Enhanced Capacity of UN Entity in Relation to Violence Against Women
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Background
Launched in 2017 with an initial investment of over 500 million USD from the European Union, Spotlight Initiative is the United Nations Secretary-General’s High Impact Initiative to end violence against women and girls (EVAWG). Recognized as one of the 12 High-Impact Initiatives – driving progress across the sustainable development goals – Spotlight Initiative represents an unprecedented global effort to address violence against women and girls at scale.
During its first phase (2017- 2023), Spotlight Initiative helped cohere the UN system to implement 34 programmes across five regions. This included two civil society grant-making programmes – established in collaboration with the UN Trust to End Violence against Women and the Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund – which helped channel additional resources directly to civil society. By fostering a “One UN” approach under the leadership of the Resident Coordinators at the country level, Spotlight Initiative has leveraged various UN agencies’ complementary expertise, deepened collaboration, and streamlined operational processes, allowing for stronger programme delivery and better results for women and girls.
Through its deep partnerships at country and regional level – including with governments, civil society, faith-based and traditional leaders, academic institutions, media, the private sector, and others – Spotlight Initiative drove significant progress across response and prevention efforts. A strong commitment to meaningful engagement with civil society in particular, including local and grassroots organisations and feminist and women’s rights groups, has been central to the Initiative’s approach, as well. Under its first phase, nearly half of the Initiative’s activity funds were channeled directly to civil society, ensuring local ownership, buy-in, and sustainability of the Initiative's investments. At the global level, the Initiative forged a range of strategic partnerships, including with the Group of Friends, a coalition of 93 UN Member States advocating to end violence against women and girls, and the UN Foundation, which helped launch the WithHer Fund to channel more funding directly to local organizations.
Through its comprehensive approach – working to pass progressive laws and policies, strengthen institutions, deepen prevention programming, improve access to services, and generate data, and by centering partnerships – particularly with civil society – the Initiative has been shown to be 70% to 90% more effective at reducing the prevalence of violence against women and girls than siloed, single-pillar approaches. By aligning its interventions with national and local priorities, Spotlight Initiative works to deepen capacity, political will, and long-term commitment to ending violence against women and girls and advancing gender equality and women’s rights.
Areas of Focus
Unique to the Initiative is a whole-of-society approach that places ending violence against women and girls at the heart of national development priorities and gives local communities the tools they need to address violence in their specific context. The model works to support the development and revision of gender responsive laws and policies; strengthen institutions and data collection on VAWG; promote gender-equitable attitudes and positive social norms, and provide quality services for survivors of violence and their families. It does this work in partnerships with government and, critically, with civil society and women’s movements at every level, enhancing civic space and driving sustainable, transformative change.
UNODC developed a “Strategy for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (2018-2021) establishes the first institutional framework on gender equality for the United Nations Office at Vienna (UNOV) and UNODC. This Strategy seeks to ensure that gender equality and the empowerment of women are integral parts of all aspects of the work of UNOV/UNODC in making the world safer from drugs, crime and terrorism and in ensuring the peaceful uses of outer space.
This Strategy will assist UNOV and UNODC-by 2021-to be workplaces where gender equality and the empowerment of women are actively promoted by staff in all aspects of institutional processes, programmatic work and activities thus fostering an enabling, inclusive and diverse work environment and improving the representation of women at all levels in order to reach gender parity.
The ILO launched on March 2018 an Office-wide campaign to combat all forms of sexual harassment and misconduct within the ILO.
Morocco MCO
In 2017, through its chair of the Gender Thematic Group, UN Women Morocco organized several thematic sessions on EVAW issues for gender focal points of the UN System. A session was dedicated to the presentation and analysis of the recently-adopted law on human traffiking, and was animated by UN Women's partner from the Ministry of Justice, the Magistrate in charge of criminal cases involving children and women. Another session was co-organized with UNFPA and the Ministry of Health to present its annual report on State of the World Population and the Ministry's sectoral programme on EVAW. Finally, the GTG served as a coordination platform for the 16 Days campaign and all agencies were invited by UN Women to commemorate together the International Day to End Violence Against Women and Girls that was organized on November 24, 2017, with a release of hundreds of ecofriendly orange balloons and with the presence of the Resident Coordiantor and the Ministry of Women's Affairs.
We have increased the capacity of our regional and country focal points through regional capacity building workshops on essential services (with UNW and UNFPA)or of the health sector response. We have also strengthened our capacity to respond to VAW in humanitarian settings.
A specific guidance (“How can we protect men, women and children from gender-based violence? Addressing GBV in the food security and agriculture sector”) and a policy brief (“How can food security interventions contribute to reducing gender-based violence?”) were developed to introduce FAO staff and relevant partners to both the relevance and practical know-how of addressing GBV in food security and agriculture interventions. The Guide specifically calls upon FAO and partner staff to contribute to the protection of all human rights, including the right to a life free from GBV.
- Improve understanding of the different forms of gender-based violence, their causes and consequences, and how they directly and indirectly affect the agriculture sector, food security and livelihoods;
- Better define FAO responsibilities and identify the best opportunities to address GBV;
- Provide practical information and tools to inform protection and GBV analysis at each stage of the project cycle.
In 2016, WFP has carried out a massive in-house sensitisation campaign for its own staff on Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. Also, a total of 100 protection/gender focal points from different Country Offices were trained on protection. The training covers gender-based violence and aims at building people's capacities for the integration of protection measures in food assistance programs, including GBV related measures.
The WFP Men Stand for Gender Equality Movement was founded by 24 male WFP colleagues during the 16 days of activism in 2015. Its members have been increasing ever since at HQ, Regional Bureaus and especially in the Country Offices, and the movement has been growing. In November 2016, the South Sudan Country Office launched its own ‘WFP Men Stand for Gender Equality’ initiative, and as of January 2017, the movement counts 322 members.
UNRWA developed and finalized the new Gender Equality Strategy (2016-2021), 'Integrating Gender, Improving Services, Impacting Lives.' The new strategy consolidates gender mainstreaming in the Agency’s organizational processes and programmes and aims at improving service delivery and reducing vulnerabilities among Palestine refugee women, men, boys, and girls. In this light, it serves to guide and frame all gender-related work by the Agency, including work on GBV.
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.
Some 3000 WFP staff and partners have been trained on integrating protection in WFP's operations. The training covers gender-based violence and aims at building people's capacities for the integration of protection measures in food assistance programs, including Gender based violence related measures.