19/30 Report of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the activities of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women - Note by the Secretary-General

United Nations A/HRC/19/30–E/CN.6/2012/13

General Assembly Economic and Social Council

Distr.: General 12 December 2011

Original: English

11-63260 (E) 160112 *1163260*

General Assembly Economic and Social Council Human Rights Council Nineteenth session 27 February-23 March 2012 Agenda item 2 Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Secretary-General

Commission on the Status of Women Fifty-sixth session 27 February-9 March 2012 Item 3 (c) of the provisional agenda* Follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and to the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly, entitled “Women 2000: gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century”: gender mainstreaming, situations and programmatic matters

Report of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the activities of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women

Note by the Secretary-General

Summary The Secretary-General has the honour to transmit herewith to the Commission on the Status of Women and the Human Rights Council the report of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on the activities of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women, which was prepared in compliance with General Assembly resolution 50/166.

* E/CN.6/2012/1.

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Report of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women on the activities of the United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women

I. Introduction

1. The United Nations Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence against Women is a leading multilateral grant-making mechanism supporting national and local efforts of Governments and non-governmental organizations to end violence against women and girls. Established in 1996 by the General Assembly by its resolution 50/166, the Fund is administered by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women) on behalf of the United Nations system. To date, the Fund has supported 339 initiatives in 127 countries and territories, awarding more than $78.4 million in grants.

2. The present report, submitted to the Commission on the Status of Women at its fifty-sixth session and to the Human Rights Council at its nineteenth session, describes the progress and the achievements of the Fund in 2011.

II. Background and context

3. The international community is witnessing a historic opportunity to intensify progress towards ending violence against women and girls. Over the past 25 years, female life expectancy has increased, gender gaps in education have been closing and economic opportunities for women have been expanding.1 Legal reform processes in favour of women’s rights during the same period have also been significant: globally, 139 countries have included gender equality guarantees in their constitutions, with 125 countries specifically enacting laws criminalizing domestic violence.2 These laws are being reinforced at the international level by successive General Assembly and Security Council resolutions3 calling for intensified action and recommending multisectoral and sustained approaches to ending violence against women and girls.

4. As the Fund celebrates its fifteenth anniversary, it continues to be well positioned, through its investments, to capitalize on the current global momentum to end violence against women and girls. Successive General Assembly resolutions adopted as recently as in 2010 refer explicitly to the critical importance of supporting and enhancing the effectiveness of the Fund as a system-wide funding mechanism and reiterate the target, set by the Secretary-General’s campaign “UNiTE to End Violence against Women”, of raising $100 million annually in grant- making for the Fund by 2015. This $100 million benchmark is linked to the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, highlighting the importance of ending violence against women and girls for the achievement of the Goals.

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1 See World Development Report 2012: Gender Equality and Development. Washington, D.C.: World Bank.

2 See In Pursuit of Justice: Progress of the World’s Women 2011-2012. New York: UN-Women. 3 General Assembly resolutions 61/143, 62/133, 63/155 and 64/137 and Security Council

resolutions 1820 (2008) and 1888 (2009).

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5. Guided by a strategic plan for 2010-2015 entitled “Vision 2015”, the Fund is focusing on three main priorities: turning policy pledges into reality for women and girls, generating knowledge on what works in ending the pandemic of violence against women and girls, and building new partnerships, ownership and expanded commitment with respect to the Fund throughout the United Nations system and beyond. Paragraphs 6 to 36 below summarize the progress made by the Fund in 2011 towards the realization of these priorities.

III. Translating promise into practice

6. Since its inception, the Fund has been a key global mechanism for transforming Government pledges to end violence against women into concrete budgetary and policy commitments by enhancing the quality and increasing the quantity of support available for the on-the-ground implementation of effective programmes.

7. By the end of 2011, the Fund had a portfolio of 96 active grants, covering 86 countries and territories, with a total value of more than $61 million. The Africa region had the largest portfolio (32 per cent), followed by Asia and the Pacific (25 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (19 per cent), and Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (12 per cent). The Arab States region had the smallest portfolio (5 per cent), and cross-regional programmes accounted for 7 per cent of the entire portfolio. The Fund supports 12 United Nations country team programmes, awarding $10.8 million in grants to support vital initiatives to prevent and address violence against women and girls. The United Nations Population Fund is the lead agency for six programmes, UN-Women is the lead agency for four programmes, and the United Nations Development Programme and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean are the lead agencies for one programme each.

