INTERNATIONAL: UN Women Boosted by the Award of Additional $10m Grant

The new super agency at the United Nations, called UN Women and combining four of the major women's agencies, is off to a good start with a new additional $10m grant initiative coming from the UN trust fund.

Assisting 18 nations with 13 separate initiatives to stop the spread of violence against women and girls worldwide, the UN Trust Fund aims to help local as well as national efforts.

The new grant, entitled UNiTE to End Violence Against Women, will complete the UN fund's 14th grant-making cycle, which has given $20.5m to 33 countries and territories to cover 24 separate programmes.

Through the newest $10m grant, Belarus, Sri Lanka and the Marshall Islands will be receiving funds to work on specific issues of violence against women and girls in their regions.

UN Women has been launched with the merger of the UN Development Fund for Women (Unifem), the Division for the Advancement of Women (Daw), the Office of the Special Adviser on Gender Issues, and the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).

Taking the lead for UN Women in the role of executive director is Michelle Bachelet, the former president of Chile and under secretary general of the UN. In an introductory statement to the UN General Assembly on 11 October, she said that the creation of UN Women is: "clearly a huge opportunity to significantly accelerate all the efforts that the UN system has made in order to achieve better conditions for women.

"We have taken an important step towards greater coherence, a central tenet of United Nations reform.

"Let me express my deepest appreciation to the leadership and staff of the four entities ... for their professionalism and unswerving commitment to the shared goal of women's empowerment, rights and equality".

Under the management of UN Women, the UN Trust Fund will be helping girls become leaders in the anti-violence movement in Peru. In Turkey, the money will be going to help The Mother Child Foundation stop domestic gender based violence in the family.

The Jordan's Womens Union will be co-ordinating, through the grant, a programme set to open in Egypt, Jordan and Morocco to tackle the trafficking of women and to protect women migrant workers' rights.

A new pilot programme to protect women and girls from acid violence in Uganda, Cambodia and Nepal will also be launched through monies coming from the initiative, via Acid Survivors Trust International.

Unfortunately, the global needs still outweigh the monies available. Falling drastically short of the current global demand to help women, the UN Trust Fund has only been able to meet 3% of the global needs of women's organizations who petitioned the agency through 1,643 grant applications.

"Violence against women destroys families, fractures communities and hampers progress on development goals," said Inés Alberdi, Unifem executive director. "But it is a problem with a solution. Only by intensifying support and increasing investment to national and local efforts can we ensure women and girls are safe from violence and can lead healthy, productive lives."