Case Study: The UN Trust Fund's reach in 2018

 

“Through the programme, I started to value myself more and found the courage to talk to my husband about our problems. I told my husband that as a woman, I also have dignity and value and that he should treat me with respect, like I do with him”, said María Calcá from Popabaj, in Guatemala, a participant in a project from the Women’s Justice Initiative.

In 2018, a total of 7,885,356 people including women and girls, men and boys, government officials and the general public, were reached by UN Trust Fund grantee projects. Through 125 projects in 70 countries and territories, grantees changed the lives of at least 384,823 women and girls including 29,979 survivors of violence.

The UN Trust Fund’s targeted approach ensures that projects reach underserved women and girls and leaves no one behind. This approach included the launch of a special window to prevent and end violence against women and girls living with disabilities as part of its call for proposals in 2018. The Fund had already been funding these projects and reached at least 1,530 women and girls living with disabilities last year.

In addition, the UN Trust Fund’s supported projects enabled 22,383 women and girls to reach specialist support services to end violence against women and girls. Noting the importance to ensure essential services for survivors, grantees supported 4,160 services providers to improve their service provision for survivors of violence. This is a representative snapshot of survivors reached and providers trained during one year, however the scope of the impact of the UN Trust Fund’s investment spans multiple years.  

For instance, one project in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, implemented by UN Trust Fund grantee Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) addresses gaps in medical and legal processes for survivors of sexual violence. The project reached an estimated 83,107 survivors of violence through the work of the 1,011 service providers who have been trained by PHR as part of the project since 2015. A Kenyan senior magistrate, who was trained as part of the project with PHR said, “If you can bring people together and talk together then you can make changes… Before [the] PHR training we would all work independently and there was no preservation of evidence… Now I feel an enormous sense of pride when we are able to work together to achieve a conviction”.

The UN Trust Fund’s Annual Report for 2018, to be released at the end of June, will contain additional data about the reach and impact of projects supported by the UN Trust Fund.