Feb 2008 - Sept 2008

In March 2008, OHCHR facilitated interactive expert panel discussions on the question of violence against women, and on maternal mortality as a human rights issue, respectively.

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, collaborated with several agencies to support “Women on the Frontline”, a seven-part series of the BBC aired in April 2008 that profiled forms of violence against women around the globe.

DPI provided communications support for the launch of the Secretary-General’s Campaign “UNiTE to end violence against women”, on 25 February 2008, including generating awareness about the role of the United Nations in efforts to end violence against women. DPI coordinated an inter-agency communications group and produced multimedia information materials on the issue. Guidance on the campaign was disseminated to field offices to ensure that the communications campaign is prioritized.

DAW, now part of UN Women, completed the first issue of Words to Action, a quarterly newsletter designed to disseminate information about measures undertaken to address violence against women by: intergovernmental bodies of the United Nations; expert bodies, including the human rights treaty bodies; entities of the United Nations system; and States at the regional or sub-regional level.DAW, now part of UN Women, produced a brochure on the database on violence against women and the related questionnaire, which was distributed to Member States during the sixty-third session of the General Asse

In the Southern African region, under the framework of the United Nations Trust Fund for Human Security and in close collaboration with other UN agencies, UNODC supports several activities, including counselling and establishment of support groups for male perpetrators and potential perpetrators in order to break the cycle of violence.

In April 2008, UNAIDS presented “Gender Guidance for National AIDS Responses” to its Programme Coordinating Board (PCB), on strategies to strengthen attention to gender issues within national AIDS programmes, including combating violence against women in the context of AIDS.UNAIDS, together with WHO, completed technical and policy guidance to support the integration of gender issues into national proposals to the Global Fund on AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) for Round 8, with emphasis on better integrating programmes aimed at combating violence against women with AIDS services.

As part of UNFPA’s collaboration with the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) on costing violence against women, workshops were conducted during this reporting period in Bangladesh, Uganda, and Morocco, to test the domestic violence costing model developed under the partnership.

The UNFPA and UNICEF Trust Fund and Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) aims at reducing FGM/C by 40 per cent in 17 countries by 2012. Over the last six months, work plans were finalized in eight countries and funds disbursed for programme implementation.

WHO coordinated the preparation and publication of the interagency statement on the elimination of FGM, signed by 10 UN agencies in 2008. WHO continued to strongly condemn the practice of FGM by medical professionals. UNFPA hosted an internal high-level meeting on sex selection in October 2008 in New York, to initiate the development of the Fund’s strategy on this issue.

Following the launch of the UN Interagency Statement ‘Eliminating Female Genital Mutilation’, by the UN Deputy Secretary General in February 2008, UNICEF-supported efforts were made to implement the approach described therein in national policies.