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UN Women has continued working with other UN agencies to finalize a UN global joint programme to build sustained national capacities to implement VAW prevalence surveys in line with international standards and SDG monitoring requirements, as part of UN Women’s Flagship Programme Initiative “Better production and use of gender statistics for evidence-based localization of the SDGs”.
In Kosovo, five survivors of domestic violence were granted ownership of apartments as part of an initiative by the mayor of Gjakova Municipality providing housing to society’s most vulnerable individuals. This example of women’s reintegration and empowerment is part of the municipality’s Coordination Mechanism Action Plan on Domestic Violence, and these plans were developed and implemented by UN Women in three municipalities throughout Kosovo. The Coordination Mechanisms include representatives from municipal gender equality office, victim advocates, police, judiciary, health and education sectors, urban planning directorate, shelters and civil society organizations. UN Women worked with municipalities to support capacity building of coordination mechanisms, police and judiciary; support a comprehensive approach to domestic violence case management; implement gender-responsive budgeting; align legislation and practices with international norms and standards; and improve implementation of monitoring mechanisms. UN Women ensured full support from local mayors and engaged them during the development of the Municipal Domestic Violence Action Plans. With this local support, the coordination mechanisms have become fully institutionalized and functional.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, is currently conducting a full fledged project on estimating the cost of VAW in the Arab region. This project consists of two phases: the first one includes two studies (namely, “Status of Arab Women Report: Violence against Women: What is At Stake” and "Model for costing domestic violence against women in the Arab region"). The former, produced in partnership with UN Women and the Lebanese American University, provides a contextualized understanding of VAW and its importance, examines the existing reporting mechanisms, explores the linkages between VAW and social, economic and health factors, and reviews the relevant methodologies with a view to identify the most suitable one for the Arab region. This first study paves the way for the development of the regional economic model to estimate the cost of VAW in the region, which is addressed in the second study in partnership with UN Women. The second phase of the project focuses on building the capacity of member States on the importance of costing violence against women, as well as piloting the economic model in two Arab countries.
Supported by UN Women, Georgian Public Defender’s Office developed and institutionalized a monitoring tool to monitor the state shelters for survivors of violence against women on a regular basis.
UN Women continued to work with the Government of Moldova and civil society organization partners to help over 1,000 women access services as survivors of violence. Through the positive deviance approach, an innovative approach to help communities drive asset-based solutions, and UN Women’s coordination role, survivors advocated concrete actions to end violence against women and were involved as key experts on eliminating violence against women in legislative, institutional and community initiatives. The number of women who sought services within the first four months of implementing this approach is a ten-fold increase compared to the scope of previous activities. Central and local public officials, civil society organizations and media were also essential actors in this approach and subsequent result. The world renown academic institutions like Oxford University and others have expressed their interest in further analyzing Moldova’s innovative experience and results and further document it for academic use. The Executive Program, run jointly by HEC Paris and the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford has invited the Moldova Country Office to present the Innovation in EVAW, and thus, to mainstream the case into their mainstream curriculum already from March, 2017.
In 2016, Serbia continued to make significant improvements in multi-sector coordination and monitoring of violence against women, with substantial support from UN Women. Twenty municipalities in Serbia achieved high levels of multi-sector cooperation in response to cases of violence against women. Professionals from the Centers for Social Work, health and educational institutions, judiciary and police participated at the case conferences on individual cases of violence and in line with the local level protocols responded to the specific needs of women victims of violence. The women victims of violence benefited from the services and protection measures provided by the local institutions in a timely, complementary and coordinated manner. The Results of the case conferences are captured in reports and published by the Provincial Secretariat for Demography, Social Welfare and Gender Equality (PSEEGE). PSEEGE and UN Women piloted a model for monitoring violence in Vojvodina Province and initiated discussions to implement the model at the national level.
The programme of work to develop the Essential Services Package has been a partnership between UN Women, UNFPA, WHO, UNDP and UNODC. The 5 modules comprising the package, identify the essential services to be provided by the health, social services, police and justice sectors as well as guidelines for the coordination of Essential Services and the governance of coordination processes and mechanisms. Service delivery guidelines for the core elements of each essential service have also been identified to ensure the delivery of high quality services, particularly for low and middle income countries for women and girls experiencing violence. This is being supported by the development of other tools including an implementation manual and a monitoring and evaluation framework for the implementation of the guidelines in different contexts. Negotiations are underway for the formalization of a UN Joint Global Programme on Essential Services for Women and Girls Subject to Violence by the five agencies for Phase II of the work to implement the guidelines in up to ten countries.
In June, 2016, UN Women held Results-Sharing Meeting on Leveraging Technical Tools, Evidence and Community Engagement to Advance the Implementation of Laws and Provision of Services to Women Experiencing Violence in South-East Asia. Over 40 government officials, UN Women officers and Civil Society Organizations across South-East Asia region shared results from EVAW work, affirming the importance of a two-tier approach, where policy-level interventions are undertaken in parallel to interventions at the community level.
In Afghanistan, in partnership with Civil Society Organizations and the Government, UN Women, supports 11 Women Protection Centers (WPCs) and 5 Family Guidance Centers (FGCs) in provinces of Bamiyan, Baghlan, Daikundi, Jawzjan, Kabul, Kandahar, Kunar, Laghman, Nangarhar, Parwan, Samangan and Takhar. The WPCs provided 24-hour safe refuge, legal aid, health care, education (basic literacy), vocational training, psychosocial services and support for reunification with their families, while the FGCs provided mediation, family counselling, and referral to WPCs and legal aid services. The WPCs and FGCs support more than 2,500 VAW survivors annually.
In Central African Republic, where the current crisis has affected the social fabric of society and survivors of GBV are stigmatised, deprived of support and known to engage in risky coping strategies such as transactional sex for survival, FAO has partnered with UN Women to ensure that women affected by the conflict, including GBV survivors, benefit from livelihood strategies.