Mar 2011 - Jan 2012

UN Women provided support to survivor assistance networks and counseling/crisis centers in Algeria (the CIDDEF and BALSAM network), Morocco (the ANARUZ network), and Mauritania (El Wafa crisis center, AMSME), which enabled women survivors of violence (about 830 in Algeria, 1700 in Morocco, and 150 victims of sexual violence in Mauritania) to access psychological and legal advice and support. In Algeria, four new counseling centers joined the BALSAM network, which is now composed of 15 counseling centers.

UN Women provided women inmates in Palestinian correction and rehabilitation centres (Palestinian prisons) with legal aid and representation from a gender perspective, social counseling sessions, recreational and rehabilitative activities; and provision of goods for primary needs for the women and their newborn children leaving inside the prison. Regular monitoring of the situation (social and legal) of women inmates in the occupied Palestinian territory was conducted and a paper was produced.

UN Women continued to support the first multi-purpose Centre in the occupied Palestinian territory (West Bank) for women victims of violence through provision of technical and financial assistance. The Centre includes a shelter which has hosted twenty women and their children on a monthly basis. Towards the end of 2011, the revision of policies and procedures of the Centre was initiated and will lead to the upgrading to national policies and procedures. The first multi-purpose Centre in the Gaza Strip was established modeling the Centre in the West Bank.

UNRWA has installed referral systems in its five fields of operations (Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and West Bank). In Gaza, UNRWA has established 12 one-stop centres located in UNRWA’s heath centres. In the West Bank, a multi-sectoral, community approach to addressing gender-based violence (GBV) has been the core of the referral system.

With the support of UN Action, WHO organized, in collaboration with UNICEF and UNFPA, a technical meeting on responding to the psychosocial and mental health needs of survivors of sexual violence. The meeting in November 2011 reviewed the evidence and experiences from the field and made programmatic, policy and research recommendations.

As part of its strategic leadership role, the UNAIDS Secretariat has gathered evidence to better address gender barriers that hinder women’s access to services, including violence.

WHO is currently finalizing a systematic review of evidence on effective interventions to address violence against women and HIV for peer-reviewed publication. A systematic review of evidence on the links between violence against sex workers and risk of STI and HIV infection as well as of effective interventions to reduce violence against sex workers is being finalized for peer-reviewed publication.

WHO is finalizing clinical and policy guidelines for the health sector response to intimate partner and sexual violence. The Guidelines Development Group (GDG), bringing together researchers, practitioners and policy makers, met in September 2011 to review the evidence and develop evidence-based recommendations for the health sector response to these forms of violence. A draft is being reviewed by the GDG and will be finalized by June 2012. A Programming Guide on Addressing violence against women in the context of HIV is also being finalized.

The UN Women Universal Access to Critical Services initiative aims to achieve access for all women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence to at least a core set of services for their emergency and immediate needs, within the next ten years, in a significant number of countries of the world. It addresses a clear implementation and accountability gap in the dearth of State mapping, benchmarking and monitoring for expansion of services for universal access, and promotes an evidence-based, results-driven approach to policy making similar to that of the Millenium Development Goals.

A round table on “Public Policies on Gender based Violence” organized by the Dominican Republic Escuela Nacional de Formación Electoral y del Estado Civil, EFEC, in coordination with UN Women and UNDP.