practice-based knowledge and learnings of grantee partners, whilst 79 final, external evaluations of grantee initiatives were produced with the support of the UN Trust Fund during this time. 

Finally, the UN Trust Fund also supports grantee partners’ capabilities to generate data and knowledge by providing dedicated funding and delivering tailored trainings and technical support. The eight grants awarded under the ACT programme in 2024 included, for the first time, a specific budget allocation for practice-based knowledge and learnings. An average of 59% of active grantee partners between 2021 and 2024 reported having an ability to produce knowledge or learning on ending violence against women programming with UN Trust Fund support.