United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women

DAW, now part of UN Women, prepared reports of the Secretary-General to the sixty-third session of the General Assembly on intensification of efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women (A/63/214), trafficking in women and girls (A/63/215), and eliminating rape and other forms of sexual violence in all their manifestations, including in conflict and related situations (A/63/216). Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, provided legislative reform support to the Alliance on the elimination of violence against women in Pakistan; and support to the Regional Rights Training Team and UNDP in advocating for the passage of sexual and gender-based violence bills in Fiji and Vanuatu. Hide

DAW, now part of UN Women, co-sponsored, together with the Permanent Missions of Canada and of Finland to the United Nations, the presentation of the book "Violence against Women: An International Perspective" which presents comparative results for nine of the countries which have implemented the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS). Hide

UNIFEM, now part of UN Women, through its gender-responsive budgeting programme in South East Europe, supported civil society, which led to increased regional and municipal budget allocations in 2008 for domestic violence shelters in Bosnia and Herzegovina and amendments to the domestic violence law to ensure co-financing for shelter operations. Hide

In February 2008, UN-INSTRAW, now part of UN Women, in collaboration with the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces (DCAF) and the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), published the Gender and Security Reform Toolkit that aim to support gender mainstreaming; the participation of women in the security sector; the capacity-building of the security sector to respond to violence against women. The toolkit includes 12 tools and corresponding practice notes on gender and police reform, gender and border management, gender and justice reform, and gender training for security personnel, among other topics. The Gender and SSR Toolkit was launched during the fifty-second session of the Commission on the Status of Women. Advocacy is being carried out among Member States and other stakeholders to encourage the use of the toolkit in ongoing security sector reform processes. Hide

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