Nairobi, Kenya// — Together with the World Health Organization (WHO), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN Women launched the RESPECT Women website, a new online one-stop platform that aims to drive concrete actions – in policies and programmes – to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls.
The website was launched during the Women Deliver Conference in Kigali, Rwanda, which took place from 17-20 July 2023 where over 6,000 delegates working on advancing gender equality gathered.
Preventing and responding to violence against women and girls continues to be a worldwide public health, gender equality and human rights priority. Globally almost 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or sexual violence in their lifetime, mostly by an intimate partner. This is a stark reminder of the scale of gender inequality and discrimination against women.
“Violence against women and girls remains one of the gravest human right violations, and has been accelerated thanks to the pandemic, conflict, climate change, and economic challenges,” stated Maxime Houinato, UN Women Regional Director for East and Southern Africa.
The RESPECT Women website outlines a set of action-oriented steps to support policy makers and programme implementers to design, plan, implement, monitor and evaluate programmes using seven strategies to prevent violence against women. RESPECT is an evidence-based framework for policy makers to strengthen and scale up efforts to prevent violence against women, building on an increasing body of evidence on what works to prevent violence against women.
Digital tools support concrete efforts to end violence against women and girls
Women Deliver 2023 coincided with the mid-way point since the Generation Equality Forum appointed UN Women and WHO as co-leads of the Action Coalition for ending gender-based violence, which continues to affect millions of women and girls around the world – with devastating impacts to their health, wellbeing and full participation in society.
The new RESPECT women website contributes towards delivering the Action Coalition’s commitments for violence prevention. The user-friendly, interactive platform provides practical support for implementing the RESPECT women framework’s seven evidence-based strategies, with briefs on how to implement successful programmes, and training and multimedia materials for advocacy.
As the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, UN Women partners with governments, UN agencies, activists, civil society organizations and other institutions to fulfill commitments to address gender-based violence in the following ways:
- UN Women supports Member States to review and reform gender discriminatory laws and policies, and to design and implement whole-of-government multisectoral coordinated national strategies to address violence against women and girls.
- Through the UN Joint Global Programme on Essential Services, UN Women works to improve the quality of, and access to, comprehensive essential services for survivors of violence, and . provides technical guidance on how to develop and implement global norms on quality multi-sectoral services and responses.
- UN Women has played a key role in developing evidence-based policy and programming guidance on prevention of violence against women and girls, guided by the RESPECT Framework. As part of its prevention strategy, UN Women focuses on early education, respectful relationships, and working with men and boys, especially through, and in, the media, sports industries, religious institutions, and the world of work.
- UN Women’s Global Database on Violence against Women provides easy access to comprehensive and up-to-date information on measures undertaken by United Nations Member States to address all forms of VAWG, and identifies effective policy responses to prevent and address violence against women and girls around the world.
- Since November 2010, UN Women has galvanized global and local partners to transform public spaces in 27 “champion” cities to ensure women’s and girls’ safety from violence and harassment in public spaces
- UN Women manages the UN Trust Fund to end VAWG, providing grants and support to women’s rights organizations and civil society organizations to design and implement interventions to end VAWG.