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During the period 2014 to 2016, ESCWA focused several of its Gender Discussion Series on Violence against Women. In December 2014, ESCWA organized a discussion on “Gender-related research and policy priorities emerging in the context of recent regional developments, particularly in humanitarian and conflict settings”. This event was organized in collaboration with the ABAAD Resource Centre for Gender Equality in the context of 16 days of activism against Gender-Based Violence. Within this framework, ESCWA organized several advocacy activities against Gender-Based Violence.
Many of IOM’s overseas pre-departure cultural orientation programmes specifically address domestic violence, female genital mutilation and other such practices that are both harmful to women and against the prevailing rule of law. IOM is working on improving the way this is reflected in curriculum and key priority messages, in training manuals and in supporting activities. IOM is also exploring how to best adopt more effective learning methodologies in order for participants to understand the underlying reasons why these practices are illegal and may have serious consequences, including the removal of children from families by child protective services.
In 2015 FAO hired a consultant, Gender Expert (Gender-based violence and food security), to develop an FAO-specific Guidance on addressing gender-based violence. The aim of the Guidance titled, 'Protection from gender-based violence in food security and agriculture interventions: A Guide for FAO and partner staff' is to assist FAO country offices in designing and delivering food security and nutrition interventions in ways that prevent and mitigate gender-based violence and contributes to the protection of survivors and those most at risk.
In March 2016 a webinar on Protection from Gender-based Violence in Food Security and Nutrition interventions was delivered, available to all staff, as part of the roll-out of the new corporate guidelines. Tailored guidance will be provided to staff working on projects in decentralized offices during 2016 and 2017.
In August 2014, OHCHR and UN Women launched the Latin American Protocol for the investigation of Gender-Motivated Killings of women, which provides guidance for investigations to comply with due diligence standards (promoted in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Peru).
In Mexico, UN Women and eleven other UN agencies launched a campaign against early and child marriage, to establish eighteen as the minimum age for marriage at federal and state level without exception. The Mexican Senate and the Congress of Oaxaca announced reforms on the issue, while the President pledged to support the campaign and eradicate early marriage in law and practice.
The IFAD gender team promoted household methodologies (HHM) in the loan portfolio: by enabling families to plan a vision for their household together and analyse why they are not currently achieving their vision, gender inequalities are frequently identified as one of the main reasons for preventing the household from progressing. Intimate partner violence is often cited as an area that needs to be addressed. HHMs are practices in several IFAD-supported projects eg Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda.
Capacity-building of UNRWA staff, including trainings, has been a focus for UNRWA in ensuring that addressing Gender Based Violence is embedded into the work done by the different Agency’s programmes. To that effect, UNRWA has started training staff on identifying and addressing GBV through different levels of trainings. Trainings have served a dual purpose to not only in increasing staff capacity to respond to GBV, but also raise awareness and change perceptions of UNRWA staff. To support the training of staff, UNRWA developed a GBV manual which was developed in 2012. In order to monitor to what extent staff understand and acknowledge their roles and responsibilities to address GBV, UNRWA carried out biannual readiness assessment questionnaires in all core programmes. Further, by looking at the return on trainings through identification, it is clear that even within programmes which have received high levels of trainings there have been persistent obstacles to reporting the identification of GBV survivors and referring them to appropriate services. This shows that while trainings have been crucial, it has not been sufficient on its own. Supporting mechanisms, such as revisions to staff terms of references, accountability frameworks and reference tools and guidelines to support staff in implementation, are necessary to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of the response and to ensure sustainability. UNRWA has been able to target staff from all its different programmes, including health, relief, and education with more than 4000 trainings in the period 2014-2015.
IFAD supported inovative projects to address gender-based violence, such as the courage brigades in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. (The courage brigades is a empowerment project initiated by the Indian state government with support from IFAD. Thtough this project, women are forming committees with local leaders and fighting malnutrition, caste violence, domestic abuse and corruption)
At the field level FAO is working on the prevention and mitigation of GBV through specific programmes and approaches such as the Junior Farmer Field and Life Schools in Uganda and Kenya, the Dimitra Clubs in several countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Burundi and Senegal, and the Safe Access to Fuel and Energy (SAFE) approach in South Sudan, Somalia, Sudan, and Kenya, among others. The JFFLS and Dimitra Clubs use empowerment approaches to bring men and women together to proactively work on issues they face in their daily lives, including GBV. Today there are approximately 1,500 FAO-Dimitra Clubs in sub-Saharan Africa (Burundi, DRC, Ghana, Niger and Senegal), with over 35,000 direct beneficiaries and 350,000 indirect beneficiaries, two thirds being women. Programmes implemented as part of the SAFE initiative reduce the risk of exposure to violence that predominantly women and girls face whilst collecting firewood in some of the contexts FAO works.