Mar 2013 - Feb 2014

ECLAC is finalizing a regional report on violence against women, including femicide, the State responses and challenges to address it.

UNICRI has launched a new research aimed at providing data on the consequences of the economic crisis on women’s rights and gender inequality. It focuses on domestic violence, discrimination, access to justice and welfare service and explores possible strategies to address the risks. Case studies are collected from the grassroots level from France, Spain, Italy and Greece, where the impact of the economic downturn on the women and the coping responses of their respective governments are studied from a gender perspective.

WHO participated as the Chair of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Conference in Bangkok that is held every 2 years which also examined research related to intimate partner violence.

UNODC expanded its online Human Trafficking Case Law Database (www.unodc/cld), which provides legal professionals with qualitative information and increases knowledge and visibility of cases of trafficking in women and girls. The Office provided specialized training, including on indicators to identify trafficking in women, to more than 800 criminal justice practitioners worldwide.

UNODC continues its research on the patterns and flows of trafficking in persons worldwide. The biennial Global Report on Trafficking in Persons presents gender-disaggregated data on trafficking victims and offenders. It also analyzes female involvement in trafficking in persons, and regional differences in terms of detections of victims and forms of exploitation.

UNESCO developed a global review of school-related gender based violence and conducted a regional review on the topic the Asia Pacific region. UNESCO also commissioned five country studies on the links between HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence in the Great Lakes Region of Africa and conducted a regional workshop on the topic in Tanzania (material available online).

UNFPA collaborated with UNFPA, ILO, UNICEF, UN-Women and the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children on a joint study on violence against indigenous girls, adolescents and young women, entitled “Breaking the Silence on Violence against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women: A call to action based on an overview of existing evidence from Africa, Asia Pacific and Latin America”.

UNFPA continued to document evidence-based practices to EVAW, including through the development of advocacy briefs such as “Addressing Gender-Based Violence” and “The Role of Data in Addressing Violence against Women and Girls” during the 2013 Commission for the Status of Women. Moreover, UNFPA and the Men Engage Alliance published global advocacy briefs on the role of men and boys in addressing GBV in conflict and on social norms, respectively.

WHO, in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the Medical Research Council in South Africa, launched the first ever global and regional estimates of the prevalence and the health burden of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence against women. The report was widely covered by the media and underscored the need for addressing violence against women as a women’s health and public health problem, as well as a human rights and development concern.

The UN Trust Fund on EVAW-funded joint programme ‘Multi-Sectoral Gender Based Violence Response at the District Level in Nepal’, the first UN joint programming initiative to address VAW in Nepal, was completed in 2013 and the evaluation concluded that the programme has helped create a forum for different stakeholders to address VAW collectively.