Prevention Series

Learning from Practice: Lessons on preventing violence from civil society organizations funded by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women

Girls participating in AMREF, a project working to end Female Genital Mutilation, in Tanzania
Women and girls participating in AMREF, a project working to end Female Genital Mutilation, in Tanzania. Credit: UN Trust Fund/Gemma Wood.

The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) recognizes the essential role civil society and women’s rights organizations play in ending violence against women and girls, as well as their expertise.

To disseminate their knowledge, the UN Trust Fund worked with grantee organizations and researchers to create a series of briefings on preventing violence against women. The organizations’ practice-based insights are invaluable to planning, designing and funding interventions aimed at ending violence against women and girls.

The main objectives of the knowledge products are to:

  • make the practice-based knowledge available to all those working to end violence against women and girls;
  • examine the unique contributions and levels of impact of civil society and women’s organizations in preventing violence against women and girls, as well as the challenges faced and lessons learned;
  • guide the UN Trust Fund’s grant-making priorities; and
  • inform the work of the UN and other stakeholders on preventing and ending violence against women and girls.

The findings identified 10 key pathways to prevent violence against women and girls – see methodology note here. Each theme will be explored in conversations with 10 grantees, resulting in a detailed report per theme and summaries in English, French and Spanish published on a rolling basis in starting July 2021 and 2022.

The ten themes are as follows on:

  1. Community mobilization
  2. Engaging faith-based and traditional actors
  3. Exploring intersectional approaches
  4. Mobilizing women as agents of change
  5. Training for behaviour change
  6. Adolescent-focused approaches
  7. Resistance and backlash
  8. Adaptative programming
  9. Survivor-centred, multi-sector responses
  10. Law and policy implementation and reform

In edition to the 10 themes, the UN Trust Fund identified lessons across the series on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and adaptations to prevention programmes made by the civil society organizations involved in the knowledge production. These lessons are published in a Special Edition of the series: “Learning from practice: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on prevention of violence against women and girls”.

Check out the Final Synthesis Review of the Practice-Based Knowledge on the Prevention of Violence against Women and Girls here.

Check out highlights of the webinars of these prevention briefs.