8. In order to address the serious gaps in moving from commitment to action to end violence against women and girls, the grant-making of the Fund has strategically focused on supporting the implementation of laws, policies and action plans. Initiatives that engage multiple sectors and encourage partnerships among key stakeholders are prioritized. As described below, active grantees supported by the Fund in 2011 are promoting primary prevention, expanding services to survivors of violence and building the institutional capacities of first responders. The Fund places a special emphasis on programmes addressing the intersection of violence against women and HIV/AIDS and on those benefiting women in conflict, post- conflict and transitional societies. Programmes supported by the Fund typically work across sectors reaching particularly vulnerable populations, including rural women, adolescent girls and indigenous communities.

9. Investments of the Fund are yielding promising results in terms of ending violence against women and girls. Recognizing the success of these initiatives, Governments, United Nations agencies, the private sector and civil society organizations are increasingly scaling up and replicating grantees’ projects in order to maximize the effectiveness of their interventions. In 2011, the Ministries of Justice and Health of Chile supported the replication of a manual developed by the local implementing partner of Fund grantee Instituto Promundo, adopting it nationwide to further the Government’s efforts to engage young men in ending

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violence against women and girls. The Americas and Caribbean Regional Office of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), in Panama, also adopted components of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies social marketing campaign and intervention model relating to child sexual abuse, incest and HIV, incorporating them into its programmes. Similarly, investigative research on violence against women and HIV/AIDS conducted on the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic by Fund grantee Colectiva Mujer y Salud is being targeted for replication by a multinational company on the border between the United States of America and Mexico. In addition, a specialized training manual developed by Oxfam Great Britain and KAFA on how to engage men and boys in prevention is being used by 60 non-governmental organizations across the region.

10. Increasingly, the activities and programme models of Fund grantees are being recognized globally as a best practice in addressing violence against women and girls. In July 2011, the social media efforts of the international human rights organization Breakthrough in the “Bell Bajao” (“Ring the Bell”) multimedia campaign were acknowledged by the India office of the Tactical Technology Collective as worthy of a case study on effective advocacy. This acknowledgement was based on the comprehensive and innovative ways in which the grantee used media and grass-roots community mobilization to reduce violence and stigma against women living with HIV/AIDS. In addition, the Child Helpline of Maldives, set up by the Ministry of Gender and Family, a Fund grantee, was identified by Child Helpline International as a best practice for its model of partnership between telecommunications companies and non-governmental organizations and its active engagement with children in setting up the helpline.

Primary prevention

11. Recognizing that the short- and long-term effects of violence against women are devastating to societies and that violence should never occur in the first place, the Fund supports sustained long-term initiatives that target the root causes of violence. Many Fund grantees focus their efforts and resources on preventing the “ripple effects” of violence that compromise the social development of children, families, communities and societies as a whole. These interventions are engaging not only men and boys in prevention, but also entire villages, districts and communities in efforts to prevent violence before it occurs.

12. With support from the Fund, Youth Star Cambodia is implementing a pilot project that engages youth in gender-based violence prevention by encouraging university graduates to volunteer their services in 20 rural districts across the country in order to raise awareness about the equal rights of women and men and to formulate local action plans to combat domestic and other forms of gender-based violence. Equality Now and its local implementing partners in Zambia are establishing boys’ networks in five schools, with approximately 100 members each, to challenge stereotypes that condone sexual violence against girls. These boys’ networks are actively engaging with media to talk about their efforts, developing more than a dozen radio programmes on ending sexual violence against girls. In Trinidad and Tobago, the Institute for Gender and Development Studies is addressing the persistent divide in responses to sexual violence, child abuse and HIV/AIDS and gathering critical data on HIV infections among girl survivors of sexual violence. Youth-friendly workshops engaging more than 400 primary- and secondary-school children throughout Trinidad and Tobago have provided children

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with vital information on child sexual abuse, incest and implications in terms of HIV. In 2011, the grantee’s intervention model and policy recommendations were adopted at the national level by the Ministry of the People and Social Development as part of the Government’s efforts to revise and improve its policies on child sexual abuse and incest.

