United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women

During the course of the Strategic Plan 2016-2020, the UN Trust Fund invested USD47 million in projects that solely or partly focused on preventing violence against women and girls.

To disseminate the expertise and knowledge of civil society and women's rights organizations, the UN Trust Fund worked with grantee organizations and researchers to create a series of briefings on preventing violence against women. The organizations' practice-based insights are invaluable to planning, designing and funding interventions aimed at ending violence against women and girls.

The main objectives of the knowledge products are to:

The findings identified 10 key pathways to prevent violence against women and girls. Each theme will be explored in conversations with 10 grantees, resulting in a detailed report per theme published on a rolling basis in starting July 2021 and 2022.

Stars of Hope Society, the only association in Palestine that is managed by women with disabilities for women with disabilities, is using a grant from the UN Trust Fund to improve access to essential, safe and adequate multisectoral services. In the first six months of 2019, the grantee built out its infrastructure of the project and, in particular, on carrying out a context analysis and building capacity. As part of that effort it produced a disability mainstreaming manual and trained 22 representatives of organizations for women with disabilities on ending violence against women and girls. As part of efforts to mainstream disability in data collection on violence, the grantee persuaded the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics to include in its data collection team four female sign language interpreters, one of whom is living with disabilities.

A project in Cambodia is being implemented by ADD International in partnership with local organizations to empower disabled women’s networks and strengthen their capacity to lead primary prevention efforts in six districts in which domestic violence is reported to be high. The target of the project is violence committed by relatives and caregivers against women and girls with disabilities. The aim of the project is to strengthen the capacity of women-led organizations that work for people with disabilities so that they may more effectively support women and girls through prevention interventions. Also under that programme, women and girls with disabilities will be trained to become volunteer role models and a methodology will be developed to analyse the incidence and causes of gender-based violence. The methodology will be disseminated in Cambodia and internationally.

In Kosovo (under Security Council resolution 1244 (1999)), Medica Kosova is implementing a small grant from the UN Trust Fund to implement a project whose aim is to protect the legal rights, including property rights, of women who have experienced gender-based violence during and after the armed conflict, and to improve institutional responses to gender-based violence. Medica Kosova is also providing monitoring and advocacy training for women’s organizations and is working with those organizations to identify shortcomings in the implementation of the national strategy against domestic violence. Thus far, the project has assisted 17 survivors of gender-based violence in obtaining legal support and starting the process of registering their properties. Another nine women, who have obtained official status as survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, have expressed an interest in following the legal procedures to register their houses and farms. In addition, 19 women have applied for the status of survivors of conflict related sexual violence and will be enrolled in the reparations scheme that provides them with a monthly lifetime pension.

The United Nations Trust Fund in support of actions to eliminate violence against women is a global, multilateral grant-making mechanism that supports efforts to prevent and end violence against women and girls. The Trust Fund, which was established in 1996 by the General Assembly in its resolution 50/166, is administered by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on behalf of the United Nations system. With the strong institutional support of UN Women and its regional, multi-country and country offices, and working closely with the rest of the United Nations system through its inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee, the Trust Fund plays a vital role in driving forward collective efforts to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.