United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

UN Women leads the MDG-Fund Gender programme in Morocco, a substantial joint programme involving 13 ministries and 8 UN agencies which has supported a coordinated multi-agency response to prevent violence against women and girls. Hide

Issue # 10 of Words to Action, UN Women’s quarterly newsletter on violence against women, was produced, with a feature article on reparations for women who have been subjected to violence.UN Women supported an International Conference of Islamic Scholars (Ulemas) of West Africa, Egypt and Sudan on the position of Islam regarding harmful practices perpetrated on women, at the issue of which a regional fatwa (sharia law ruling) banning female genital mutilation was adopted. This fatwa has become a key instrument to raise the awareness of the population on this issue. Hide

Gender-based violence prevention has been integrated into urban upgrading through the Barrios de Verdad (Real Neighborhoods) World Bank project in Bolivia. The project operates in collaboration with UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, and DFID in sixteen poor neighborhoods in La Paz. Along with other activities the project built indoor sanitation facilities and street lighting to improve pedestrian mobility and women’s security, which are said to have decreased outdoor violence against women. Several urban transport projects financed by the World Bank now include in their design indoor sanitation facilities and street lighting to improve pedestrian mobility and women’s security. Hide

Former UNIFEM now part of UN Women provided technical support to stakeholders who contributed to the enactment of the Domestic Violence Bill in Grenada, the Ley Especial Integral para una Vida libre de Violencia para las Mujeres in El Salvador, the development of the Domestic Violence (Crime and Punishment) Regulation in Nepal and the adoption of new provisions in the Law on Protection against Domestic Violence in Albania. Hide

Issue # 9 of Words to Action, former DAW’s (now part of UN Women) now UN Women quarterly newsletter on violence against women, was issued, with a feature article on addressing violence against women and HIV/AIDS effectively. Hide

With sponsorship from the Government of Norway, OSAGI, now part of UN Women, collaborated with INSTRAW and ECLAC, to develop an online training course entitled Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) in Latin America and the Caribbean to be distributed by the Peace Operations Training Institute (POTI). A second course on the Implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) in Africa, is being finalised for distribution. The courses will provide students with an overview of the resolution as well as context-specific issues and challenges that impact effective implementation, and will outline the process of developing a National Action Plan on resolution 1325 (2000).As chair of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Women, Peace and Security former OSAGI and UNIFEM- now both part of UN Women, in consultations with Member States and UN entities, led and coordinated the development of both the framework and the set of indicators to track the implementation of resolution 1325 (2000). Hide

A workshop, organised in partnership with WHO, UNAIDS and UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, , was held in Kenya in December 2010 to address the integration of gender-based violence into national AIDS strategies. Hide

In Asia-Pacific, the work of the inter-agency initiative “Partners for Prevention” (P4P) was ongoing. Engagingmen.net (www.engagingmen.net) is a website where practitioners can share resources and learn about training opportunities. “Partners for Prevention” (P4P) organized several training sessions to support national social media campaigns in China, India, and Indonesia. Demand Media, a leading online media company and expert in developing social media platforms, provides pro bono support for the national campaigns. In December 2010, P4P organized a meeting with various stakeholders from Cambodia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Fiji, the Philippines and Vietnam, who work to engage boys and men for ending violence against women. The participants agreed to work together to develop regional curricula and a collective approach for knowledge creation and sharing across the region.In December 2010, the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) “Standing Committee of Male Parliamentarians for the Elimination of Violence against Women and Children” met in Port Macquarie, Australia, where male parliamentarians from 13 countries signed a pledge to take action in their own countries and to stand together as a collective group to advocate for more actions for violence prevention among their peers. “Partners for Prevention” is supporting the Standing Committee of Male Parliamentarians as a collaborative partner with AFPPD and UNFPA. “Partners for Prevention” and AFPPD are conducting research on the challenges that parliamentarians face in moving prevention policy forward, and on ways to support them in their role in preventing violence. Hide

Support provided by former UNIFEM now part of UN Women for data collection and research provided the basis for informing the development of effective public policies and advocacy initiatives in countries such as Afghanistan, Mexico, Moldova, Morocco, Nigeria, Serbia and Uganda. Hide

In December 2010, UNDP and UN Women organized a workshop in Kampala, attended by several experts on transitional justice issues and reparation, focusing also on gender, with the objective to initiate a more integrated UN approach to reparations. Hide