13. Grantees of the Fund in such countries as Bosnia and Herzegovina and Peru are using strategies to empower women and girls facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, implementing programmes that holistically address the entrenched inequalities that contribute to violence. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rights for All is building the capacity of Roma women to gain access to justice and influence decision-making processes by delivering paralegal support to nearly 100 survivors of violence and nurturing a cadre of 12 Roma women leaders. This Fund grantee has helped to bring about, for the first time in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a dialogue with State institutions on the status of Roma women in society. In Peru, Asociación de Comunicadores Sociales Calandria is training indigenous and Afro-descendant young people to serve as leaders in an anti-violence movement, empowering them to directly engage local and regional governments in implementing an action plan for the rights of adolescents in the city of Piura. This grantee has engaged nearly 90 public officials in indigenous regions in its efforts, ensuring that the unique intercultural model of violence prevention that it established is systematically integrated at the local level, where it will have the most impact on the everyday lives of community members.

Expanding access to support services for survivors

14. The Fund supports coordinated, holistic and multisectoral responses that address the interrelated needs of survivors of violence, including health, psychosocial support, legal representation, employment and training opportunities.

15. In all regions, the Fund supports projects that are focused on empowering and building the protective assets of adolescent girls through the provision of vital services. In Tajikistan, the Child Rights Centre is filling a critical gap in support services for girls between the ages of 10 and 18 who have been affected by, or are at risk of, sexual exploitation, early marriage and trafficking. In an effort to strengthen the capacity of the existing child protection system, the grantee has established a referral network of 10 regional non-governmental organizations in local districts across Tajikistan. In only three months, more than 330 girls were provided with assistance, demonstrating a dramatic increase in service delivery to this target group. In Bolivia, Asociación Cuna is piloting a unique 24-hour mobile programme of violence prevention, intervention, reintegration and empowerment services for adolescent girls living on the streets in the country’s most crime-ridden cities. Working as part of a network of 16 Government and non-governmental institutions in the city of El Alto advocating for the rights of at-risk girls, this grantee has drafted and submitted to the Bolivian legislature a number of bills aimed at preventing violence against this vulnerable population.

16. Through a grant from the Fund, Acid Survivors Trust International is implementing a comprehensive strategy to end acid burn violence against women in Cambodia, Nepal and Uganda. In order to improve access to rehabilitative services for survivors, local implementing partners have developed a unique central database

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to track incidents of acid and other forms of burn violence, identifying the causes, the degree of injury, the region of the attack and the age of the victim.

17. Service delivery to violence survivors living in conflict, post-conflict and unstable situations poses a complex set of challenges, requiring creative interventions. In Sierra Leone, with support from the Fund, the National Commission for Social Action is implementing one of the first-ever reparations initiatives in the country specifically for sexual violence survivors. The project is promoting accountability for gender-specific crimes in conflict and is serving as a model for gender-sensitive post-conflict reparations. In Liberia, ActionAid is enhancing the coordination, at the community and county levels, of the efforts of protection actors in River Gee and Grand Gedeh counties and has been instrumental in encouraging joint support, monitoring and follow-up with respect to cases of violence against women and girls.

Securing budgetary and policy commitments for implementation

18. The Fund supports projects that fill critical gaps in the implementation of laws and policies addressing violence against women, ranging from standardized data collection to political advocacy to the development of the capacities of Government officials and other stakeholders charged with the implementation and enforcement of laws.

19. Nearly all grantees of the Fund are working to strengthen the institutional and professional capacities of those tasked with the implementation of laws, policies and action plans to end violence against women. In Suriname, the Ilse Henar Foundation for Women’s Rights, together with the Government, the private sector and trade unions, is piloting a model for addressing sexual harassment in the workplace. This Fund grantee developed a first-of-its-kind code of conduct that is being implemented in 10 companies in the capital region. The response by the private sector has been so favourable that some companies have made it mandatory for all their employees to attend the sexual harassment awareness-raising sessions organized as part of the implementation process. The grantee’s efforts have also created a ripple effect, empowering members of the Surinam Airways trade union to introduce into the union’s collective bargaining document a clause on preventive measures regarding sexual harassment in the workplace.

