Training

In Rajasthan, India, UNODC contributed to an initiative together with MIT’s Poverty Action Lab, to train police officers to respond effectively to violence against women. The programme aimed at improving public perception and trust of the community as well as overall capacity of over 2000 police personnel, including police officers in four women police stations.

Ongoing and planned UNODC projects on juvenile justice in Afghanistan, Burundi, Egypt, Haiti, Jordan, Lebanon and Yemen pay particular attention to the situation of girls and to awareness raising and training on the special needs of girls. A global project on implementation of the Guidelines on Justice in Matters involving Child Victims and Witnesses of Crime is ongoing and gives special consideration to the situation of girl victims and witnesses of crime.

In Afghanistan, UNODC supported training for prison staff on the special needs of preparing women and girls for release and several tools developed.

OHCHR provided training for representatives from human rights organizations in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), on women’s rights in general and violence against women in particular.

DAW, now part of UN Women, in cooperation with ESCWA’s Centre for Women, convened a regional capacity building workshop on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women for judges and parliamentarians from 13 countries in Western Asia, in Amman, Jordan, in October 2007. The meeting focused on follow-up to the Secretary-General’s study on violence against women and General Assembly resolution 61/143, and on family law.

The Civilian Police Section of DPA/United Nations Peace-building Office in the Central African Republic (BONUCA) conducted training for national gendarme officers on human rights issues and gender-based violence. DPKO Gender Advisers have partnered with UNPOL to highlight gender-based violence in training for National Police.

UNFPA is working in collaboration with a wide range of stakeholders to address gender-based violence, including training of uniformed personnel, health workers and law enforcement.

UNICEF hosted a region-wide workshop on best practices to prevent and respond to gender-based violence in South Africa which brought together representatives from more than 20 UNICEF offices in Africa, along with government partners to learn from the South African experience of addressing gender-based violence and share experiences to prevent and respond to it.

WHO developed a Handbook for the documentation of interpersonal violence prevention programmes, which provides guidance on how to document violence programmes, as a basis for monitoring and evaluation of interventions to prevent and reduce violence.

UNFPA employs a wide range of operational strategies to address violence against women, including the development of guidelines and tools, capacity-building and training. As such, UNFPA has supported sensitivity training of medical professionals to meet the health needs of women affected by violence. Pilot interventions have been tested in 10 countries—Cape Verde, Ecuador, Guatemala, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mozambique, Nepal, Romania, Russia and Sri Lanka. It has also supported an international consultation on programming to address gender-based violence.