United Nations Trust Fund to End Violence against Women
220 East 42nd Street, 21st Floor New York, NY 11226, USA
https://www.unwomen.org/en/trust-funds/un-trust-fund-to-end-violence-against-women
Background
The United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) is the only global, multilateral, inter-agency grant-making mechanism exclusively focused on ending violence against women and girls. Established by General Assembly resolution 50/166 in 1996 and managed by UN-Women, the Fund provides vital resources to civil society and women's rights organizations to prevent violence against women and girls; improve access to adequate essential, multisectoral services for survivors; and support effective implementation of laws and policies.
Since its inception, the UN Trust Fund has invested over $240 million in 706 survivor-centered initiatives across 140 countries and territories, advancing Sustainable Development Goal 5 by translating global gender equality commitments into concrete action and bridging grassroots women's movements with international policy frameworks, as well as multiple other Sustainable Development Goals.
The UN Trust Fund recognizes that civil society organizations, particularly women-led and women’s rights organizations, drive the most effective and sustainable efforts to end violence against women and girls. Through dedicated flexible funding, it directly contributes to UN-Women's Strategic Plan 2022-2025, strengthening "Women's voice, leadership, and agency" (Outcome 5) and advancing "Ending violence against women and girls" (Impact 3).
By providing core support covering general operating costs, contingency planning, and staff wellbeing, the UN Trust Fund seeks to strengthen grantee partners’ organizational resilience, enabling organizations to withstand challenges, particularly in volatile environments. Its intentional intersectional approach prioritizes initiatives addressing multiple forms of discrimination, ensuring resources reach particularly marginalized women and girls. Strategically positioned within the UN ecosystem, it connects its partner organizations with UN entities, donors, and policymakers, nurturing innovation, elevating frontline voices, and catalyzing collaboration to strengthen collective knowledge and resources. Based on grantee partners’ experience addressing violence against women and girls, the UN Trust Fund also co-creates knowledge resources to inform more effective approaches across the field.
The Mid-Term Review of the 2021-2025 Strategic Plan (MTR),[1] published in 2024, reaffirmed that the UN Trust Fund has a unique role in providing long-term, flexible funding to grassroots and women’s rights organizations, in particular those operating in high-risk and crisis settings. It emphasized that the UN Trust Fund provides excellent value for money and lives up to its ambition of being more than a traditional donor. The MTR also found that stronger communication efforts were needed to mor effectively convey the UN Trust Fund’s distinctive and strategic role as well as to ensure the achievements of grantee partners were fully recognized and amplified.
[1] Mid-Term Review of the UN Trust Fund Strategic Plan 2021-2025 (UN Women, 2024)
Areas of Focus
The UN Trust Fund’s priority areas of focus include:
- Improving access to essential specialist, safe and adequate services, including access to justice, for survivors for those at risk of violence.
- Transforming social norms, a key factor in preventing violence against women and girls.
- Ensuring more effective legislation, policies and national action plans that are shaped by women and girls in decision-making processes.
Resources
UN Trust Fund website: http://untf.unwomen.org/en
UN Trust Fund Learning hub, including practice-based knowledge products, strategic assessments, and evaluations: https://untf.unwomen.org/en/learning-hub
UN Trust Fund publications: http://untf.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications
Supporting legislative and policy development is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025, reflecting the critical importance of effective legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to ens
View MoreSupporting legislative and policy development is a core strategic priority of the UN Trust Fund, and one of the three outcome areas in its Strategic Plan 2021-2025, reflecting the critical importance of effective legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to ensure survivors of violence have access to justice services and protection under fully implemented laws and policies.
As such, between 2021 and 2024, an average of 46% of initiatives supported by the UN Trust Fund per year included strategies to increase effectiveness of legislation, policies, national action plans and accountability systems to end violence against women and girls.
Between 2021 and 2024, the UN Trust Fund supported 11,904 institutional partners that had increased capacities to develop or implement national and/or local multisectoral strategics, policies and-/or action plans to end violence against women and girls. In total 4,217 local, subnational or national government institutions worldwide increased capacities to design and implement institutional reforms, strategies and /or policies to prevent or respond to violence women and girls.
For example, in Kenya in early 2022, the Centre for Rights Education and Awareness (CREAW) supported Isiolo County, one of its project sites, to officially launch its own gender policy to guide the mainstreaming of policies and processes to address VAW/G. The policy was drafted by CREAW and the Kenya Women Parliamentarians Association. CREAW also teamed up with local women’s rights groups to advocate for the policy’s adoption. The policy set out specific information on how the County Government can mainstream gender in all county functions to address a number of issues, including public participation and the representation of women and girls in all sectors; economic funds and equal opportunities for women; and a mechanism for gender-based violence prevention and response (such as safety nets, shelters and economic justice).
In four regions of Argentina, a project led by the organization FUSA para la Salud Integral con Perspectiva de Género y Derechos Asociación Civil, funded by the UN Trust Fund, has formed an interdisciplinary workgroup to develop policy proposals and strategies to change local laws and policies on violence against women and girls with disabilities so that they adhere to international human rights standards. The organizers of the project are also engaging with and providing training for organizations that advocate for the rights of people with disabilities; thus far, 24 women and girls from such organizations have received training on the rights of women and girls with disabilities and acquired the tools necessary to share what they have learned with a wider audience. Preliminary agreements have been reached with health centres to expand the services they offer, and revised protocols are being reviewed by the ethics committees of those health centres.
Women with mental disabilities held in Serbia’s institutions often suffer multiple forms of violence. A recent study by Mental Disability Rights Initiative-Serbia (MDRI-S) uncovered multiple forms of violence, including forced medical treatment such as the administration of contraceptives without informed consent, and forced abortions and sterilization.
The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women is supporting a project run by MDRI-S, a not-for-profit organization that advocates for the rights of women with mental disabilities, with a small grant. MDRI-S is the first organization in Serbia bringing the lives and narratives of women with mental disabilities living in custodial institutions to the attention of the public. MDRI-S advocates for the deinstitutionalization of people with mental disabilities and for the model of living in residential assisted living centers, while at the same time it invests in improving conditions of women still living in custodial institutions by sensitizing service providers to women’s needs.
MDRI-S has brought together numerous policy makers from government, parliament and independent bodies such as the Ombudsman and Commissioner for Equality, to present the findings of their research and recommendations for change. MDRI-S has so far trained 60 service providers on how to address violence against women with mental disabilities in custodial institutions. By involving policy makers and service providers, MDRI-S is ensuring that those working directly with women with mental disabilities are sensitized to have the information needed to prevent abuse from occurring, and encourages policy makers to become advocates and actors for deinstitutionalization.