20. Fund grantees are also working to build the understanding of key Government actors with regard to the links between violence against women and HIV/AIDS as well as their capacity to address those twin pandemics. In the Dominican Republic, for example, Colectiva Mujer y Salud is working in five border provinces to raise public awareness about preventing HIV and gender-based violence and to build the capacity of local authorities managing both issues. By actively participating in the national commission for the review of the HIV/AIDS law, the grantee has also helped to inform the current revision of the law, ensuring that it explicitly acknowledges the connection between violence against women and HIV/AIDS.

21. Other grantees of the Fund are focused on the enforcement of laws that address violence against women through the strengthening of judicial systems and the improvement of access to justice for survivors of violence. The International Association of Women Judges, in partnership with the Zambia Association of Women Judges, has trained more than 80 rural magistrates and 30 judges in Zambia on the rights of women and girls and on how to create victim-friendly courts. The

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training sessions have resulted in the establishment of essential “feedback loops” between magistrates, judges, forensic doctors and other law enforcement personnel. These loops have been critical in helping these officials to better evaluate the testimony of child witnesses, to understand the issue of corroboration in child sexual assault cases, to determine what evidence is required for the conviction of perpetrators, and to be more sensitive to the needs of victims.

IV. Generating knowledge and developing capacities

22. The Fund recognizes that knowledge is most significant when it is shared with and directly reaches beneficiaries, expanding their opportunities to protect themselves from violence. The Fund is breaking the monopoly of knowledge by bridging feedback gaps and connecting technology to the individual needs of women and girls. For example, the Fund is supporting the efforts of Physicians for Human Rights to develop, pilot and introduce to forensic experts in five Central and East African countries mobile telephone applications that will enable health professionals in remote areas to photograph forensic evidence of sexual violence and securely transmit the images as text messages to hospitals, courts and police stations in urban centres. Such efforts are critical to ensuring successful rape prosecutions and ending impunity for these crimes.

23. Similarly, Women in Cities International is identifying and mapping the geography of public gender exclusion across four cities, in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and South Asia. By applying the Geographic Information System (GIS), this Fund grantee is able to map both the use and the users of public spaces and to collect data on the state of women’s safety in the target cities. The project has already achieved impressive outcomes. For example, research sponsored by the Women in Cities International programme in the United Republic of Tanzania that determined that the lack of a police presence had a negative impact on women’s experiences concerning safety in the capital resulted in the mobilization of resources by the private sector for the construction of a new police station. Given that the project is being carried out in four cities on four continents, it provides an unprecedented opportunity for both cross-cultural learning and the expansion of the global body of knowledge about the factors that cause the denial of women’s rights in cities.

24. Grantees are increasingly creating systems and tools for the protection of women and sharing them with survivors and women at risk of violence. In Guatemala, the Population Council is implementing a first-of-its-kind gender-based violence prevention project to “safescape” rural indigenous communities, using community safety mapping methodology not only to provide a baseline and situation analysis, but also to track changes in girls’ perceptions of safety. The project has provided Global Positioning System devices to adolescent girls in the target sites to enable them to create maps of their communities (every household, building and route) documenting where they feel safe and where they feel at risk. The project also empowers these girls to share the maps with community leaders, making their concerns visible.

25. Fund grantees are filling the critical gap, in terms of both knowledge and rigorous evaluation, in addressing violence against women. For example, a new grantee in Kenya, Liverpool VCT, Care and Treatment, will develop national

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gender-based violence indicators and collect cross-sectoral data on the implementation of the Sexual Offences Act. In India and Bangladesh, the Fair Wear Foundation is working to eliminate harassment and violence against women in textile export factories by conducting audits of 10 factories using the organization’s existing International Labour Organization-based verification audit methodology.

26. In 2011, the Fund intensified its efforts and investments in order to develop the capacities of grantees to conduct effective monitoring and evaluation and to improve the Fund’s overall processes for capturing and disseminating knowledge. The Fund provided technical feedback to grantees, beginning with the proposal development phase and continuing with assistance in developing and implementing grantees’ monitoring and evaluation plans. As in previous years, the 2011 Call for Proposals for the sixteenth grant-making cycle recommended that applicants dedicate 10 per cent of grants requested to evaluation and an additional 2 to 5 per cent to monitoring. In 2011, the Fund secretariat conducted monitoring visits to 13 grantees in seven countries, in addition to the regular monitoring by focal points for the Fund at the subregional offices of UN-Women. These field visits involved meetings with a range of grantees and stakeholders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Liberia and Thailand.

