Prevention and Advocacy

Issue # 2 of Words to Action, DAW’s (now part of UN Women) quarterly newsletter on violence against women, was produced with a feature article on legislation.

During the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in 2008, OSAGI, now part of UN Women, and UNFPA organized a panel discussion with the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, which reviewed 15 years (1994-2009) of work of the mandate. OSAGI coordinated the performance of a play, “MIKA”, which highlighted the far-reaching impact of violence against women and which was also performed at United Nations Headquarters in December.

In October 2013, UN Women launched Voices against Violence, a pioneering co-educational and non-formal education curriculum on ending violence against women and girls, designed for various age groups ranging from 5 to 25 years, in partnership with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts.

OHCHR initiated research on how human rights mechanisms have addressed harmful gender stereotypes and wrongful gender stereotyping aimed at informing further work to promote greater attention to states obligations and promising practices.

In Cairo, Egypt, UN-Habitat conducted women’s safety audits in the 3 selected areas for intervention and prepared situational analysis reports and recommendations which were submitted to government. Place-making participatory planning workshops have been conducted in each of the 3 areas and the implementation of women-inclusive management of public spaces model has been approved by government.

UN Women’s Safe Cities Global Initiative includes: the “Safe Cities Free of Violence against Women and Girls” Global Programme (2011-2017), in partnership with UN Habitat, and 50 other local and global partners operating in 9 countries to develop models to prevent sexual harassment and other forms of sexual violence against women and girls in public spaces. Five pilot cities of the programme (Cairo, Delhi, Kigali, Port Moresby and Quito) are applying an impact evaluation methodology to contribute a solid evidence basis for what works.

The Parenting Project Group of the WHO Violence Prevention Alliance, co-led by UNICEF and the University of Cape Town, launched the ‘Parenting Programmes for Preventing Violence: A Toolkit for Understanding Outcome Evaluations’ report with the aim of providing technical support to those implementing parenting programmes at the country level.

Applying Social Media Tools for the Prevention of Gender-based Violence: Lessons learned from social media communication campaigns to prevent gender-based violence in India, China and Viet Nam’; was launched and disseminated by P4P in 2013. This resource consolidates learning from the P4P initiative ‘Engaging Young Men through Social Media for the Prevention of Violence against Women’. “Let’s Talk Men 2.0” film series7 launched in India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka with accompanying tools for discussion facilitators.

UNDP also organized numerous activities to raise awareness on the issue such as national campaigns on VAW in Albania, on trafficking in Argentina and Kosovo; the “From Peace in the Home to Peace in the World” campaign in Uzbekistan, as a part of the UNCT; sensitization of population in Cambodia and Madagascar, of pupils in Sierra Leone, university students in Timor-Leste, religious leaders in Afghanistan, and journalists in Algeria; production of awareness-raising material(videos, leaflets etc) in Argentina, Europe and CIS, Uzbekistan, Peru, as well as advocacy material on CSW 57 in Ghana; inf

UNRWA equally participated in the activities organized by the UN Gender Taskforce in Gaza and West Bank for the campaign “UNiTE to end violence against women”. In the West Bank, this included events at boys’ and girls’ schools, where movies on violence against women were shown and the societal role in prevention of violence discussed. In Gaza, a conference was organised under the slogan “From peace at home to peace in society: Let’s unite to end violence against women”.