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The Department of Public Information’s Development Section worked closely with the European Union to launch a strategic partnership, called Spotlight, for ending violence against women and girls on 20 September 2017. This includes an initial pledge of EUR 500 million from the EU to finance programmes on EVAW. DPI developed a website as well as video, web and social media products to raise awareness and drive advocacy. We conducted interviews with and supported media outreach for high-level officials, including the EU European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development, the Deputy Secretary-General as well as heads of UN Women, UNFPA and UNDP on Spotlight during the 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women.
The Section also continues to support UN Women communications efforts to raise awareness and action around the International Day to End Violence against Women (25 November 2017), cross-promoting advocacy materials across the UN platforms.
All communication messages and products on EVAW were shared across the Department, including with our network of 59 operational United Nations Information Centres who communicate the UN’s work to local audiences in more than 80 local languages.
Gender units invest in targeted SGBV prevention activities that include prevention against VAW across the Missions through targeted capacity strengthening training, implementing gender analysis to identify enablers of SGBV; invest in community based early warning mechanisms and inclusion of specific SGBV indicators and reporting benchmarks across all functions to identify timely identification of SGBV risks; and establish partnerships with women civil society organisations to collectively develop strategies for an enabling environment that prevents and mitigates SGBV
In March 2017 DPKO produces a range of communication materials in line with the new gender policy have been developed to provide coherence and consistent advocacy on SGBV prevention.
DDR/CVR teams across 5 peacekeeping missions (MONUSCO, MINUSCA, MINUSMA, UNAMID and MINUJUSTH ) missions have designed and implemented a series of Community Violence Reduction (CVR) projects, aimed at preventing and reducing violence at the community level in both ongoing and post-conflict scenarios. While interventions target a wide set of actors (e.g. members of armed groups, youth at-risk and community members), these initiates particularly improve security conditions for vulnerable groups, including women and children. Moreover, by ensuring their participation, CVR projects serve to mobilize and empower women within their communities and, as a result, contribute to the constitution of a protective environment.
Gender-specific mine action programming: UNMAS makes every effort to ensure that its mine action programming is tailored according to specific cultures and gender of the beneficiaries. In some settings, this means women conducting single-gender risk education sessions (e.g. in Iraq in 2017).
Recruitment of women in mine action programming: Research in Colombia and Lebanon indicates that women employed in mine action (which is traditionally male -dominated) increase their voice and influence in their communities: http://www.gmap.ch/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/final-report-ARS-2016.pdf
ESCWA, in partnership with the Institute for Women’s Studies in the Arab World (IWSAW) at the Lebanese American University and UNFPA, organized a youth arts competition for the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence 2017. The competition received over 75 submissions of artwork from youth in the Arab region and the awards event involved a presentation on engaging with visual arts as a means to respond to gender sensitive legal reform.
ESCWA, in partnership with UN Women, produced a brochure targeting policy makers on estimating the economic costs of violence against women and a created a series of eight infographics conveying key messages on the impact of violence against women in the Arab region and responses by ESCWA Member States.
ESCWA facilitates a quarterly gender discussion series, open to all members of the community. The following topics have been addressed: Child marriage in the Arab region; Prioritizing women, peace and security on the Arab agenda; Estimating the cost of violence against women in the Arab region; and the Arab position on gender equality.
ESCWA, in partnership with UNFPA, screened the film ‘Nour’ (2017) about a fifteen-year-old girl from a Lebanese village who is forced to marry a much older man. In response to the film, audience members remarked that activists, government official and NGOs must strategize how to confront child marriage once it happens, in addition to promoting legal reform.
ESCWA, in partnership with the Asfari Institute on Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut, launched the “Lazim Campaign” during the weeks leading up to International Women’s Day 2018. Through the Lazim Campaign, prominent women throughout the Arab region shared their hopes for change in 2018, including criminalizing violence against women and developing gender-sensitive legislation.
A network of field ethics focal points has been created to receive and escalate complaints related to sexual exploitation and abuse. Trainings have been conducted for focal points on ethics procedures and the handling of these complaints, as well as on Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) and FAO's PSEA procedures.
UNODC promotes the Blue Hearth campaign, a global awareness raising initiative to fight human trafficking and its impact on society.
UNODC is implementing the Education for Justice Initiative and the Doha Declaration. In this framework, UNODC works to raise awareness on trafficking in persons though education, working closely with youth and academics to look into key concepts of trafficking and how this affects in particular women and girls, and how education can contribute to crime prevention and promotion of legality and justice.
Further, under the Global eLearning Programme, UNODC supports Member States through the delivery of courses across the world designed to address crime prevention challenges; on human rights, gender issues in cases of child sexual exploitation, alternatives to imprisonment for women offenders and the Essential Services Package for Women and Girls Subject to Violence; in line with international standards and norms.
In Viet Nam, UNODC supports awareness-raising campaigns on gender-based violence, documenting gender-based violence cases, providing aid services to victims and developing evidence-based data for policy advocacy purposes.
UN Women established a Community of Practice (CoP) for stakeholders working on the prevention of and response to violence against women and girls. Specific objectives of the Flagship Programming Initiatives (FPI) CoP include: Making existing knowledge, tools and approaches on the practice available and easily accessible to members of the CoP, allowing members to share concrete experience, challenges and good-practices on the implementation of the FPI so that members can “learn from others”, and generating new knowledge and tools. This community of practice, which follows various channels of communication (knowledge online platform, webinars, email helpdesk and a focal points’ meeting) will be strengthened based on its users’ experience and on new developments within UN Women’s programmes.
On 3 October 2016, UNESCO organized a Round Table on “Education and Gender Equality: The Perfect Partners for Development - Reflections on child, early and forced marriage – effects on school drop-outs.” During the event, the 2016 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report Gender Review was also launched. The Round Table was part of UNESCO’s celebration of the International Day of the Girl Child and aimed at reflecting on the fundamental link between gender equality and education, with a specific focus on the impact of child, early and forced marriage on education prospects for girls.
In Vietnam, the Domestic Violence Minimum Intervention Package was implemented in two provinces, and 12 Domestic Violence Rapid Response Teams were established.
The UN Women Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean, in partnership with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), hosted the meeting “Preventing and Responding to Violence Against Women and Girls in Latin-America and the Caribbean: Lessons learned across the globe”, which was held in Panama City from December 5 to 7 of 2016. This event provided a unique space, bringing together several UN agencies, government officials, diplomats, civil society organizations, global researchers and other experts in the field of preventing and responding to violence against women and girls to exchange experiences and explore ways to implement effective and promising practices to address violence against women. This approach sought to drive change in the region, which has been characterized by the lack of evidence-based interventions and rigorous evaluations. A total of 25 countries were represented in this meeting and UN women key guidance documents such as the UN prevention Framework to End Violence against Women and Girls as well as the Essential services guidelines were disseminated.
UN Women collaborated with UNESCO to develop a guidance toolkit on prevention of and response to violence against women and girls in the educational sector: “Global Guidance on School-related Gender-based violence” in December 2016 (http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002466/246651E.pdf). UN Women continues its collaboration with UNESCO to develop similar toolkits to engage the media and sporting organizations in prevention of and response to VAW. These technical documents provide key information to governments, policy-makers, practitioners and civil society who wish to take concrete action against violence against women and girls. It introduces approaches, methodologies, tools and resources that have shown positive results.