Training

UNRWA is strengthening the capacity of its counselors in the health centres, its lawyers in legal advice offices, and its social workers in the women program centres to offer a more targeted intervention to victims in Gaza and West Bank through the Community Mental Health, the MDG-Gender and the Equality in Action programs.

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, provided support to civil society and women’s organisations for initiatives, including training for Pakistani civil society groups on masculinities; and developing a high school curriculum on violence against women in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

FAO has organized trainings in DRC and Niger based on a module entitled “Communicating Gender for Development”, involving a wide range of stakeholders, during which GBV and how to address it was discussed, as well as the role community leaders and radios can play in combating domestic violence.

UNFPA, in collaboration with UNIFEM HQ and UNFPA and UNIFEM country offices, and key government and civil society organization stakeholders, held capacity development workshops, in Uganda and in Sierra Leone, to develop key indicators under the National Action Plans on Security Council resolution (SCR) 1325.

In December 2009, UNHCR held a training with NGOs from several African countries on resettlement and the heightened risk identification tool (HRIT), which has been developed to enhance the identification of individuals at heightened risk of protection problems, including SGBV. Resettlement is an important protection tool for survivors of SGBV.

UNDP supported the training of about 450 professionals in Moldova and the development of curricula on GBV for the judiciary, the police and the government in Serbia. In Argentina, UNDP initiated, in collaboration with the women’s machinery, a project to help the effective implementation of the law on violence, including the development of local diagnostics and the strengthening of provincial areas of women through training. UNDP has also focused efforts on enhancing the capacities of police officers, judges, paralegals, court administrators and religious leaders.

A first pilot training on conducting women’s safety audits for the Caribbean was held in Kingston, Jamaica, in mid-November 2008, with 30 participants from Jamaica, Grenada, St Lucia, and Haiti. A concept note by UNDP and UN-HABITAT, submitted to the Democratic Governance Thematic Trust Fund for up-scaling this programme to cover other municipalities in Jamaica, has been accepted.

UNHCR supported the training of community and health services staff to improve their response to sexual violence and exploitation, to ensure safe access to services and to develop peer HIV prevention programmes for vulnerable groups.

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, supported the financing of domestic violence courts with senior African judges and, gender-responsive budgeting work that resulted in the earmarking of funds for gender-justice courts and women's prisons in Venezuela.

In Turkey, more than 2 million soldiers were trained by UNFPA-supported initiatives on gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health. Also in Turkey, by the end of 2008, 250 police facilitators were trained on domestic violence prevention who, in turn, trained 40,000 of their peers.