27. Closing the gaps in grantees’ capacity to design and implement programmes and knowledge regarding what works in ending violence against women is central to the Fund’s mandate, as described in the monitoring, evaluation and knowledge management framework for the period 2008-2011. In 2011, the Fund institutionalized capacity development training for recently funded grantees on evidence-based programme design, monitoring and evaluation. The Fund held two skills-building workshops, in Bangkok and New York, for new and current grantees, reaching a total of 18 organizations.4 In addition to holding its annual skills- building workshops, the Fund organized a three-day workshop tailored to meet the specific monitoring and evaluation needs of new grantees working to address the intersection of violence against women and HIV. The workshop enabled grantees to identify common outcomes of projects; to develop a system for communication and collaboration between grantees; and to share tools, resources and information in the context of HIV/AIDS and violence against women. Grantees responded enthusiastically to the Fund’s capacity-development training and have begun to integrate evidence-based research, monitoring and evaluation tools into their existing programmes.

28. In 2011, in order to further decrease the evaluation and knowledge gap as set out in its strategic vision, the Fund commissioned a study to map all the outcomes in the field of violence against women that had been influenced by grantees from grant-making cycles 10 to 14. A team of experts “harvested” outcomes from a total of 80 grantees implementing projects in 73 countries. This outcome-mapping process provided an unprecedented opportunity to generate knowledge (concerning trends, patterns and gaps) on where investments were proving most effective and on

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4 A five-day regional workshop was held in Bangkok from 2 to 6 May 2011 for grantees, primarily from the Asia and Pacific and Arab States regions. There were more than 34 participants, including representation from 10 grantee organizations and United Nations country teams. In New York, the Fund held a three-day pre-implementation workshop on HIV and violence against women from 7 to 9 September 2011, engaging 39 participants from eight grantee organizations, in addition to UN-Women subregional focal points and a range of international experts on the intersection of violence against women and HIV.

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how the Fund could further best practices in the field. This was the first time that the outcome-mapping methodology had been used specifically to analyse outcomes related to violence against women and girls. According to the study, the Fund’s influence was not heavily concentrated in a few areas, but spread out across its objectives and priorities, as well as across regions. The study found that the Fund was supporting the right types of grants and approaches to addressing violence against women and girls. The outcomes suggest that the Fund should continue to support organizations and Governments at the local, provincial and national levels with methods, strategies and models that are innovative as well as those that are known to work. The report was made publicly available late in 2011.5

29. In an effort to widen the platform of public engagement on violence against women, the Fund invested in a series of communications products, social media and short films that increased the visibility of grantee programming in a number of critical areas. In 2011, the Fund produced video testimonials of women and community members benefiting from grantee interventions in Cambodia, Guatemala and Liberia. The videos will constitute an important addition to the Fund’s library of multimedia products that tell the stories of women and girl survivors of violence, and that profile champions taking action against those human rights violations. The compelling short videos, photo library and narrative stories have proved to be significant advocacy, awareness-raising and resource mobilization tools for the Fund.

V. Building new partnerships, ownership and expanded commitment

30. The Fund is founded on United Nations partnerships and is working to increase ownership of the Fund across the United Nations system. A key platform for enhancing these synergies is the inter-agency Programme Advisory Committee, comprising United Nations agencies at the global and subregional levels. This entity advises the Fund on strategic decisions and grant-making issues. In particular, the subregional inter-agency programme advisory committees permit the establishment of links to existing United Nations efforts and national priorities. This decentralized and broadly participatory structure ensures that funding allocations closely match the capacities and needs of diverse countries and regions, thereby promoting the overall relevance of the Fund to national priorities and context.

31. In 2011, participating United Nations agencies at the global and subregional levels included the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the International Labour Organization, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the Global Coalition on Women and AIDS of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UN-Women, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, United Nations

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5 The complete Outcome Mapping Report is available from http://www.unwomen.org/ publications/mapping-of-grantees-outcomes-the-united-trust-fund-to-end-violence-against- women-2006-to-mid-2011/.

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Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and the United Nations Population Fund. The Programme Advisory Committee met a total of four times at the global and subregional levels to provide critical expertise and guidance in shaping the Fund’s strategic plan for the period 2010-2015. In 2011, a total of 18 meetings of the programme advisory committees were convened at the global and subregional levels in 16 countries.

