United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

In collaboration with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), DAW, now part of UN Women, organized an expert group meeting on good practices in legislation on violence against women at the United Nations Office at Vienna, in May 2008. The report of the expert group meeting includes a model framework for legislation on violence against women with detailed recommendations and explanatory commentaries containing examples of good practice. Hide

In September 2008, DAW, now part of UN Women, sent a questionnaire to Member States on measures undertaken to address violence against women, for the purpose of obtaining information for the Secretary-General’s database on violence against women (A/RES/61/143, para. 19). Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, in collaboration with Avon Products, Inc. convened a global summit in March 2008 wherein Avon Products, Inc. committed $1 million to the UN Trust Fund – the Fund’s largest single, annual, private sector contribution ever. Hide

UN-HABITAT and UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, held a joint workshop during the International Seminar “Cities without Violence, Safe Cities for Women and Girls”, in July 2008 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and presented a joint training initiative on women’s safety audits for cities in Latin America and the Caribbean. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, facilitated the Wilton Park conference of May 2008 on the role of military peacekeepers in addressing sexual violence during armed conflict, and contributed to the dissemination of the results. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, and DFID supported a conference organized by the Rwandan Defense Forces in Kigali in March 2008 on women’s participation in peacekeeping missions, as part of prevention of gender-based violence. In collaboration with UNFPA and UNDP, UNIFEM organized a satellite session “From acknowledgement to action: Intersections between violence against women and HIV/AIDS”, at the International Conference on AIDS in Mexico City, in August 2008.UNIFEM leads or partners on several joint United Nations initiatives on violence against women, including programmes in Bangladesh, Colombia and Morocco; the Asia Pacific Regional Joint Programme Partners for Prevention: Working with Boys and Men to Prevent Gender-based Violence; and the One UN pilots in Albania, Rwanda and Uruguay, which include violence against women in their programming. Hide

In Burundi, UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, , UNDP, UNESCO and UNICEF worked together to provide training and reporting assistance for civil society organizations and police to improve statistics and data collection on cases of gender-based violence. Hide

In June 2008, UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, organized a workshop with representatives from Afghanistan, Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda, Timor-Leste and Uganda as part of a programme on Supporting Women’s Engagement in Peace-Building and Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict: Community-Led Approaches. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, collaborated with several agencies to support “Women on the Frontline”, a seven-part series of the BBC aired in April 2008 that profiled forms of violence against women around the globe. Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, provided capacity development to the Burundian police and judiciary to improve protection mechanisms for survivors of violence against women and to civil society partners, working on violence against women in Indonesia, Thailand, Timor-Leste and the Philippines. It also supported the development of a training course, "Empowerment, HIV and violence against women in the Caribbean." As part of the Safe Cities Programme, UNIFEM and Red Mujer y Habitat supported an online learning course, “Urban violence, insecurity and discrimination”. Hide