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With the Office of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, UNFPA convened an Expert Group Meeting to gather current and past research and information by leading media organizations, news entities and key women journalists on the status, consequences and causes of threats to women journalists worldwide. The findings and the submissions received following a call for input issued by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women contributed to the report the Special Rapporteur presented at the 44th session of the UN Human Rights Council in June 2020.
The kNOwVAWdata initiative supports safe and ethical prevalence and administrative data collection, analysis and reporting through technical assistance as well as capacity development programmes. From 2018 to 2019, 65 UNFPA staff participated in the kNOwVAWdata curriculum course from 19 countries. In December 2020 the course was adjusted to an online format which enabled an additional 50 participants, from all regions, to undertake the course. Currently 32 UNFPA staff and close to 100 external participants are enrolled in the course curriculum from over 36 countries. Under the UNFPA flagship programme for disability inclusion, The We Decide Global Initiative, one key focus area is ending violence against women with disabilities and building UNFPA internal capacities accordingly. The UNFPA We Decide Disability Inclusion Guidelines have been implemented in 74 Country Offices. Within the scope of the Joint Programme for UN Partnership for Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD) “Building Back Better for All”, UNFPA produced resources that strengthen disability inclusive COVID-19 response and recovery in connection to GBV and SRHR. UNFPA staff was trained on how to use these tools and resources.Under the UNFPA flagship programme for disability inclusion, The We Decide Global Initiative, one key focus area is ending violence against women with disabilities and building UNFPA internal capacities accordingly. The UNFPA We Decide Disability Inclusion Guidelines have been implemented in 74 Country Offices. Within the scope of the Joint Programme for UN Partnership for Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNPRPD) “Building Back Better for All”, UNFPA produced resources that strengthen disability inclusive COVID-19 response and recovery in connection to GBV and SRHR. UNFPA staff was trained on how to use these tools and resources.
UNFPA has demonstrated capacity to adapt to the new circumstances derived from the COVID- 19 pandemic. Almost all UNFPA offices, that is 99% of offices in 108 countries, have adapted their GBV interventions to this new context.
Prevention and response services had to be moved to the online space and an increase in GBV, as well as additional threats and forms of violence have been reported across the world. UNFPA has effectively responded to these new challenges and the lessons learned will be applied to future regional and global challenges. For example, in Latin America, UNFPA created a regional Community of Practice for Essential Services to respond to violence in the context of COVID-19. In 2021, reports on the impact of COVID-19 on gender equality and GBV were published in Asia Pacific (“COVID-19 and Violence against Women: The evidence behind the talk”) and East and Southern Africa (“Impact of COVID-19 on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in East and Southern Africa”). These publications gather data on GBV during the pandemic which show an increase in reporting of VAW, including technology-facilitated violence.