32. The Fund has continued its close collaboration with a range of foundations and funds focused on the empowerment of women, forming a partnership for the first time with the Trust Fund for Victims, established under the Statute of the International Criminal Court to implement Court-ordered reparations and provide victims and their families with material assistance and psychosocial support. This relationship will provide a platform for sharing experiences and knowledge on best practices from the Fund’s active grantees working to address conflict-related violence against women, and will be instrumental as the Fund operationalizes a new “special focus area” on addressing violence against women and girls in conflict, post-conflict and transitional settings.

33. The Fund continued to support the mandates of various United Nations mechanisms, including OHCHR and the special procedures mechanism established by the Human Rights Council. The country offices of OHCHR will work closely with grantees on the ground to ensure that a human rights perspective is effectively integrated into project implementation at every stage. Furthermore, the Fund’s annual Call for Proposals specifically solicits proposals from organizations working to address serious gaps in the implementation of recommendations to end violence against women made by the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences. The Fund actively engaged the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict during the development of the new special focus area on women and armed conflict, and will continue to engage her Office as this new group of grantees begin the implementation of their projects. By funding programmes addressing violence against women in conflict, post-conflict and transitional settings, the Fund also aims to support the Secretary-General’s “UNiTE” campaign by targeting one of its five key outcomes: addressing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations.

34. The Fund’s strategic plan emphasizes outreach across public and private sectors in order to leverage resources and partnerships for the Fund’s long-term sustainability. With that mind, the Fund hosted several high-level events in 2011. In November, the Fund celebrated its fifteenth anniversary in an event, hosted by the Secretary-General’s “UNiTE” campaign, commemorating the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The theme of the event focused on the role of young people in addressing violence against women and girls. Showcasing the investment of the Fund in this area, representatives of partner organizations in Lebanon and Guatemala made presentations about their work. Also at the event, the Secretary-General announced the sixteenth Call for Proposals. In collaboration with the Office of the Executive Director of UN-Women, the Fund hosted a special donor event in December 2011 to present the findings contained in the outcome-mapping report to Member States and private-sector donors in order to urge them not only to continue, but to increase their contributions to the Fund.

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35. In 2011, the Fund developed and began to implement a fund-raising strategy to meet the Secretary-General’s challenge, as part of the “UNiTE” campaign, to raise $100 million for distribution in grant-making in 2015. For grants awarded in 2011 to complete the fifteenth grant-making cycle, the Fund benefited from the generous support of the Governments of Spain (lead donor), Australia, Austria, Finland, Iceland, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. In 2011, the Government of Germany also made a multi-year contribution for the first time in the history of the Fund.

36. Recognizing that the private sector has a critical role to play in ending violence against women and girls, the Fund is expanding its partnerships with companies interested in the activities of partner organizations. In 2011, Johnson and Johnson continued to be the lead private-sector partner of the Fund. It has supported the partnership designed to bolster knowledge and learning about the intersection of HIV/AIDS and violence against women, with a special focus on the capacity- building of grantees. In addition, the MAC AIDS Fund has contributed to the Fund for the first time to support a capacity-building workshop for new HIV/violence against women cohort grantees. The United Nations Federal Credit Union hosted a second fund-raising event for the Fund in December 2011. The Credit Union, one of the Fund’s private-sector donors, engaged its membership by launching a matching donation challenge, with all proceeds benefiting grantee programmes. The non-profit organization Zonta International contributed to the Fund for the seventh consecutive year. The Fund was also supported by the UN-Women National Committees in Iceland, Japan, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Canada, in addition to contributions from individual donors.

VI. Grant-making cycle 2011

37. Fund grants are awarded annually in an open, competitive and transparent process that ensures high-quality programming and rigour in the selection of grantees. The Call for Proposals invites holistic initiatives that focus on reaching particularly excluded or disadvantaged groups through approaches tailored to diverse needs. Priority is placed on applications that highlight multisectoral approaches and collaboration among various stakeholders, evidence of what works to optimize the use of resources, and investment in systematic and comprehensive documentation and evaluation aimed at generating and sharing knowledge. Through its grant-making process, the Fund channels global expertise and resources to the local level, where they are needed most. It also highlights the potential for the scaling-up of successful initiatives, while emphasizing the development of national capacities to foster sustainability.

