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Operating as ‘One UN’ involves bringing together the expertise, experience, and capacities of the entire UN family to work more effectively and efficiently. It is a central pillar of UN Reforms and is particularly important for addressing the complex challenge of ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG). Spotlight Initiative has been an ambitious attempt to deliver EVAWG programming through an empowered Resident Coordinator, a new generation of UN Country Teams, and enhanced inter-agency coordination, offering valuable lessons about how to operate as one UN and amplify the UN system's…

To make a compelling case to donors and national governments for investing in ending violence against women and girls (EVAWG), it is useful to highlight both the moral imperative and the far-reaching social and economic impacts of violence. VAWG is a fundamental breach of women and girls human rights, impacting their own and their families' education, health and societal contribution. VAWG is also a strong indicator of a lack of peace and societal wellbeing.

VAWG also has huge economic costs, estimated to be around 2% of global GDP, or US$ 1.5 trillion. Economic costs have been calculated…

Improving EVAWG programme sustainability is essential for long-term, transformative change to end violence against women and girls (VAWG). To ensure that positive programme impacts continue long after the programme ends, it is crucial to plan for sustainability right from the very start during the programme design phase and then to continue to plan for this through implementation, closure or scale-up. Sustainability involves meaningfully engaging communities, optimising resources, advocating for policy change, empowering individuals, and seeking to diversify funding sources.

A programme strategy on violence against women and girls (VAWG) should be developed early in the design phase and set out the key programme approaches that will be adopted and how specific interventions and activities will be designed, implemented and evaluated. It is not always necessary or appropriate to design a new programme from scratch if there are options to build on your organisation's or partners' existing work to strengthen, expand, adapt or scale programming in your context. A robust programme strategy builds on the following key elements:

A contextual situational analysis…

A survivor-centred approach prioritises survivors' rights, ensuring they receive dignity and respect. By placing survivors at the centre, a programme can aid their recovery, minimise further harm, and support their empowerment. Survivors should be supported to have their voices heard and be involved and kept informed at every stage if programme design and implementation. This involves building a safe, trusting relationship and helping survivors regain control over their lives. VAWG programmes should be attuned to survivors' specific needs at each stage of the project cycle - this is known as…

Ending violence against women and girls requires the design and implementation of contextually relevant programmes. In terms of design, a programme that is successful in one context may not be appropriate in another due to the diverse needs and experiences of communities and the specific factors driving violence in those contexts. Nonetheless, where an effective programme approach is deemed appropriate to another context, it is possible to adapt the approach or model successfully to the new context provided sufficient time, resources and technical expertise are allocated for adaptation of the…

Spotlight Initiative has supported a range of programmes and activities which have focused on preventing violence in sports. This includes: awareness and advocacy campaigns, policy reform, creation of safe spaces, capacity building, youth engagement, peer leadership, and multi-stakeholder partnerships. These initiatives have targeted youth, men and boys, women and girls.

Policy development and institutional support: In Samoa, Spotlight Initiative partnered with the Samoa Association of Sports and the National Olympic Committee to develop new policy tools and resources - including an…

Spotlight Initiative has prioritised direct support to facilitate and strengthen women’s rights and feminist movement building in a number of ways and learned some key lessons:

Directly address the resourcing gap through an inclusive, human rights-based and feminist approach to funding that disrupts the existing landscape and shifts funds and decision making to grassroots and local women’s rights organisations. Spotlight Initiative programmes allocated 48%, or about USD 190 million, of activity funds to civil society organisations, and of this, 79% reached national, local and grassroots…

Adapting the SASA! Community mobilisation approach: Spotlight Initiative has adapted and implemented the SASA! Approach in Uganda and Haiti, originally developed by the Ugandan women’s rights organisation Raising Voices. SASA! is rooted in a feminist understanding of men’s power over women as a root cause of VAWG and works to balance power in relationships and communities. It trains and supports community activists to facilitate informal activities - such as dialogues, role plays, discussions of posters - with community members in their homes, workplaces, churches and social locations. It aims…

A key focus of Spotlight Initiative's work has been to strengthen the institutional environment for ending VAWG. In different countries, programmes have variously worked with national government, the private sector, media and education institutions both to reduce violence within these institutions, ensure they implement commitments to end VAWG and to foster a wider enabling environment for VAWG prevention.

In addition to work to reform and strengthen laws and policies, Spotlight Initiative has worked with government bodies to strengthen institutional capacity to implement these commitments…