Jul 2007

OCHA staff is sensitized on the prevention of gender-based violence, and all partners and staff are informed about applicable codes of conduct. The Office implements confidential complaints mechanisms on gender-based violence, including sexual violence against women and is responsible for managing the sexual exploitation and abuse focal point network.

Several DPKO missions have supported, or implemented training activities for mission personnel and other stakeholders on gender-based violence against women, as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and Timor-Leste.

UNV carried out a corporate review of gender mainstreaming (Norrish, 2006) which made recommendations for strengthening performance in this area. As a result, UNV set up a Gender Action Team.

In order to ensure gender mainstreaming, OHCHR works directly with a range of UN partners in the areas of development cooperation, humanitarian affairs, and peace and security to ensure that human rights principles, norms and standards relating to gender equality and women’s rights are integrated into their work, including as it relates to violence against women.

DPKO gender units/advisers collaborate and partner with different units within a peacekeeping mission to combat violence against women, in particular those dealing with human rights, conduct and discipline, children, or HIV/AIDS, as is the case in Burundi.DPKO gender units in peacekeeping missions increasingly participate in country-based United Nations inter-agency initiatives and mechanisms to address gender-based violence against women, for example in Haiti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, Sudan and Burundi.

In September 2005, a United Nations inter-agency working group on violence against women in all its manifestations, was established, coordinated by ECLAC, in order to strengthen, coordinate and integrate current activities carried out by the organizations of the United Nations in Latin America and the Caribbean in the area of violence against women.

ESCWA supports the work of intergovernmental bodies, including the Arab Regional Conference Ten Years after Beijing: A Call for Peace in Beirut (2004), which resulted in the five-year work programme that includes women’s rights and violence against women among its five priority areas. In 2004, ESCWA conducted the Arab regional ten-year review and appraisal of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, which included attention to violence against women.

ECLAC is presently collaborating with the regional Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights to establish ways of linking follow-up of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women (Convention of Belém do Pará).

ILO’s approach to violence against migrant women is also based on the promotion of labour standards for migrant workers within a Decent Work framework. Important standards to specifically promote the protection and welfare of migrant workers, including women, are the Migration for Employment Convention (Revised) 1949 (No.97), Migrant Workers Supplementary Provisions Convention 1975, (N0.143) and the Private Employment Agencies Convention, 1997 (N0.181).

ECA supports inter-governmental processes, including those that result in policy instruments for the advancement of women, and the elimination of violence against women. It supports the work of the Inter-African Committee on Traditional Practices on fight against traditional practices that are harmful to women and girls, including genital mutilation.