Mar 2014 - Mar 2016

OHCHR assisted CEDAW (Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women) and the CRC (Committee on the Rights of the Child) in elaborating joint General Recommendation No. 31/General Comment No. 18 on harmful practices and the update of General Recommendation 19 on violence against women.

OHCHR supported the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences in producing thematic policy recommendations through her reports to the Human Rights Council (HRC) on 20 years of United Nations developments regarding VAW (A/HRC/26/38) and on closing the gap in international human rights law (A/HRC/29/27). Also her reports to the General Assembly on VAW as a barrier to the effective realization of all human rights (A/69/368) and on closing the gap in international human rights law (A/70/209).

OHCHR has continued to support the Human Rights Council’s work on women’s human rights. OHCHR submitted various reports to HRC, including a report on early, child and forced marriages (A/HRC/26/22), a report on sexual and gender-based violence in the context of transitional justice (A/HRC/27/21), and a report on the implementation of the technical guidance on the human rights-based approach to preventable maternal mortality and morbidity (A/HRC/27/20).

In August 2014, OHCHR and UN Women launched the Latin American Protocol for the investigation of Gender-Motivated Killings of women, which provides guidance for investigations to comply with due diligence standards (promoted in Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Peru).

A standard-setting item on “Violence against women and men in the world of work” is listed on the agenda of the ILO 107th Session (June 2018) of the International Labour Conference.

FAO has been instrumental in the finalization of the Committee on World Food Security’s (CFS) Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (FFA), a global policy guidance instrument endorsed in October 2015.

WHO is  one of the 13 UN entities of UN Action, leading knowledge pillar by contributing to improved evidence for understanding the scale of sexual violence in conflict and how to respond effectively. In 2015, WHO together with UNODC published a toolkit on 'strengthening the medico-legal response to sexual violence', which aims to support service provision and coordination in low-resource settings, available in English and French. It is being field tested in several countries with the aim of improving coordination across the multiple stakeholders involved.

WFP has contributed to the development of the 2015 IASC "Guidelines for Integrating Gender Based Violence Interventions in Humanitarian Action" and is currently a member of  the IASC GBV Guidelines  Global Reference Group, which is responsbile of the global  roll out of the guidelines.

WFP attended 9 IASC meetings in 2015, in which WFP was playing a pivotal role as a member of the standing committee of the GenCap project & the co-chair of the IASC Gender Reference Group. Gender based violence is a key consideration in WFP's Policy on Humanitarian Protection (2012) that outlines the organisation's position on protection and provides a framework for implementation of its responsibilities in this regard. As part of its modus operandi, WFP seeks to implement food assistance programmes that take the interlinkages between hunger and gender-based violence into account.

In March 2015, the United Nations Secretary-General’s campaign UNiTE to End Violence against Women (UNiTE) launched its call to action for the 16 Days of Activism,  ‘Orange the World: End Violence against Women and Girls’. The theme of prevention of violence against women and girls was selected as a focus to provide opportunities to highlight the need for greater investment in ending violence against women and girls at global, regional and country level in the particular context of the new SDG framework with a focus on prevention as a long term solution.