Analysis of applications

38. In 2011, a total of 2,572 concept notes were received, requesting a total of $1.2 billion. This compares with a total of 1,643 concept notes received in 2010, requesting a total of $857 million, reflecting increases of 56 per cent in the number of applications and 38 per cent in the amount of funds requested in just one year. In 2011, the highest number of concept notes and the greatest amount of funds requested came from Africa (35 per cent), followed by Latin America and the Caribbean (29 per cent) and Asia and the Pacific (21 per cent). Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, Arab States and cross-

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regional programmes represented 6, 5 and 2 per cent, respectively, in terms of funds requested. In all regions, most concept notes came from women’s organizations and other non-governmental organizations (86 per cent), followed by governmental organizations (6 per cent) and United Nations country teams (2 per cent).

Grants awarded

39. In 2011, the Fund awarded $17.1 million in new grants to 22 initiatives in 34 countries. Africa was awarded the greatest amount of funds (40 per cent), followed by Asia and the Pacific (25 per cent), Latin America and the Caribbean (19 per cent), Arab States (6 per cent) and Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (5 per cent). A total of 5 per cent of the Fund’s grants for 2011 were awarded to cross-regional projects. For the first time, organizations in Iraq and South Sudan received funding. The majority of new grantees included women’s organizations and other non-governmental organizations (81 per cent), followed by governmental organizations (14 per cent) and United Nations country teams (5 per cent). Grants distributed in the fifteenth grant-making cycle are expected to reach more than 6 million beneficiaries and approximately 4 million primary beneficiaries and 2 million secondary beneficiaries.

Highlights of new grants

40. New grantees continue to work in the thematic and priority areas supported by the Fund, with some grantees partnering with and building on the achievements of past Fund grantees and others charting the road map for new approaches and learning in the field. Examples include the following:

(a) Building safe public spaces and work environments for women is a priority of two new grantees. In Peru, the municipal government of Lima, headed by a female mayor for the first time, will work to rid the city of discrimination and violence through effective gender budgeting and consolidated planning to ensure that the city’s approach to gender-based violence is in line with national and international standards and appropriately funded. City health and justice officials will be trained to support survivors of abuse, and male perpetrators will be engaged through transformative training to prevent further violence. The Fair Wear Foundation will establish systems to address workplace violence not only by working with garment factories and their employees in Bangladesh and India, but also by engaging, for the first time, the European companies outsourcing to them;

(b) The cross-regional programme “Pop culture with a purpose: global partnership on edutainment media for social change” will scale up two earlier initiatives carried out by grantees supported by the Fund, Breakthrough (India) and Puntos de Encuentro (Nicaragua), and implement them in 12 other countries, tapping into the experience, knowledge and expertise of previous partners and bringing them in as resource organizations for the programme. The project will challenge the idea that violence against women is normal and inevitable, through innovative mass communication with positive and locally specific content;

(c) Seven new grantees will constitute a second cohort addressing the intersection of violence against women and HIV/AIDS, implementing vital projects in India, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Ukraine. In 2011, the Fund awarded $6.2 million in support of these efforts. While scaling up lessons learned from the previous cohort initiative jointly undertaken by Johnson

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and Johnson and the Fund, these organizations will continue building the evidence base with regard to what works in addressing the twin pandemics of violence against women and HIV/AIDS. For example, in Malawi the Coalition of Women Living with HIV and AIDS will pilot a programme aimed at training women to serve as paralegals in violence cases, mobilizing communities to criminalize marital rape, and upscaling existing support for women living with HIV. Likewise, the Ukrainian Foundation for Public Health will provide high-quality health and legal services for survivors currently excluded or marginalized by the State, including women living on the streets or living with HIV/AIDS;

(d) The Fund is supporting five new projects in conflict and post-conflict settings in 2011, awarding close to $4 million to these vital initiatives and, for the first time, providing grants to projects in Iraq and South Sudan. In newly independent South Sudan, the American Refugee Committee will assist the Government in developing guidelines for the clinical management of rape survivors and a secure information management system for the collection of timely data on incidents of violence. With support from the Fund, Physicians for Human Rights will train forensic experts in five East and Central African countries in which the International Criminal Court is currently investigating rape as a war crime, with the aim of developing a functioning medico-legal system. In Sierra Leone, the International Rescue Committee will ensure access to justice for survivors of violence through piloted mobile legal clinics, the training of justice officials and community mobilization. In Cambodia, the Victims Support Section of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia will secure the successful prosecution of forced marriage and other gender-based crimes committed under the Khmer Rouge, by empowering survivors to participate actively in legal proceedings. In Iraq, International Medical Corps will facilitate survivor access to vital health and justice services, supporting key ministries and raising awareness about gender- based violence through multimedia outreach.

