Event: Expert convening: Preventing violence against women and girls

This week, at a conference entitled “Building a shared agenda on prevention of violence against women and girls” in Wilton Park, United Kingdom, Aldijana Sisic, Chief of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) presented results of the fund’s investments to prevent violence against women and girls.

Over the past 5 years, the UN Trust Fund has invested USD 47 million in its prevention portfolio. (Source: Database of UN Trust Fund funding, 2014-2018)

Ms. Sisic shared that over the past 5 years, the UN Trust Fund has invested USD 47 million in 124 projects either entirely focused on prevention, or with a prevention component, out of a total of USD 52 million funded during that time. “The investment made is still a small portion in terms of response to the mapped global request for funding prevention interventions considering that the Fund received over the past five years requests for USD 2.5 billion of funding for projects focused on preventing violence”, Ms. Sisic informed.

A meta-analysis of projects funded in the past 10 years confirmed the effectiveness of investment in prevention and identified the successes of integrating prevention work in other types of project interventions such as service provision to survivors of violence or advocacy for policy change.

Of the USD 3 billion requested in funding from the UN Trust Fund over the past 5 years, USD 2.5 billion of requests were for projects focused on prevention. (Source: Database of UN Trust Fund funding, 2014-2018)

Last year alone, UN Trust Fund-supported projects reached 7,885,356 people. Examples of the UN Trust Fund’s reach over the past two years also include forty-four grantees who mobilized 1,942 community or faith groups to take public action in changing behavior, practices and attitudes of their community members to prevent violence. In addition, 34 grantees implemented school-based interventions as entry points for prevention work in 816 schools to improve the curriculum or implement policies, practices or services to prevent violence against women and girls.

The conference, put on in partnership with the United Kingdom’s Department of International Development and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund, brought together global experts and policy makers to discuss evidence on what is effective in preventing violence against women and girls, best practices for up-scaling interventions, and ways to ensure financing for continued work.