Jul 2007 - Jan 2008

In December 2007, UNFPA published A Holistic Approach to the Abandonment of Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting. This document describes the holistic approach utilized by UNFPA - such legal and policy reform, national capacity building and working at the community level – in its FGM/C abandonment programmes, and gives a brief sampling of the organization's country level experiences.

As a follow up to the Secretary-General’s Study on Violence Against Children, in December 2007, UNICEF supported the development of a new publication on violence against girls, entitled ” From Invisible to Indivisible” highlighting the recommendations of the Secretary-General’s study on violence against children and the study on violence against women.

ECE’s work is undertaken by a Task Force that operates under the framework of the Conference of European Statisticians. The Task Force prepared an assessment of existing surveys and methodology on measuring violence.

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, supported initiatives for better data collection and national statistical monitoring on gender-based violence, including in Afghanistan, Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, and Venezuela. In Afghanistan, UNIFEM supported the development of a database to collect and track service-based data to monitor the ‘Strategic Framework for Eliminating Violence against Women’.

Policy influence has been a major component of UNDP’s assistance in supporting governments to address gender-based violence in Mozambique, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Mexico, Zimbabwe, and Maldives. In Cambodia, for example UNDP’s policy advocacy and support for the development of monitoring indicators on gender equality has resulted in the adoption by the Cambodian government of four Monitoring Indicators on gender equality, one of which relates to domestic violence.

In November 2007, ECLAC published the regional report on violence against women. The Spanish version was launched in November 2007, under the title “!Ni una más! El derecho a vivir una vida libre de violencia en América Latina y el Caribe”. In December 2007, ECLAC published a report on the follow-up to Goal 3 of the Millennium Development Goals, including a chapter on violence against women.

Recent publications of UNODC included: child-friendly version of the Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime (published in February 2008); Handbook for Female Prison Staff on Responding to the Specific Needs of Women Prisoners in Afghanistan (published in December 2007 in Dari).

In September 2007, OHCHR organized a seminar on women and torture, for United Nations and civil society representatives, with the aim of providing input for the thematic report of the Special Rapporteur on Torture, on strengthening the protection of women from torture (A/HRC/7/3), to be presented to Human Rights Council at its seventh session. The report is aimed at ensuring that the torture protection framework is applied in a gender-inclusive manner.

A regional programme supported by IOM is providing assistance for the return and reintegration of trafficked women and girls, mainly exploited as domestic workers, throughout the region. Medical assessments are carried out in the shelters with special attention to HIV cases. Reintegration activities involve school support or income generating activities. IOM signed an agreement with the Colombian Ministry of Justice in order to develop counter-trafficking activities in the areas of assistance to victims and prevention through a hot-line.

In China, UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, support to the Xuzhou Domestic Violence Shelter is being considered for nation-wide scale-up by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.