VII. The way forward

41. Moving into its sixteenth year, the Fund will continue to support high-quality, evidence-based programmes that achieve targeted results with maximum impact. In accordance with the strategic direction set forth in “Vision 2015”, the Fund will enhance its processes for collecting and disseminating knowledge about what works in ending violence against women. With a view to facilitating cross-learning, the Fund will create multiple global platforms for connecting grantees using similar strategies or interventions.

42. The Fund will continue, through its annual Call for Proposals, to award grants to projects aimed at closing the gap with regard to the implementation of national and local laws, policies and action plans that address violence against women. However, in order to further advance the Fund’s strategic plan, which foresees the gradual launching of special funding categories, the 2011 Call for Proposals notably included a special focus area on addressing violence against women in conflict, post-conflict and transitional societies. The Fund intends to utilize this special thematic focus area as an opportunity to harness the historic mobilization of multiple stakeholders for collective action to address conflict-related violence against women and girls. Through this special focus area, the Fund will be not only filling a critical gap in financing for women’s and girls’ post-conflict needs, but also

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providing sustained visibility to the issue. The new focus area will also enable the Fund to form an expanded and vibrant network of partners with experience in fragile conflict and post-conflict rehabilitation settings that will pool their resources and talent bases in order to help end violence against women and girls. In addition, the special focus area will further support the Secretary-General’s “UNiTE” campaign by targeting one of its five key outcomes: addressing sexual violence in conflict and post-conflict situations. The Fund will also complement the policy and coordination work of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict and United Nations Action against Sexual Violence in Conflict, by strengthening existing mechanisms on the ground through the provision of funds to organizations and institutions working to address this issue. As this new cohort of grantees begin project implementation in 2012, the Fund will tap into existing inter-agency networks operating in emergency situations, creating synergies with United Nations agencies at the field level, including the Department of Peacekeeping Operations.

43. As part of an ongoing effort to determine where investments are proving to be most effective, the Fund will continue to extract results from the outcome-mapping process and the supporting database. In 2012, the Fund will systematically collect data on the “multiplier effects” of the prevention programmes that it directly supports, in order to analyse how those efforts lead to results beyond the prevention of violence against women and girls, that is, how changes in attitudes, norms and behaviour result in better services for women in terms of both quality and quantity. In the light of the report’s findings in this area, the Fund will explore ways to develop a more standardized approach to primary prevention across grantees.

44. In terms of grantees addressing the intersection of violence against women and HIV/AIDS, the Fund will continue to provide specialized technical assistance to partners throughout the project implementation period in order to establish standard outcomes, set baselines and integrate monitoring and evaluation into their programmes as an integral component. In 2012, a paper will be published on the lessons learned from the first cohort of grantees working in this area in order to extract promising practices that have emerged from this cutting-edge learning initiative. The Fund considers not only the documentation of lessons learned, but also, and more important, the upscaling of proven approaches and best practices in addressing these twin pandemics as a funding priority. As the Fund matures, it will emphasize the discovery of particular models and approaches that are worth scaling up across its programmes.

45. Given the number of grantees currently using technology ranging from the Geographic Information System to mobile telephone applications as tools for preventing violence against women and girls, the Fund will connect those partners with national and international technology companies in 2012 in order to begin a conversation about how these local efforts can be upscaled and integrated across municipalities and districts in the target country.

46. In 2012, the Fund will launch a state-of-the-art online grant management system in order to capture and track grantees’ results more efficiently and make them more accessible to a global audience. The system will also allow for a better flow of information between the Fund secretariat in New York and the focal points in the subregional offices of UN-Women. In addition, it will allow for more efficient implementation of the Fund’s monitoring and evaluation plan. The grant

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management system will include an online database to facilitate results-based reporting and analysis across grants, to identify and manage risks, and to monitor progress in terms of results achieved and resources involved.